Our Terms & Conditions
Fees:
Charges for legal work are based upon the time spent on a matter by either a Solicitor or a Legal Assistant. The basis for calculation of the professional fees is described below and is mainly by reference to time spent by whomsoever shall spend time working on your file. This will include attendances upon the client and others, any time spent travelling, considering preparing and working on papers and correspondence, making and receiving telephone calls. Each Solicitor or Legal Assistant’s time is charged out at the applicable hourly rate.
These hourly rates do not include VAT, but VAT will be added when an invoice is prepared. Where instructions of the client require that interviews take place, or other work is carried out, necessarily outside of our normal office hours, we reserve the right to increase the level of the hourly rate but you will be notified should the hourly rate be increased. Charging rates are reviewable and the firm reserves the right to review the charges annually at the end of each financial year which falls due in March of each year.
You may, after discussion with the Fee Earner responsible for your case, impose a cap on costs that we may incur without your further agreement. If you wish to do this you must do so in writing.
Disbursements:
Depending on the transaction, there may be other fees payable to third parties which are referred to as disbursements. Any disbursements will be confirmed to you either in the covering letter or during the transaction. Unless the amount required is trivial, we may require you to pay us for such disbursements in advance.
Examples of disbursements that may be incurred in your matter are court fees, experts fees, barristers fees and other payments to third parties. We will tell you about these disbursements and the amounts required from you as soon as we are able to do so.
Payment of Fees:
It is the firm’s practice to deliver accounts either at the completion of your case or, whenever applicable, at periods during the duration of your case. The firm’s fees are payable on production of the account. If you do not pay interim accounts we may not be able, in some circumstances, to continue to act for you.
We will also require from you throughout the case payments in advance, known as “payments on account” of our costs. It is a condition of our contract with you that these are paid when required. If you do not pay payments on account that we reasonably require from you then we will not be able to continue to act for you.
The payments on account required from you will be based on our estimate of the likely costs to be incurred in the next stage of your case and we will explain to you how they have been calculated when we request the payment. Payments on account will be set against the bill that we send to you for the relevant period. If the time actually spent is less than estimated the balance will be carried forward or refunded as appropriate.
You may find it convenient in budgeting for our costs to make regular payments on account each month. The Fee Earner responsible for your case will be able to discuss with you an appropriate amount and provide you with our bank details if you wish to set up a standing order.
Fees are payable whether or not we act for you until the case is concluded and whether or not you are successful. If your instructions do not proceed to completion for any reason during the period in which we are instructed then we shall be entitled to charge for work done on the basis set out in these terms and conditions.
Complaints Procedure:
Whilst we hope we will not give you cause for complaint, should you be unhappy with the service provided by the firm, please do not hesitate to contact us in writing. Please address your concern for the attention of the Senior Partner.
We endeavour to resolve any problem quickly and efficiently. We operate an internal complaints handling system to help us to resolve the problem together. If for any reason we are unable to resolve the problem between us, then we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority which also provides a complaints and redress scheme.