18. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
As solicitors we are permitted to put a reasonable limit on our liability to our clients provided that:
- The limit on our liability is not below the minimum level of cover required by the Solicitors’ Indemnity Rules (currently £3,000,000 for companies); and
- We can only limit our liability to the extent that the law allows. In particular, we do not limit our liability for death or personal injury resulting from our negligence.
Our liability to you shall therefore be limited as follows:
- Irrespective of the legal grounds on which any claim against us is made, unless we expressly state a higher amount in our Client Care Letter accompanying these Terms, our liability and loss to you (including any liability for negligence other than for death or personal injury) shall be subject to an aggregate limit of £3 million for all claims and losses resulting from:
- one act error or omission;
- one series of related acts or omissions;
- the same act or omission in a series of related matters or transactions;
- similar acts or omissions in a series of related matters or transactions.
- For the purposes of this clause, a claim against any one or more of our [partners] assistant solicitors, employed barristers, any other members of our staff (whether employees or not) and any company or its employees handling outsourced work as per clause 8 above, arising from one matter or transaction, shall be regarded as a single claim against us and our liability to you shall be limited accordingly.
- We will not be liable for any consequential, special, indirect or exemplary damages, costs or losses or any damages, costs or losses attributable to lost profits or opportunities.
19. OTHER MATTERS
We shall not be liable to you for any failure to provide our services caused by matters beyond our reasonable control.
20. REGULATORY MATTERS
We are authorised and regulated by the SRA, whose Code of Conduct, including its professional rules, principles and guidance apply to us. We are not authorised by the Financial Services Authority. If, while we are acting for you, you need advice on investments, we may have to refer you to someone who is authorised to provide the necessary advice. However, we may provide certain limited investment advice services where these are closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you. This is because we are members of the Law Society of England and Wales, which is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
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 may carry on insurance mediation activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts such as defective title indemnity insurance in conveyancing matters and after-the-event insurance in litigation matters. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The register can be accessed via the Financial Services Authority website at www.fsa.gov.uk/register.
The Law Society is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 but responsibility for regulation and complaints handling has been separated from the Law Society’s representative functions. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society and the Legal Ombudsman is the independent complaints handling body.
If you are unhappy about any insurance mediation advice we have given you then you should follow our complaints procedure (see Complaints at clause 17).
The Firm has effected professional indemnity insurance cover which meets or exceeds the requirements of the SRA. In the event of any failure by the Firm to meet its liabilities, apart from such insurance, the Solicitors’ Compensation Fund is in place, from which grants may be given to those who have suffered loss by reason of the dishonesty of a solicitor or an employee in connection with a solicitor’s practice or in connection with a trust of which the solicitor is a trustee. You are not entitled to the protections offered by the SRA compensation fund, for instance where non-legal services provided by the firm are unregulated by the SRA.
21. CONFLICTS
We have the following rights to cancel this Contract on giving immediate written notice:
- If our own interests conflict with yours; or
- If a conflict of interests arises between you and any of our other clients in relation to the same or related matters, or there is a significant risk that this might happen; or
- If any instructions you give us conflict with our professional duties or obligations as solicitors.
22. TERMINATION
You may immediately terminate the Contract in writing at any time if you wish us to stop acting for you. We may also cancel the Contract:
- If we have good reason to do so an on giving you reasonable written notice; or
- If we believe there are circumstances that justify an immediate cessation of the work that we are doing for you; or
- In the circumstances provided for in other clauses of these Terms.
Circumstances that might justify our ceasing to act for you under the first two bullet points above would include a non-payment of any of our invoices, your failure to make any payment on account or to settle any Disbursements or costs which we have requested, or your failure to give us the instructions that we might reasonably expect in relation to your matter(s).
In the event that we cancel the Contract and cease acting for you, we shall be entitled to charge you a fee for all the time spent by us up to cancellation, and all the Disbursements and costs we have incurred or may be liable for up to that point in time. If it is not possible to calculate our fee with reference to a Quotation that we have given, our fee shall be calculated on the basis of our hourly rates.
23. PAPERS AND DEEDS
We are entitled to retain our files and any documents we are holding on your behalf until you have paid all our invoices (a lien). Unless you have already asked us to return any papers to you, we shall keep all files relating to your completed matters in storage for not less than 6 years, either in their original form or on some other retrievable medium. After the end of that period, those files will be destroyed, although this shall not apply to any original documents that you have specifically asked us in writing to keep in safe custody for you.
We do not normally make a charge for retrieving stored papers which relate to current matters, although we reserve the right to charge you for any time spent in retrieving papers relating to completed matters and for any time spent in reading the file, writing letters, or doing any other work at your request. This is normally £20 plus 20 pence for each page of A4 document to cover our retrieval, photocopying/ scanning and postage costs.
We reserve the right to charge for storage from the time a matter is completed in the case of deeds, wills or documents and after six years in the case of records [insert details of charges for deed packets.
Where we are asked to retrieve a deceased’s will and associated papers we incur a cost in doing so. As such we reserve the right to charge 20 plus 20 pence for each page of A4 for such retrieval where we are not also instructed to handle the estate.
If you ask us to send any documents to anyone else, we shall not be liable for any loss or damage that occurs to those documents after they leave our possession. You should also note that, unless we believe it might be appropriate to do so we will not ordinarily make copies of any lengthy or bulky documentation which we send to anyone else, unless you specifically ask us to do so, and pay our copying charges.
24. EMAIL, FAX AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) MATTERS
Unless otherwise agreed, we may use conventional (unencrypted) email to communicate with you and anyone else that is involved in any matter on which you instruct us. You acknowledge that conventional email may present security risks in certain circumstances and you shall be taken to have accepted those risks unless you tell us not to use that means of communication.
If you would like us to use encrypted email for communication purposes you should notify us in writing. We will endeavour to do so, but this shall also be subject to us making the necessary arrangements with you and any other recipients.
If you do not want us to fax you at any fax number where we might ordinarily think you may be contactable, you must inform us of this in writing and provide us with any fax number(s) you wish us to use.
Please note that in order to protect the integrity and security of our IT systems, we may prohibit the receipt and opening of certain types of electronic files by our staff and you should note our internal IT procedures may also impose a delay on our ability to open and deal with certain types of electronic files.
Please also note that we may record and monitor telephone, fax and email communications that are made to or from our offices and staff for the purposes of the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000.
25. RECOMMENDATIONS
If we should recommend the services of anyone to you such as accountants, surveyors, trade mark and patent agents, foreign lawyers, or anyone else, we shall do so in good faith and this shall be the sole extent of our liability with regard to the recommendation in question.
26. AUDITS AND AUDIT ENQUIRIES
If we receive requests for information of an auditing nature from you, your accountants or auditors, we may address our response to you and we may charge you for the time spent in addressing these enquiries at our normal hourly rates.
External firms or organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice to ensure compliance with mandatory requirements such as the regulatory standards and/or voluntary standards such as Lexcel or ISO 9001. Such external firms or organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your files. We operate our own in-house file review process to ensure our own quality standards are adhered to and personnel involved in the review process are bound by the firm’s confidentiality obligations.
27. THIRD PARTY RIGHTS
Unless we specifically agree to the contrary in writing, we shall act only on your behalf in relation to the work that we do for you and the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 shall not apply.
Any legal advice that we give you is for your own use only and we shall not be liable to anyone else in relation to that advice (including anyone that you pass or transmit it to) unless we expressly agree to be liable to the recipient(s) in writing.
28. DATA PROTECTION
If you are a private individual we shall only use any personal data that we have relating to you for the following purposes:
- To identify you as a client of this firm, to confirm any information you have given us and to keep your records up to date;
- To provide you with legal services;
- To process any payments from you;
- To send you information regarding our products and services, including any products and services that we may supply in conjunction with anyone else, unless you ask us not to do so;
- For review and analysis in connection with the management of our practice;
- For legal and regulatory compliance; and
- For producing statistics and other information relating to our business, including statutory returns, providing this shall not identify you personally.
Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the Data Protection Act 1998, and our duty of confidentiality. Please note that our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as expert witnesses and other professional advisers. Except in certain circumstances, you have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you and you should ask us should you need to access this data.
29. CONVEYANCING MATTERS
In conveyancing matters when acting for you as a purchaser, we may also be acting for your proposed lender and as such we have a duty to fully reveal to your lender all relevant facts about the purchase and mortgage. This includes but is not limited to:
- Any differences between your mortgage application and information we receive during the transaction;
- Any cash-back payments or discounts that a seller is giving you.
30. REFERRALS AND COMMISSIONS
If you have been referred to us by an introducer with whom we have a financial arrangement:
- We shall not disclose your information to that introducer unless you consent;
- We shall make clear the amounts involved in your client care letter;
- If we also act for the introducer in the same matter and a conflict of interest arises, we may have to cease acting for you;
- Any advice we give will be independent and you can raise questions on all aspects of the matter.
We are prevented by law and regulations from making a secret profit from our relationship with you. If any occasion arises where there is potential for us to earn a commission or financial benefit (such as a discount or rebate), for instance if we introduce you to another practice to undertake work for you which we cannot do ourselves, we will establish a separate written agreement with you to deal with the acceptance and allocation of any such commission or financial benefit arising.
31. EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY
We are committed to encouraging and promoting equality and diversity in all of our dealings with clients, third parties and employees. Please contact us if you would like a copy of our equality and diversity policy.
32. PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE
The details of our Professional Indemnity Insurance and the territorial coverage of the policy are available in each of our offices and are available upon request.
33. GENERAL
Any dispute or legal issue arising from our Terms of Business will be determined by the law of England and Wales, and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English and Welsh courts, notwithstanding that you may be based, or our services may be provided to you, elsewhere.
Please sign the agreement below. Please return the signed copy to us and keep a signed copy for your own records.
35. ADVICE ON FUNDING
AGREEMENT
By giving us any specific instructions to act on your behalf, requesting advice from us after you have received our Client Care Letter you confirm that you have read and understood the terms and conditions set out in this Terms of Business.
You confirm that you agree and accept these terms and conditions and confirm that:
1. You do understand that there are other ways of funding my claim,
2. If you are on income support, low income or some welfare benefits, and in certain cases you may qualify for public funding (legal aid). You are aware that your local Citizens Advice Bureau can provide you with further information.
3. You are aware that other sources of funding this matter include trade unions, legal expenses insurance and home insurance, and that may other solicitors and barristers also offer no-win-no fee services