CLIENT CARE
We offer a friendly and professional legal service and are here to help you. We will also ensure that everything proceeds as smoothly as possible. Whilst most things we do are confidential, if something comes to our attention that we know or suspect involves a fraudulent and or money laundering activity then we are under a legal obligation to breach that confidence and report full details of the activity to the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS).RESPONSIBILITY
The Fee Earner allocated to your legal matter will carry out most of the work personally but you can also contact the Fee Earner’s Secretary who will be familiar with the file. If she is unable to help you herself she will be pleased to take a message for you. Alternatively you may speak to the Case Supervisor who will also help.THE FIRM
Established in 1983, we are a small/medium sized Solicitor practice based in Corby. We are open Monday to Friday, 8.45am to 5.00pm and Evenings and Saturday mornings by appointment. We are always happy to visit people in their own home or elsewhere if it is more convenient.COSTS
We offer relatively low and sensible fees. Our costs are calculated primarily to the amount of work we spend on the matter. Our costs can increase or decrease depending on the type of case we are carrying out, it’s importance, complexity, urgency and level of skill and specialist knowledge required. The type of work that we can charge for includes advising, attending on you and others, dealing with papers, letter and telephone calls, travelling and waiting (if appropriate).COSTS/PRIVATE
The current hourly rate of charging is as follows:-- Partners £150
- Solicitors £130
- Trainee Solicitor £115
- Legal Adviser £100
- Legal Assistant £ 90
COSTS ESTIMATES
We will always try to provide some estimate of our likely costs but there are often situations when it is difficult to do this. If we have to do more or less work than we originally anticipated we will inform you of this and make any adjustment to the estimate.PAYMENTS ON ACCOUNT
It is normal practice of this firm to request clients to make payment on account of anticipated costs and disbursements. We will let you know if we do require payment on account and tell you the reason why.INTERIM ACCOUNTS
We may send you bills at interim intervals for work carried out during the conduct of the matter. This assists our cash flow and enables you to budget for costs. We are sure that you will understand that in the event of an interim account not being paid we must reserve the right to decline to act for you any further and that the full amount of the work done up to that date will be charged to you.METHODS OF PAYMENT
We expect our bills to be paid within 28 days. If not we reserve the right to charge interest on outstanding money at the rate of the Judgement Debt (currently 8%). Payment should ideally be in the form of a cheque or bankers draft drawn on your account with a UK clearing bank or telegraphed through the banking system to our bank account. We cannot accept more than £1,000 in cash.By your acceptance of these terms and conditions, you are deemed to authorise us to deduct any of our fees legitimately payable from any monies that we might hold in our office or client accounts on your behalf before paying any balance of monies to you. We will provide further information on this point if you require.
JOINT RETAINER
In some cases we accept instructions to act for more than one person (for example husband and wife or a partnership). Each individual client is responsible to pay our fee in full. This is known as Joint and Several Liability. We will deliver only one account for the work carried out on your behalf but if one or more of those persons jointly instructing us does not pay, we have the legal right to fully recover the monies from any one of those jointly instructing us.TAXATION OF COSTS
In the event that you are involved in a Court dispute and you are successful it may be that you get some other party to pay your costs. However, it is rare for the system of “Taxation” of costs as it is known to result in the other party having to pay all of the full amount of your costs. This is a complex subject and we will be happy to explain this further if you wish.ANTI MONEY LAUNDERING LEGISLATION
We are obliged under the above legislation to take measures to prevent the proceeds of any crime being used to launder money and must report matters to the National Crime Investigation Service (NCIS) where there is any suspicion that criminal proceeds are being used in any way throughout the course of this transaction. We enclose a separate letter by way of information to help us in this important regard.FINANCIAL SERVICES
We are not authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 but we are able, in certain circumstances, to offer a limited range of investment services to clients because we are members of The Law Society. We can provide these investment services if they are an incidental part of the professional services we have been engaged to provide.PROGRESS REPORTS
We will keep you regularly advised of progress in your case and we will try to keep in contact with you a minimum of at least once a month. We may contact you on your home, work or mobile telephone numbers. Where appropriate we may also use an email address or fax. If any of these methods are inconvenient to you please let us know. We may also from time to time advise you of other services we have to offer, if you do not wish to receive this information please let us know.CONFIDENTIALITY
Naturally everything we do for you is completely confidential.COMPLAINTS
If you have a complaint, however small, please let us know. We will try to do everything we can to sort out any problem to your satisfaction. The first person you should initially contact in the event of a complaint is the Fee Earner or the Case Supervisor, both are named above. If they cannot sort matters out for you then you can raise the matter with either Clare Byrne (Office Manager), Paul Seaton (Partner) or Adrian Chambers (Partner) and ultimately with The Law Society.IMPROVEMENTS
We hope that you will be satisfied with the service we offer. However, if you find that there are any areas of our service that could be improved please let us know. We want to try and maintain and improve our client services.We will at the end of your matter send you a Client Questionnaire and would ask you if you could please return it to us.
PUBLIC FUNDING (LEGAL AID)
This firm has a Legal Services Commission franchise for criminal and family work and we always assess you and advise you as to the possibility of Public Funding for your case.You may be entitled to Public Funding from your first visit to the office as a result of you being eligible for advice under the Legal Help and Help at Court scheme. If you are not eligible under that scheme you will be responsible for our costs on the basis mentioned above until such time as a full Public Funding Certificate is granted to you.
Following the granting of a Public Funding Certificate we will be entitled to recover all our costs from the Legal Services Commission. If no order has been made as regards costs and therefore you have to pay your own costs and you recover or preserve any money or property then you will have to pay your costs out of such money or property. We have to pay any money we recover for you to the Legal Services Commission. The Legal Services Commission will deduct the shortfall from the money before it sends the balance of the money to you.
The right of the Legal Services Commission to make you pay your costs or the shortfall in your costs out of any money or property recovered or preserved is known as the Legal Services Commissions ‘Statutory Charge’. The Statutory Charge is very important and we will explain the operation of the Statutory Charge to you in a separate letter should an application for Public Funding be submitted to the Legal Services Commission.
CONCLUSION
We hope that this information has been of assistance to you. We believe that it is much better from everyone’s point of view that the above matters are clarified at the outset rather than at the end of the case. Please do not hesitate to contact us immediately if you have any queries.If you feel that you ought to take separate legal advice from another solicitor or other organisation before agreeing to these terms and conditions, we will in no way be offended.
