Terms and Conditions v.1 2023 (April)

Our Aim

We aim to offer our clients quality legal advice, with a personal service, at a fair cost. As a start, we hope it is helpful to you to set out in this statement the basis on which we will provide our professional services.

 

Our Commitment to You

We will:

REPRESENT your interests and keep your business confidential.

EXPLAIN to you the legal work which may be required and the prospects of a successful outcome.

MAKE SURE that you understand the likely degree of financial risk which you will be taking on.

ADVISE YOU if legal aid might be available to you.

KEEP YOU regularly informed of progress or, if there is none, when you are next likely to hear from us.

TRY to avoid using technical legal language when writing to you – tell us when we fail in this aim!

DEAL with your queries promptly; for example, we will always try to return your telephone calls on the same day.

ADVISE you on tax matters when specifically requested to do so.

 

Our Regulator

Our company is authorised to provide legal services and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA has published a Code of Conduct a copy of which can be obtained from their website: www.sra.org.uk

 

Our Hours of Business

The normal hours of opening at our offices are 9.00 am to 5.00 pm weekdays. Messages can be left on the answerphone outside these hours and essential appointments can be arranged at other times.

 

People Responsible For Your Work

The accompanying letter tells you who will be responsible for dealing with your matter. Other members of staff may provide assistance as the matter progresses. We will try to avoid changing the people who handle your work but, if this cannot be avoided, we will tell you promptly of any change and why it may be necessary.

 

Charges and Expenses

If we have agreed an alternative method of charging with you the details will be set out in the letter and/or form of agreement which accompanies these Terms and Conditions. Otherwise, our charges will be calculated mainly by reference to the time actually spent dealing with your case. This will include meetings with you and perhaps others; any time spent travelling; considering, preparing and working on papers; preparation and review of correspondence including emails; cost calculations; and time spent making and receiving telephone calls. We may arrange for some aspects of the work to be carried out on our behalf by persons not directly employed by us. Such work will be charged to you at the hourly rates set out in the accompanying letter.

Routine letters are charged as 6 minute units of time and we charge for the time spent making telephone calls in 6 minute units; that is, items of routine correspondence are charged at 1/10th of an hour. We will add VAT to the hourly rate at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present, VAT is 20%.

Our hourly rates are reviewed periodically to reflect increases in overhead costs and inflation. Normally the rates are reviewed with effect from 1 April each year. If a review is carried out before this matter has been concluded, we will inform you of any variation in the rate before it takes effect.

In addition to the time spent, we may take into account a number of other factors in calculating our charges.  These factors include any need to carry out work outside our normal office hours, the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken and any particularly specialist expertise that the case may demand. In particular in property transactions, in the administration of estates and in matters involving substantial financial value of benefit to a client, a charge reflecting, for example, the price of the property, the size of the estate, or the value of the financial benefit will be considered. Where a charge reflecting any value element is to be added to our basic charges, we will explain this to you.

Solicitors have to pay out various other expenses on behalf of clients which may include Land or Probate Registry fees, court fees, experts’ fees and fees for copy notes or records. We have no obligation to make such payments unless you have provided us with the funds for that purpose. VAT is payable on certain expenses. We refer to such payments, generally, as ‘disbursements’.

If for any reason, this matter does not proceed to completion, we will be entitled to charge you for the value of the work done and expenses incurred. This will be calculated on an hourly rate plus expenses and disbursements (or by proportion of the agreed fee if so determined) as set out in the accompanying letter of instruction.

 

Quotations

Where a quotation for work is given you must take particular note of the parameters of the work for which the quotation is given. The nature of legal work is such that the work which becomes necessary is sometimes outside the parameters originally identified. In such cases the additional work will be charged in accordance with the criteria set out above.

 

Estimates

We will try to give a realistic estimate of the cost involved in any matter in which we are instructed. However, by the nature of the work, matters may become more or less complex than originally envisaged. We will keep you informed of any resulting revision in the original estimate of fees.

 

Payment Arrangements

Property transactions: We will normally send you our bill following the exchange of contracts and payment is required on a purchase prior to completion and at completion on sale. If sufficient funds are available on completion, and we have sent you a bill, we will deduct our charges and expenses from the funds.

Administration of estates: We will normally submit an interim bill at regular stages during the administration, starting with the obtaining of the Grant. The final account will usually be prepared when the Estate Accounts are ready for approval.

Other cases or transactions: 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 and months.  We find that this helps clients in budgeting for costs as well as keeping them informed of the legal expenses which are being incurred. If such requests are not met with prompt payment delay in the progress of a case may result. In the unlikely event of any bill or request for payment not being met this company must reserve the right to stop acting for you immediately.

Payment is due to us within 14 days of the date of the invoice. If you do not settle your account with us within the 14 day period we reserve the right to charge interest on a daily basis at 4% over NatWest’s base rate from time to time from the date of the invoice until actual payment is made in full.

If you have any issue with the bill received by you, you can query the same with us and we will seek to resolve any issues with you.  If that is not possible you may make a formal complaint under our complaints procedure.  If we are not able to resolve the matter at that stage you may have the right to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.

You may also have the right to have the bill assessed by the Court under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.

Please note that we are normally only able to accept cash up to a limit of £500 in any 28 day period. If clients circumvent this policy by depositing cash direct with our bank we reserve the right to charge for any additional checks we deem necessary regarding the source of the funds.

We accept payment by all major credit/debit cards. Please note that while we can take payment in full by debit or credit card for a bill, we have to restrict the amount that we take as a payment for completion on property matters to £10,000.

 

Other Parties’ Charges and Expenses

In some cases and transactions a client may be entitled to payment of costs by some other person. It is important that you understand that, in such circumstances, the other person may not be required to pay all the charges and expenses which you incur with us. You have a primary liability to pay our charges and expenses and any amounts which can be recovered will be a contribution towards them. If the other party is in receipt of legal aid no costs are likely to be recovered.

The other person will not be liable to pay the VAT element of your costs if you are able to recover the VAT yourself.

If you are successful and a court orders another 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 or expenses on account, but we are entitled to the rest of that interest.

You will also be responsible for paying our charges and expenses of seeking to recover any costs that the court orders the other party to pay to you.

A client who is unsuccessful in a court case may be ordered to pay the other party’s legal charges and expenses; that money would be payable in addition to our charges and expenses. Arrangements can be made to take out insurance to cover liability for such legal expenses. Please discuss this with us if you are interested in this possibility.

 

Interest Policy

In accordance with the Solicitors Accounts Rules 2019 we are required to set out our policy with regard to interest on client funds.

Any money received and held on your behalf will be held in our General Client Account. Interest will be added to your client funds prior to completion of your matter. We may also add interest to your client funds on a quarterly basis and this will be compounded.

The rate of interest applied to funds held in our General Client Account will be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure that it is set at a fair and reasonable rate. We will use the gross rates published by NatWest Bank for their Business Reserve account which is the highest rate currently available on instant access client funds. This rate may not be as high as you would be able to obtain by depositing funds yourself.

Interest will only be payable if the amount due when calculated using the conditions set out above exceeds £50 over the life of the matter. This limit is to help us cover the administrative cost of calculating the interest and making the payments to you.

If we become aware that substantial client funds are going to be held for an extended period, we will seek to place such funds on either a higher interest General Client Account or a Designated Account. We will apply gross interest monthly on the higher interest General Client Account and this will be reviewed in line with the interest that we can obtain on client fund investments but the rate and frequency of interest on a Designated Account will be governed by the bank or building society in which we deposit your funds. Designated Client Account interest is normally paid net of tax. Details can be provided upon request.

It is possible to contract out of this interest policy for any reason such as for tax purposes or to comply with religious beliefs. This has to be done in writing and agreed by us and it has to be made clear that you have contracted out after being fully informed of our policy.

 

Client Monies

We will hold all client monies in a bank or building society account in compliance with the provisions of the Solicitors Act 1974 and the Solicitors Accounts Rules 2019. We may not be liable to repay those funds should the same be lost as a result of the failure of the bank or building society where those monies have been deposited in accordance with the above provisions. Client money may be covered by FSCS if the client fits the criteria for cover. There is a limit of £85,000 per institution, however, if you already hold money within the bank that we are using, your account balance will count towards that limit. Our client current account is held with NatWest, but we do not hold all client funds with NatWest, we spread funds between several banks, details upon request.

 

Client Residual Balances

 After completion of work there may be a residual balance of client money. We will liaise with you for bank details to return this balance if not already held. If we cannot make contact and don’t have means to send an electronic funds transfer, we will attempt to send a cheque to the address that we hold. If the cheque is not cashed, we will follow Solicitors Accounts Rules 2019 and continue to make reasonable attempts to return this money, however, at this stage if the balance is below £50 then the efforts made to date will be considered reasonable and therefore the balance will be transferred to charity at this point. We hold an indemnity with the charities concerned which means they would return this donation if it is claimed by you at a later date.

 

Storage of Papers and Documents

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. In addition, we will keep your file of papers for you in storage for not less than 1 year. After that, storage is on the clear understanding that we have the right to destroy it after such period as we consider reasonable or to make a charge for storage if we ask you to collect your papers and you fail to do so. We will not, of course, destroy any documents such as Wills, Deeds and other securities, which you ask us to hold in safe custody. No charge will be made to you for such storage unless prior notice in writing is given to you of a charge to be made from a future date which may be specified in that notice.

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 time spent for 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 your instructions.

Any personal data we receive from you for the purposes of our money laundering checks will be processed only for the purposes of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, or as otherwise permitted by law or with your consent.

You consent to us retaining such data for longer than the 5-year statutory period, unless you tell us otherwise.

 

Termination

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. If at any stage you do not wish us to continue doing work and/or incurring charges and expenses on your behalf, you must tell us this clearly in writing.

If we decide to stop acting for you, for example if you do not pay an interim bill or comply with a request for a payment on account, we will tell you the reason and give you notice in writing.

Under the terms of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, for some non-commercial instructions, you may have the right to cancel our agreement to act on your behalf without charge. This will only apply where you have instructed us:

 

1. following a visit by us (or by someone acting on our behalf) to your home, workplace or other location; or

 

1. at our office but following a meeting between us away from our offices,

 

and further notice of your cancellation is given to us within 14 days of the date on which you entered into the agreement. Notice of cancellation should be given by telephone, email or letter to the person named as being responsible for your work.

If, however, we have started work with your consent within the 14 day period prior to receipt of the cancellation notice you lose the right to cancel without charge and you will be charged for the work carried out prior to receipt of that notice. Acceptance of these terms and conditions of business will amount to such consent.

 

Complaints

Tinsdills is committed to providing high quality legal advice and client care.  If, however, at any point you become unhappy with the service we provide to you then please inform us immediately so that we can do our best to resolve the problem for you.  You can obtain a copy of our complaints procedure from our website.  Alternatively, we can provide you with a copy on request.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman.  The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers.

The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within 1 year of the date of the act or omission which you are concerned about or within 1 year of you realising there was a concern.  You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of our final response to you under our complaints procedure.

If your complaint relates to a bill you receive in addition to the potential right to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, you may also apply to the Court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.

 

Limited Companies

When accepting instructions to act on behalf of a limited company, we may require a director and/or controlling shareholder to sign a form of personal guarantee in respect of the charges and expenses of this company. If such a request is refused we will be entitled to stop acting and to require immediate payment of our charges on an hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier.

 

Tax Advice

Any work that we do for you may involve tax implications or necessitate the considering of tax planning strategies. We may not be qualified to advise you on the tax implications of a transaction that you instruct us to carry out, or the likelihood of them arising. If you have any concerns in this respect please let us know immediately. If we can undertake the research necessary to resolve the issue we will do so and advise you accordingly. If we cannot, we may be able to identify a source of assistance to you.

 

Identity and Disclosure Requirements

You may be asked to provide proof of identity prior to any work being undertaken. If you fail to provide appropriate proof of identity for yourself, or any principal whom you may represent, we are entitled to refuse to act for you. We may use electronic identification service providers to confirm your identity and that of any beneficial owners. It is a condition of our retainer that you consent to us doing so on your behalf and that of beneficial owners.

 

Confidentiality

Solicitors are under a professional and legal obligation to keep the affairs of clients confidential. This obligation, however, is subject to a statutory exception; legislation on money laundering or terrorist financing places solicitors under a legal duty in certain circumstances to disclose information to the National Crime Agency. Where a solicitor knows or suspects that a transaction on behalf of a client involves money laundering, the solicitor may be required by law to make a money laundering disclosure. If that happens we may not be able to inform you that a disclosure has been made or of the reasons for it because the law prevents “tipping off”.

By signing these Terms and Conditions of Business and returning them to us you authorise us in property transactions to disclose to other parties in the transaction and, if applicable, to all other parties in the chain of transactions, and their agents and advisers, all information which we have in relation to your involvement in the transaction, including any related sale or mortgage and other financial arrangements and wishes as to dates for exchange and completion. You may withdraw this authority at any time but, if you do so, you should appreciate that we will inform the other party or parties and their agents or advisors that this authority has been withdrawn.

External firms or organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice. These external firms or organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your files.

 

Privacy Notice

When you deal with Tinsdills Solicitors, you trust us with your personal information. We take privacy seriously and we are committed to protecting the data you provide to us.

Tinsdills Privacy Notice explains when and why we collect personal data about you, how this data is used, the conditions under which it may be disclosed to others and how it is kept secure.

The full Privacy Notice is available on request and it can be viewed or downloaded from our website www.tinsdills.co.uk

 

Joint and Several Liability

Where you comprise more than one person, all your obligations and liabilities with us are joint and several and references to you in these Terms and Conditions of Business include references to each such person. Words denoting persons include any individual, firm, body, corporate, association, limited liability partnership or partnership (whether or not having a separate legal personality).

Where we are instructed by more than one person, firm or company to act on the same matter, we will only be able to do so on the basis that we can be fully open about the instructions to all of those instructing us. We will be unable to act where one client to a matter requests that we keep certain information from another client involved in the same matter. Where we act for two or more clients on the same matter it is on the understanding that we are authorised to act on instructions from any one or more of them.

 

Critical Dates

Once your matter is completed we cannot accept an on-going responsibility for reminding you of critical dates in respect of such matters as rent reviews, lease renewals, exercise of options, service of notices or counter-notices within time limits or any other such matters, unless we have current and specific instructions from you to deal with such matters immediately prior to the critical date concerned.

 

Insurance Mediation and Distribution

We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”).  However, we are included on the register maintained by the FCA so that we can carry on insurance distribution 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 Solicitors Regulation Authority.  The register can be accessed via the FCA website at www.fca.org.uk/register.

In property transactions, we may advise it is necessary to obtain defective title legal indemnity insurance.  If this is necessary then we will advise on the reason for this and provide a copy of the proposed policy and detail its cost.

We are not contractually obliged to use any one insurer but we do not give advice on the basis of a fair and personal analysis.  Before we make a recommendation about a defective title legal indemnity policy we will provide you with a demands and needs statement and discuss with you the suitability of the insurer.  This means we will consider the suitability of the policy to your particular situation.

In personal injury claims we may advise you that it would be appropriate to take out an “after the event” insurance policy to insure you against the risk of paying the Defendant’s costs and disbursements and/or your own disbursements. We will again provide you with a demands and needs statement and discuss with you the suitability of the policy to your particular claim.

The Law Society is a designated professional body for the purpose of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 but responsibility for the regulation and complaints handling has been separated from The Law Society’s representative functions.  The Solicitors Regulation Authority is an independent regulatory body of The Law Society and the Legal Ombudsman is the independent complaints handling body of The Law Society.

 

Financial Services

 We are not authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (“FSMA”) but we are able, in certain circumstances, to offer a limited range of investment services to clients because we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.  We can provide these investment services if they are an incidental part of the professional services we have been engaged to provide.  The scope of the retainer, however, does not and will not include giving advice on the merits of entering into any particular investment.  When providing our services we will assume that you have decided, or will decide, to negotiate and enter into any such transaction solely on the basis of your own evaluation of the same and any advice which you may receive from a person authorised under the FSMA.

The Law Society is a designated professional body for the purpose of the FSMA but responsibility for the regulation and complaints handling has been separated from The Law Society’s representative functions.  The Solicitors Regulation Authority is an independent regulatory body of The Law Society and the Legal Ombudsman is the independent complaints handling body of The Law Society.

If you have any problem with the services we have provided for you, then please let us know.  We will try to resolve any problem quickly and operate an internal complaints handling system to help us to resolve the problem between us.  If for any reason we are unable to resolve the problem then complaints and redress mechanisms are provided through the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Legal Ombudsman.

 

Disclaimer

The company does not accept any liability to you for any loss or damage which you incur as a consequence of the company complying with its statutory obligations.

 

Terms and Conditions of Business

Unless otherwise agreed, and subject to the application of the current hourly rates, these Terms and Conditions of Business shall apply to any future instructions given by you to this company.