The following areas are covered in these terms of business:
Our office hours are from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm on Monday to Friday
Evidence of Identity
The law requires solicitors, banks, building societies and others to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identity of their client and, at times, people related to the client or their case. This is because solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their client can be used by criminals wanting to launder money.
To comply with the law on money laundering, we need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon as practicable, and in any event before we can proceed with your matter. To collect this evidence, our practice is to take a photocopy of your original passport and a copy of a recent utility bill. If you are unable to provide us with the required identification, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can discuss alternative ways to verify your identity.
Confidentiality
We are under a professional and legal obligation to keep details of your case confidential. This obligation, however, is subject to a statutory exception, which may require a solicitor who knows or suspects that a transaction on behalf of a client may involve money laundering or terrorist financing, to make a disclosure to the National Crime Agency.
If we are required to make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we may not be able to inform you that a disclosure has been made. We may also have to cease acting in your matter for a period of time and may not be able to tell you the reasons.
Financial arrangements
Our policy is to only accept cash up to £500 from clients. If you try to avoid this policy by depositing cash directly with our bank, we may decide to charge you for any additional checks we decide are necessary to prove the source of your funds. Where we have to pay money to you, it will be paid by cheque or bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party.
Interest on money owed to you
Any money received on your behalf will be held in our practice’s client account. Our policy is to account to you for interest only when it is fair and reasonable to do so taking into consideration all the circumstances. Interest calculated at £50 or less will not be paid unless in the circumstances it is fair and reasonable to do so.
Costs
We will try to give you a fixed fee quote or estimate at the outset of being instructed. Our charges are based on an hourly rate and will be calculated by reference to the time we spend working on your matter. Your matter will be carried out or overseen by Andrew Tobias, a solicitor with more than 20 years’ experience. Our hourly rates are between £250 and £500 per hour depending upon the type of matter and the expertise required. This will be confirmed to you prior to us carrying out any work. This will include attending meetings and negotiations; reading, preparing and working on papers; making and responding to telephone calls, emails, faxes and letters; preparation of costs estimates, schedules and bills; and attendance at court and travel time.
Hourly rate
We will inform you of the amount of the hourly rate for each hour spent on your matter. We will notify you in writing if the rates you are being charged are increased and the date from which the increases will apply.
All routine correspondence which we write will be charged at 1/10th of the hourly rate, while routine correspondence we receive will be charged at 1/20th of the hourly rate.
All routine telephone calls of up to six minutes duration, either made or received, will be charged at 1/10th of the hourly rate.
More complicated correspondence and telephone calls will be charged at the hourly rate for the actual time they take.
If your instructions mean we have to work outside normal office hours, we will increase the level of the hourly rates. We will notify you in writing of any such increases.
Disbursements
There may be other expenses which we need to pay on your behalf. These can include: court fees; fees for experts reports; search fees; HM Land Registry fees; and barristers’ fees.
These will be listed separately on your bill and you may be charged VAT in relation to these expenses.
Payment of expenses in advance
We will normally request that you pay us a proportion of the costs in advance. Also where we have to make payments to 3rd parties to cover expenses, such as court costs or fees for expert report, we will ask you to pay us first. This will help prevent delays in your matter. As we become aware of payments which will need to be made, we will write to you to ask you to send payment to us to cover the payments as the matter progresses.
When we send you bills, we will make sure we take into account the amounts you have already paid. If there are any advance funds left over, we will put them against our fees which need to be paid. You should note that the total bill may be greater than the amount which you have paid in advance.
Payment of bills
We will send you an interim bill for our fees and expenses as the matter progresses and while work is in progress. We will send a final bill after completion of the work.
You may also set a limit on the fees and expenses we can incur in relation to your matter. This means you have to pay fees and expenses up to this limit, but we must ask your permission to continue working on your matter if it looks like you will have to pay us more than the limit you have set. We will write to you before we reach the limit, and explain why your matter is likely to cost more, review our estimate of how much your matter is likely to cost and ask you to agree a new limit, before we do more work on your matter.
Payment of an interim or final bill is required within 14 days. We may charge you interest on unpaid bills at eight per cent per year, from one month after the delivery of our bill.
If your matter does not proceed to completion, we will charge you for the work done and for expenses incurred.
We are entitled to pay your bill from monies received by us on your behalf and to retain your file of papers or other property until payment is made.
Recovering costs in Court Proceedings
If your matter is successful, you may obtain an order from the court for the payment of your costs by another person or entity. However, in practice this usually results in only a part of the costs being recovered for you, because of the way in which the court measures the costs.
You have to pay our charges and expenses in the first place and any amounts which can be recovered will be a contribution towards them. If the other party is in receipt of legal aid or is uninsured, they simply may not be able to pay and you will not be reimbursed.
Other parties’ costs in Court Proceedings
If you are unsuccessful in your matter, it is likely that the court will order you to pay your opponents costs in addition to our costs. Your opponents costs can be assessed by the court to see if they are reasonable, so you will have the opportunity to review the costs and asked the court to reduce them.
Referral Fee
If we pay a referral fee to a third party we will advise you of the amount and the recipient.
Financial and insurance advice
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, the Law Society is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (as amended), and so we can provide some limited financial and insurance services as long as they are an integral part of the legal service we are providing to you and we account to you for any financial benefit we might receive. Any complaint in respect of these services should be made to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems.page).
Speaking to your Lender
If you are purchasing a property and we are also acting for your proposed lender, we have a duty to make full disclosure to the lender of all relevant facts relating to you, your purchase and mortgage. That will include disclosure of any discrepancies between the mortgage application and information provided to us during the transaction and any cash back payments or discount schemes which a seller is providing to you. If a conflict of interest arises, we must cease to act for you in this matter.
Under the Indemnity Insurance Rules solicitor firms are required to take out and maintain qualifying insurance. Details of Andrew Tobias & Co Solicitors’ insurance can be found at our offices, or you can contact us to request this information.
We are not qualified to advise you on the potential tax consequences of the work which we carry out. We advise you to instruct a specialist tax advisor or accountant to advise you on tax. If you would like us to recommend someone, please do speak to us.
We are committed to 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.
We use the information you provide for the provision of legal services to you and for related purposes including: updating and enhancing client records; statutory returns; and legal and regulatory compliance.
Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the Data Protection Act 2018; the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”); and our duty of confidentiality. Please note that our work for you may require us to disclose information to third parties such as expert witnesses and other professional advisors. You have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you.
We may from time to time send you information which we think might be of interest to you, but only if you provide your written consent.
We will keep our file of your papers (except any of your papers which you ask to be returned to you) for no more than seven years. We will keep the file on the understanding that we have the authority to destroy it seven years after the date on which we write to inform you that your matter has concluded. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody.
If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act for you, we will normally charge for such retrieval. We may also charge you for: time spent producing stored papers requested; and reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with instructions in relation to the retrieved papers.
Our practice is subject to audit or quality checks by external firms and organisations, such as our insurers, external advisors, auditors or assessors. These external organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your file.
Our liability to you for a breach of your instructions shall be limited to the amount recoverable under Rules 2.1 and 2.3 of Annex 1 of the Solicitors Regulation Authority Indemnity Insurance Rules (“the Rules”). For the purposes of the Rules, we are not a relevant recognized body, nor a relevant licensed body.
Please feel free to raise anything which concerns you with Andrew Tobias at any time. If we are unable to address your concerns to your satisfaction, you are entitled to raise the matter with the Legal Ombudsman. Normally you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint. The Ombudsman may not be able to consider a complaint if you have already applied to the court for assessment of our bill. The Legal Ombudsman’s contact details are:
Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH
Tel 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Any dispute or legal issue arising from our terms of business will be determined by English law and will be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.
You may end your instructions to us in writing at any time, but we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owing to us for charges and expenses.
We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason. For example, if you do not provide us with instructions, or there is a conflict of interest, or you do not make a payment on account, or you do not pay a bill within 14 days of a request to do so. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.
If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, you will pay our charges up until that point on an hourly basis and expenses set out in these terms and conditions.
Send us a short email about how we can help you with your legal issue to law@andrewtobias.co.uk
Or complete this form and we will contact you.
© Andrew Tobias & Co 2024
Send us a short email about how we can help you with your legal issue to law@andrewtobias.co.uk
Or complete this form and we will contact you.
© Andrew Tobias & Co 2024
Send us a short email about how we can help you with your legal issue to law@andrewtobias.co.uk
Or complete this form and we will contact you.
© 2024 Solicitor Solutions Ltd.