Rules of Engagement/ Client Care Letter

Lawdit Solicitors (‘Lawdit’, ‘we’, ‘us’) will be delighted to act for you in relation to your legal matter.

The Law Society obliges solicitors to provide clients with certain information about the way that their professional business is undertaken. Please find detailed below our standard terms and conditions, which set out the basis upon which we will carry out the work on your behalf.

Lawdit Solicitors Limited is a private company registered in England & Wales, Company No. 4714251, having its registered office address at No.1 Brunswick Place Southampton SO15 2AN. Tel: +44(0)23 8023 5979; Fax: +44(0)23 8063 2849

We are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority of England and Wales http://www.sra.org.uk . Our membership number is 382025. There is a lot of useful information on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s website and also that of the Law Society (http://www.lawsociety.org.uk) about Solicitors and how we operate.

We are registered for VAT with HM Customs and Excise. Our VAT registration number is: 780 9109 15

This document explains the basis on which all necessary work will be carried out. Whilst that does mean writing at some length, we hope the information will be useful.

In particular we refer you to sections 4, 6 and 7 below.

1.   Advice and action

We shall set out any preliminary advice and plan of action.

In our telephone conversation/email exchange of [ ], we highlighted what your objectives are, the issue involved and options available to you and what we believe is the most appropriate action.  

2.   People responsible for your work

The details you need to know are as follows:-

(1) Once we are instructed your matter shall be assigned to a Solicitor/ Director of Lawdit. He shall be assisted by a colleague who shall be either an IP Executive or a Trainee Solicitor.  

(2) Other members of Lawdit’s commercial team that assist a Solicitor/ Director may or may not be solicitors but where they are not solicitors you shall be informed i.e that the person dealing is a Trainee Solicitor or an IP Executive (paralegal) etc. See section 4 below.

(3) Once the matter is under way we will keep in touch with you, usually by email or telephone as it progresses. Any letters that are sent will be sent to you for approval. They will be referred to as DRAFT and will not be sent out until you confirm that they can be sent.

(4) We will endeavour to answer your telephone calls, however, because of work commitments, both in and out of the office during the day, your call may be dealt with by another member of the department, as that will allow your enquiry to be dealt with as promptly as possible.

(6) We will endeavour to update you with regards to the progress of your case every 28 days. There will be occasions where this may not be appropriate and we may telephone to discuss matters.

(7) We try to avoid changing the people you are dealing with, but if it should seem appropriate at any stage for the matter to be referred, for all purposes, to another member of the team, we will explain why that is suggested and arrange for an introduction.

(8) To help us keep in touch, please let me know as soon as possible if you change your address, telephone number or e-mail so that we can keep our records up to date. We would welcome hearing from you, with any change of contact details, even when the matter is finished, as that will ensure we can continue to send you information about Lawdit and our associated companies in the future which we hope will continue to be of interest.

We hope this is all the information you need to ensure we are able to keep in touch with each other during this matter and in the future.

3.   Further help

Whilst your matter progresses it may be helpful to get some assistance from others outside Lawdit. In particular:

(1) it is usually helpful to involve experts who can advise on, and help deal with, certain aspects of the case; and

(2) it may become appropriate to instruct Counsel (a barrister) to advise or to represent you.

(3) We will let you know if it seems appropriate to seek this further assistance and let you have details of who is involved. Usually, any advice from these sources will be given in writing, though a meeting may be arranged if appropriate.

4.   Charges, expenses and funding

Instructing Solicitors is expensive. It is important to let you have details, at the outset, of how costs are incurred; and any liability that might arise if you do not pay these costs.

The charge out rate for our Solicitor/ Directors is between £195 to £225 + VAT per hour. IP Executive or Trainee Solicitor’s charge out rates are £130 + VAT.

We time record the work that we do. The time recording is split into 10 units per hour i.e. one unit = 6 minutes, one hour is ten units and fractional units are rounded up to the next whole unit. For the avoidance of doubt a telephone call received from you or a third party regarding your file is recorded as a ‘TCI’ will be marked as one unit. A telephone call out made by us to you or to a third party shall be recorded as ‘TCO’. Our hourly fees are reviewed from time to time. We will let you know if there are any changes that affect you.

Non fixed fee matters: [From our experience the costs associated with this matter should be no more than £[ ]. The likely disbursements (additional costs/ expenses) are [ ] ]. OR [We agreed to carry out this work on a fixed fee basis …Our charges and expenses shall be £[ ]. In addition to this the likely disbursements (additional costs/ expenses) are [ ].

It is sometimes difficult at this stage, to provide you with an accurate estimate in relation to the amount of work that will be required on your case, and what the cost of that work will be. In litigation matters involving claims of over £5,000 you should be aware that if your case is successful, a significant amount of the charges and disbursements incurred on the case will be recoverable from the other side- but these are not guaranteed as ultimately a court will have to decide. Equally, if you are unsuccessful then as well as bearing your own costs, you will be liable to pay the costs of your opponent(s).
     
We may not need any further money on account of costs in the initial stages. However, as the work progresses, we may need to ask for such a payment if our exposure increases.

Payment of our invoices must be made within 14 days of our invoice being sent to you. We reserve the right to claim statutory interest at the rate of 8% above the Bank of England reference rate in force on the date the debt becomes overdue and at any subsequent rate where the reference rate changes and the debt remains unpaid in accordance with the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 as amended and supplemented by the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations 2002.

5.   Documents & Confidentiality

It is important that you keep all documents, which relate in any way to your matter safe.

After completing the work, we are entitled to keep all papers and documents while there is money owing for charges and expenses. We keep papers (except for any papers you ask to be returned to you) for no more than 6 years and keep the file on the understanding that we have the authority to destroy it (automatically and without further recourse to you) after 6 years from the date of the final bill, although documents you ask to deposit in safe custody will not, of course, be destroyed.

If it becomes necessary to retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act on your behalf we would not normally charge for such retrieval. However, we will make a charge, based on time spent producing stored papers or documents to you or to another person at your request, in other circumstances. We may also charge for reading correspondence or other work necessary to comply with instructions given by you or on your behalf in this connection. Do note that we engage third party agents to store documents on our behalf and that it can take up to 7-10 days in order to retrieve any archived documents.

Solicitors are under a professional and legal obligation to keep the affairs of the client confidential. This obligation, however, is subject to a statutory exception- see sections 6 and 7 below.

6.   Money Laundering

Following the introduction of the Terrorism Act 2000 (as amended), the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 we are now obliged to request evidence of your identity and undertake certain other procedures to establish your credentials and the legitimacy of your instructions before acting upon them.  These procedures may require us to take fuller instructions from you than previously, and may, in rare cases, introduce some small delays into your matter.  We will in every case strive to keep these to a minimum.  However, such is the strength of the obligation placed upon us that if satisfactory documentary evidence is not produced we may have to refuse to accept your instructions or decline to continue acting for you.

We may also have a legal obligation to report to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) any information which comes to our attention concerning any matters covered by the money laundering legislation.  If so, we may not be permitted to inform you or anyone else that we have done this.  We may also be ordered by SOCA to stop the work you have instructed us to carry out. If so we would not be able to inform you or anyone else why we have stopped work.

In addition to the above our files are subject to quality control and inspection audits for compliance from any accountant or auditor duly appointed by us, the Law Society, the Solicitors Regulation Authority or other law enforcement/ government authority.

Apart from the above, it is and remains our policy to keep all information about the personal and business affairs of our clients confidential and to complete your instructions with all due diligence and speed. Nevertheless, we cannot accept any liability or responsibility whatsoever for any losses, expenses, liabilities, or other detriment that you might suffer or incur as a result of our compliance with these obligations.  This exclusion of our liability to you is fundamental to our retainer.

7. Client Identification

We are required to check the identity of clients that we act for and where a party exists that has a beneficial interest in the transaction- the identity of that beneficiary. An example of a situation where we need to establish the identity of someone who has a beneficial interest in a transaction would be where a company instructs us to undertake some work for it through its director/ secretary. The person who would have a beneficial interest in this matter would be a shareholder who has a 25% or more shares in that company. In such circumstances, we will require personal documentation to identify you that can include a current signed passport, photo-card driving licence, birth certificate or a recent utility bill and where you cannot produce the originals we require certified copies to be sent to us. The obligation imposed upon us to do this is as set out in the legislation referred to in section 6 above- particularly the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. This is important and fundamental to our retainer.

8.   Termination

You may terminate your instructions in writing at any time, but we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing for charges and expenses.

In some circumstances, you may consider that we ought to stop acting for you, for example if you cannot give clear or proper instructions on how to proceed, or if it is clear that you have lost confidence in how the work has been carried out.

We may only decide to stop acting for you with good reason, for example if we do not receive instructions from you or otherwise we do not have the assistance we need to progress your case properly or if costs are not paid on time to us. We will, however, always give reasonable notice before ceasing to act so that, if possible, any problems can be dealt with and we can continue to act on your behalf.

9.   Communication, suggestions and complaints

We are confident of providing a high quality service.

We do, of course, welcome any suggestions you might wish to make which you think could help to improve our service.

If, at any time, you are not happy with the service you are receiving from us, do please let us know. You are valued by us and we should like the opportunity to put matters right if any problems do arise. In the first instance, please contact the fee earner dealing with your matter and we will do what we can to resolve the problem promptly. If, however, we are not able to resolve the problem to your satisfaction you should then contact Michael Coyle, who is responsible for Lawdit’s complaints procedure.

As this document is important, please keep it in a safe place for future reference.

We do hope that this document usefully deals with any immediate queries about the day-to-day handling of the matter and Lawdit’s terms of business. If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We look forward to hearing from you and of being of service to you.