Who will do the work?
How long will the work take?
What will the work cost?
Who has to pay?
How to pay?
Minimising my charges?
Querying my charges?
Complaints?
Limiting your claims against me
Communications
Storage of papers
Who will do the work?
As a sole practitioner, I will carry out all the legal work. If at any time you have any questions or problems, please contact me.
If I am not available, my secretaries will be happy to take a message and help you if they can. If you just want me to return a call, let them know, and I will telephone you as soon as I can. It helps if you leave a message, and saves you money.
I have arrangements with other solicitors for them to manage my practice and look after my clients' affairs if I am ever absent due to holiday, illness or emergency. They can be contacted through my office and will make sure that your interests are fully protected.
I am associated with another firm of solicitors, Pengelly & Rylands: we support each other, as we each have complimentary specialisations. Therefore, in suitable cases, I may recommend to you that Pengelly & Rylands should do particular aspects of your work. However, the choice of solicitor will always be yours.
How long will the work take?
The short answer is, "I do not know" - so much depends on the speed with which others involved in the matter work, and on any unexpected problems that occur. All I can promise is to deal with everything promptly and to keep you informed of progress.
What will the work cost?
In suitable cases, where the amount of work involved can be estimated beforehand, I will give you an estimate of my likely charges. If I give you an estimate, I will not exceed it without warning you, but any estimate is not a fixed price.
In some areas of work, particularly for a succession of similar transactions, I may be able to agree a fixed fee. The work covered by the fixed fee would need to be clearly identified, with any extra work being subject to an additional charge. If you are interested in this, please let me know.
Charges will be calculated mainly by reference to the time I spend on your work in personal meetings, correspondence, telephone calls, research, travelling and waiting time, etc. In addition, by law, they must reflect certain other aspects of the work, such as: -
� its urgency and complexity
� its monetary value and importance to you
Normally, I take account of these factors by specifying an appropriate hourly rate (a relatively low rate for straightforward, non-urgent work; a relatively high rate for urgent, extremely valuable work; etc). If the application of the hourly rate results in a bill that is either too high or too low, I will suggest a suitable adjustment.
I will confirm my current charging rate with you before I start work. This is the rate (plus VAT and expenses) at which I will charge you: there is no further "mark up" as some other firms add.
I review my rates every February and August and will tell you of any changes. All time I spend directly, personally and productively on this case will be charged at this rate, but no extra charge is made for work done by my secretaries: all my overheads are covered in my hourly rate.
My rate does not include VAT, which I will add to the bill at the rate in force when the bill is issued. You may also need to pay various out-of-pocket expenses ("disbursements"), which I will notify to you as they arise.
If you want to put a limit on the costs, please tell me. This limit can be either the most you are willing to spend on the case, or the most you are willing to spend without further discussion. I cannot guarantee to complete the matter below your limit, only to stop work when my fees reach that level.
There is no extra charge if another solicitor deals with your work as my locum. If Pengelly & Rylands become involved, they will bill you directly.
Who has to pay?
If I am representing you in a dispute, you will probably expect your opponent to pay your costs if you win. This does not always happen. Please bear in mind the following points -
- My fees and expenses are payable by you whether or not you are successful
- If you are successful, your opponent will probably not have to pay all of your costs (for instance, the rates allowed by the Court on bills payable by opposing parties are rarely as high as the rates that are appropriate between a solicitor and his own client). You will have to bear any shortfall
- Even if you win, your opponent may not have the money to pay you, or may successfully hide what money there is, or may have Legal Aid (in which case you would probably not get any contribution towards your costs). You would still have to pay me
- If you are unsuccessful, you will probably have to pay a large contribution towards your opponents costs, as well as all your own
- Litigation is a lottery - people often lose when they (and even their lawyers) expected to win
- If you drop court proceedings once they have started, you may well have to pay your opponent's costs as well as your own
If there is more than one of you, you will be jointly and individually liable for money due to me, so I do not have to ask each of you to pay part of my bill, but can insist that any of you pays me in full. Please also bear in mind that I can only represent you if you agree with each other on what is to be done - if there is any conflict of interest, I may have to stop acting for all of you.
If you instruct me to do work for a limited company, you will be personally responsible for payment if the company fails to pay. I know that some people do not want to give personal guarantees for their companies, but I feel that, if you do not trust your company to pay, you should not expect me to take the risk.
How to pay
In conveyancing matters, I will send you a bill before the completion date, covering the work to date and the estimated work to complete the matter - if substantially more than the estimated work is required, I may have to render a supplementary bill, but I try to avoid this. If there will be money due to you on completion, I will deduct my charges and expenses from that money and send you the net amount; if there is money needed from you, I expect to have that money as cleared funds in good time before completion. Certainly, I cannot pay out money to you or on your behalf unless I have that money as cleared funds in my account.
In other matters that do not last more than a few weeks, I will send you a bill when my work is finished. I expect you to pay the bill within one month.
In matters that last longer, I usually ask for payments as we go, and issue bills at reasonable intervals for work done so far. These may be monthly if I am busy on the case, but will be less frequent when there is less activity. Again, I expect you to pay within one month.
These interim bills will not necessarily be final bills for all work done to that date: they will be on account of the full bill for the completed work.
If you do not pay promptly, I reserve the right to charge you interest (at the statutory debt rate at that time) on any overdue amounts and to stop work on a particular matter if necessary. I will also retain (ie: claim a "lien" over) any documents or funds of yours which I hold until all sums due to me are paid, and may use funds held by me on your behalf for other purposes to pay the debt.
I may ask for payments on account of anticipated fees or expenses. Any money paid on account is kept in clients' account (separate from my own office account) until it is needed, and earns interest while unused. Unless the amount payable would be less than �20, I will credit you with the interest that my bank would have paid were the money held in a separate deposit account, after deducting -
- a modest administration charge for calculating the interest and
- a fair discount to compensate me for paying you interest before I am paid by the bank. If you receive any interest, please remember to declare it to the Inland Revenue on your tax return: I will be paying you the money gross, and it will be your responsibility to pay the tax due on it.
If I introduce you to another adviser (eg: a financial adviser) I may be paid a commission for this. That commission will normally cover the work involved in effecting the introduction and routine liaison with the adviser in future. I will tell you the amount (or likely amount) of the commission, to ensure you have no objection to my keeping it. Any commission will reduce my bill that would otherwise be payable by you. Whether commission is paid or not, I will only recommend an adviser whom I think is right for you.
Minimising my charges
There are some simple things you can do to help me reduce my bill -
- Give me all the information I ask for as soon as you can, making sure nothing is missing
- If you have extra non-urgent information, please bear in mind that I can handle letters, faxes and e-mail much more efficiently than telephone calls.
- You can often do some routine work yourself, such as agreeing what fixtures and fittings you want to buy or sell when moving house, or preparing a diary of events for a court case.
Querying my charges
If you think I have overcharged you, you have certain rights:
- In matters involving court cases, you can ask for a detailed bill. (If the work justifies it, the detailed bill can be higher than a previous non-detailed bill.)
- In matters not involving court cases, you can ask me to have the bill checked by the Law Society, but you must do this within one month of receiving the bill.
- In all matters, you can ask the court to check my bill. You must apply to the court direct and, depending on the outcome, you might have to pay my costs of this process.
I can let you have more details of these rights if needed, but please note that accepting these terms restricts your ability to challenge my charging rate.
Complaints
to download a PDF of the complaints procedure (16k) click here
As well as the above specific rights, if you are not happy with the service you have received from me, please tell me exactly why, and I will try to resolve any problems. If appropriate, I can refer the papers to another solicitor for an objective opinion on the level of service I have given.
If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors at Victoria Court, 8 Dormer Place, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire CV32 5AE (telephone: 01926 822007/8).
I emphasise that I aim to offer all my clients an efficient and effective service, and I am confident that I will do so in this case. However, if you are unhappy with any aspect of my service, please speak to me.
Limiting your claims against me
I am insured under the Law Society's indemnity scheme against claims for negligence, subject to a limit per claim of �1,000,000. Unless legally obliged otherwise, I do not accept liability for negligence above �1,000,000 (except to the extent that I am covered under the indemnity scheme).
Please note that I do not claim to be a tax expert and my work will not include giving advice on any tax aspects. I can introduce you to a tax expert to advise on these aspects if you want.
Communications
I will normally contact you by letter or telephone. If you want me to routinely use fax or e-mail, please let me know. There is a risk that a communication (perhaps particularly by fax or e-mail might be intercepted or get lost, so please consider carefully which form of communication you would prefer.
If there is more than one of you, you may wish to nominate one person to represent you all in dealing with me. If so, please give that person's name below. This arrangement can be cancelled by any one of you in writing to me to say so.
If you give me your email address, I will assume that you want me to contact you by email when practical, and that you are content for me to use email to correspond with others on your work. Please read my email protocol to make sure that you are aware of the risks and limitations of using email
Storage of papers
When my work on any particular subject is finished, I will store my file of papers. I will store the file for at least six years (there is no charge for this). At the end of that time, unless there seems to be a good reason for keeping the papers, I will destroy them (this does NOT apply to any deeds, Will, Codicil, etc, I hold in safekeeping for you: only to the correspondence and similar papers).
If you would prefer me to send the papers to you at that time, instead of destroying them, please tell me at any time before the file is stored. Frankly, the papers are unlikely to be of any use or interest after six years, but you can have them if you would prefer them not to be destroyed
While I hold the stored papers, I can retrieve them from storage to answer any questions that might have arisen, and there is normally no charge for this. However, if you want copies of papers from a closed file, or if a significant amount of time or work is required to answer your queries, I reserve the right to make a suitable charge for this.
If you are a consumer, you may (under the Distance Selling Regulations) be able to cancel this contract by telling me in writing within 7 days of accepting these terms. As a result, I will not start work until 7 days after you accept these terms (unless you tell me in writing that you want me to start immediately). Further, the 30 day "performance period" under the Regulations is inapplicable: I will do the work as quickly as practicable, but cannot predict how long it will take.
