Terms & Conditions
- People Responsible for your work
- Charges and Expenses
- Billing arrangements
- Other party's charges and expenses
- Solicitors' Financial Services
- Storage of papers and documents
- Termination
- Communication between you and us
- Agreement
Will Osmond (WJO) and Sarah Cato (SMC) will be responsible for this matter. They are the partners with ultimate responsibility. From time to time they may be assisted by their assistants, Paul Flaherty (PCF) and Catherine Dunbar (CLD) or their trainees Christopher Reid (CMR) or Alex Chruscikowski (APC).
Our charges are based on the time we spend in dealing with a transaction. Time spent on your affairs will include meetings with you and perhaps others, any time spent travelling; considering, preparing and working on papers; correspondence; and making and receiving telephone calls.
We will charge you £300 per hour for Mr. Osmond, £220 for Mrs. Cato, £180 for Mr. Flaherty and Mrs. Dunbar and £110 for Mr Reid and Mr Chruscikowski for each hour engaged on your matter from now until the review date of 1st April 2010.
Routine letters that we write, and routine telephone calls that we make and receive will be charged as units of 1/10th of an hour. Routine letters received will be charges as units of 1/10th of an hour. Other letters will be charged on a time basis.
On 1st April next we will review the hourly rate to take account of changes in our overhead costs and notify you in writing of any increased rate.
In addition to the time spent, we may take into account a number of factors which include the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken, the expertise or specialist knowledge which the case requires and, if appropriate, the value of the property or subject matter involved. On the basis of the information currently available, we expect these factors to be adequately covered by the hourly rate set out above. The rates may be higher if, for example, the matter becomes more complex than expected. We will notify you of this.
We will add VAT to our charges at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present VAT is 17.5%.
There may be certain other expenses, including payments we make on your behalf, such as court fees, fees for medical reports and barrister's fees, which you will have to pay. VAT is payable on certain expenses. We will not incur any third party fees without first obtaining your authority to do so.
We will inform you if any unforeseen additional work becomes necessary (for example, due to unexpected difficulties or if your requirements or the circumstances significantly change during the course of the matter). We will also inform you of its estimated cost in writing before any extra charges and expenses are incurred.
It is normal practice to ask clients to pay sums of money from time to time on account of the charges and expenses which are expected in the following weeks or months. This helps to avoid delay in the progress of their case. When we put these payments towards your bill/s, we will send you a receipted bill. We will offset any such payments against your final bill, but it is important that you understand that your total charges and expenses may be greater than any advance payments.
We will send you an interim bill for our charges and expenses at the end of each month while the work is in progress. This enables you to budget as the matter progresses. We will send a final bill after completion of the work.
Payment is due to us within 14 days of our sending you a final bill. We will charge you interest on the bill, at 4% per annum above the National Westminster Bank Base Rate from the date on which payment is due, if you do not pay our bill within this time. Interest will be charged on a daily basis.
If you have any query about your bill you should contact Will Osmond straight away.
If a case is approaching trial we shall ask you to pay us a sum on account of Counsel's brief fee and will ask that our own fees are paid up to date before Counsel is briefed. We may also ask for a sum to be paid on account of our own fees for attending trial.
It is important that you understand that you will be responsible for paying our bills. We will discuss with you whether your charges and expenses might be paid by another person. Even if you are successful, the other party may not be ordered to pay all your charges and expenses or these may not be recovered from them in full. If this happens, you will have to pay the balance of our charges and expenses. If the other party is legally aided, you may not get back any of your charges and expenses, even if you win the case.
If you are successful and the court orders the other party to pay some or all of your charges and expenses, interest can be claimed on them from the other party from the date of the court order. We will account to you for such interest to the extent that you have paid our charges and expenses on account, but we are entitled to the rest of that interest.
You will also be responsible for paying the charges and expenses of seeking to recover any charges and expenses that the court orders the other party to pay.
In some circumstances, the court may order you to pay the other party's legal charges and expenses if, for example, you lose the case. That money would be payable in addition to our charges and expenses. We will discuss with you whether our charges and expenses and your liability for another party's charges and expenses may be covered by insurance, and if not, whether it would be advisable for you to have insurance to meet the other party's charges and expenses.
This firm is not authorised by the Financial Services Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Services Authority so that we can carry on insurance mediation activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, is regulated by The Law Society. The register can be accessed via the Financial Services Authority website at www.fsa.gov.uk/register
After completing the work, we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses. We will keep our file of papers (except for any of your papers which you ask to be returned to you) for no less than 6 years. We keep the file on the understanding that that we have the authority to destroy it 6 years after the date of the final bill we send you for the matter. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody.
If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your affairs, we will not normally charge for such retrieval. However, we may make a charge based on the time spent producing stored papers or documents to you or another at your request. We may also charge for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with the instructions given by you or on your behalf.
You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time, but we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses.
In some circumstances, you may consider we ought to stop acting for you, for example, if you cannot give clear or proper instructions on how we are to proceed, or if it is clear that you have lost confidence in how we are carrying out your work.
We may decide to stop acting for you only for good reason, for example, if you do not pay an interim bill or fail to comply with our request for a payment on account. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.
If you decide that we will no longer act for you, you will pay our charges on an hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier.
We are confident of providing a high quality service in all respects. If, however, you have any queries or concerns about our work for you, please raise them in the first instance with the fee earner dealing with your matter. If that does not resolve the problem to your satisfaction or you prefer not to speak to him then please contact the firm's client care partner who is William Osmond.
All solicitors must attempt to resolve problems that may arise with their services. It is therefore important that you immediately raise any concerns you may have with us. We value you and would not wish to think you have reason to be unhappy with us.
Unless otherwise agreed, these terms of business apply to any future instructions you give us.
Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business. Even so we ask you to please sign and date the enclosed copy of these terms and return it to us immediately. We can then be confident that you understand to basis on which we will act for you.