These terms and conditions apply to the work that you have instructed us to carry out on your behalf. Together with our client care letter, they form our contract with you. Unless we agree otherwise with you, these terms and conditions will apply to any future instructions you provide to us. Your continuing instructions confirm that you accept these terms and conditions. If you have any queries, please contact the fee earner responsible for your matter, who will be happy to assist.
The following areas are covered in these terms of business:
1. Service standards
2. Responsibilities
3. Hours of business
4. Anti-money laundering obligations
5. Speaking to your lender
6. Financial matters
7. The distance selling regulations
8. Professional indemnity insurance
9. Equality and diversity
10. Data protection
11. Storage of papers
12. Review of files
13. Limitation of liability
14. Applicable law
15. Ending our services
16. Solicitors Regulation Authority Principles 2019
We aim to provide you with high standards of service at all times. We will:
Hobbs Law LLP is committed to high quality legal advice and client care. If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you receive, or about the bill, please initially contact the Solicitor dealing with your matter by ‘phone, via email or post. Alternatively you can speak with another Partner of the firm.
We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints, available upon request. If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint. The time limit for referring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman will be not later than one year from the date:
The Legal Ombudsman will have a discretion to accept out-of-time complaints in circumstances where it deems it “fair and reasonable to do so”.
The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted at PO Box 15870, Birmingham B30 9EB, or by calling 0300 555 0333.
Please note that some clients may not have the right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman, for example:
You also have the right to object to the bill and apply for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. The Legal Ombudsman may not deal with a complaint about the bill if you have applied to the court for an assessment of the bill.
To achieve the best possible outcome in your case, we need to work together with you. We will:
You need to:
Our office hours are from 9.00am until 5.00pm weekdays, although we can sometimes accommodate appointments outside of these working hours.
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.
In order 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 as follows:
Individuals
We will obtain a copy of your passport or photographic driving licence and a utility bill or bank statement of not more than three months old showing your name and home address.
When we have received required client identification documents we will submit an online anti-money laundering search/know your client search. If we have to carry out online searches, the cost will be no more than £10 plus vat per person.
Companies
We will carry out a company search to reveal the directors of the company or members of the limited liability partnership (LLP) and also the individuals with an ownership in the limited company or LLP of 25% or more. We will take a copy of all director’s/member’s/owner’s original passports or photographic driving licences utility bills or bank statements of not more than three months old showing the director’s/member’s/owner’s name and home address.
When we have received required client identification documents we will submit an online anti-money laundering search/know your client search. If we have to carry out online searches, the cost will be no more than £10 plus vat per search.
If you are unable to provide us with the specific identification requested, please contact our office 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, while we are acting for you, it becomes necessary to make a money laundering disclosure, we may not be able to inform you that a disclosure has been made, or the reasons for the disclosure, because the law prohibits this. 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 for it.
If we are also acting for your proposed lender in this transaction we have a duty to make full disclosure to that lender of all relevant facts relating to you, your transaction and the mortgage/loan. That will include disclosure of any discrepancies between the mortgage/loan application and information provided to us during the transaction. If a conflict of interest arises, we must cease to act for you in this matter.
Financial arrangements
Our practice’s policy is to only accept cash up to £500.00 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 the funds. Please do not pay a cheque into our bank account without first checking with us that it will be cleared in time.
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. If it is necessary to transfer funds by way to bank transfer to you, or on your behalf, there will be an electronic handling fee of £30 plus vat.
Please be aware of the threat of cybercrime. We will not email you with alternative banking details at any time, nor change our bank details during the course of a transaction.
Interest on money owed to you
In accordance with the Solicitors Regulation Authority Accounts Rules 2019, interest paid to you must be a fair and reasonable sum. Any money received on your behalf will generally be held in our practice’s general client account with NatWest Bank plc, which is an instant access account. Our general client account is not currently interest bearing (payable at 2% below base rate). On occasions, monies may be held in designated deposit accounts. Where interest is payable it will be normally paid from the date on which funds are cleared with us until the date the funds are withdrawn. Interest will not be paid if the sum is less than £20.00. Please contact us if you would like a copy of our interest policy.
Costs
Where no fixed fee has been agreed, our charges will be calculated by reference to the time actually spent on the matter. In these circumstances we will provide you with a fee estimate at the outset. This is not a guaranteed fixed fee, merely a guide, but we will endeavour to inform you as soon as it becomes apparent that our charges may exceed our original fee estimate.
Time spent will include telephone calls and/or meetings with you and perhaps others, reading and working on papers, correspondence (including emails), preparation of any detailed cost calculations and time spent travelling away from the office when this is necessary.
Our current hourly rate for a solicitor/partner is £240 plus vat and for other fee earners £175 plus vat. Routine letters and emails are charged at one tenth of the hourly rate, i.e. 6 minute units of time at £24.00 (solicitor/partner) or £17.50 (other fee earners) per unit and we charge for the time spent on the matter generally and making and taking telephone calls in six minute units also.
Fixed fees – We will submit a bill either on completion of the matter or just prior to completion.
Administration of estates – We will normally submit an interim bill at regular stages during the administration, starting with the obtaining of a Grant, and thereafter interim bills are usually issued every 3 months or at more regular intervals if you prefer. The final account will be prepared when the Estate Accounts are ready for approval.
Other cases or transactions – As your matter progresses we will send you interim bills on account from time to time. These will normally be at six to eight weekly intervals. We can bill you on a monthly basis if you prefer. We find that interim billing helps clients budget for costs as well as keeping them informed of the legal expenses that are being incurred. Bills on account, unless indicated otherwise, are not an exact costing of the full amount due. They give a broad indication of the work done taken from our computer timed records. At the end of your matter the full costs over the whole period will be calculated. If interim bills are not met with prompt payment, delay in the progress of a matter may result. In the unlikely event of any bill or request for payment not being met this firm reserves the right to stop acting for you further.
Payment of all invoices raised is due to us within 28 days of our sending you a bill. Interest will be charged on a daily basis calculated at 8% per annum from the date of the bill in cases where payment is not made within 28 days of our sending the bill to you.
If, for any reason, your matter does not proceed to completion, we will advise you of the time spent on the matter and the stage to which the matter reached and the abortive fees will either be based on the time spent at our hourly rate, or a fair and reasonable representation of how far the matter reached against the original fee estimate.
Financial, insurance and tax advice
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We are, however, included on the register maintained by the FCA, so that we may carry on insurance mediation activity, which is broadly the advising on and 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 Financial Conduct Authority website at www.fca.org.uk.
The Law Society is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, but responsibility for regulation has been separated from the Law Society’s representative functions. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society. The Legal Ombudsman deals with complaints against lawyers.
We will not provide any advice on the direct and/or indirect tax issues arising in connection with a matter, unless we agree in writing to do so.
If we have not met with you, or if we have initially met with you away from our office premises, The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 may apply to this work. This means you have the right to cancel your instructions to us within fourteen working days of receiving this letter. You can cancel your instructions by contacting us by post, email or by fax to this office. Once we have started work on your file, you may be charged if you cancel your instructions.
Under the Indemnity Insurance Rules firms are required to take out and maintain qualifying insurance. Details of Hobbs Law LLP’s insurance can be found at our office, or you can contact us to request this information.
If this firm has to make a notification under the terms of our professional indemnity policy, information about you and your file may be seen by our insurers. Your file may therefore be seen by an assessor or another person unconnected with the firm in the future, unless you notify us that you do not agree to this.
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.
Your personal data will be only for the purposes of providing our services to you, general administration, giving advice on your matter, or for any other purposes stated in our Privacy Statement, (annex 1). Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act 2018 and our duty of confidentiality.
Your personal data will not be passed on to third parties, except where we are legally obliged to do so, or we have your consent, (such as lenders, expert witnesses and other professional advisers).
You have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you.
If we become aware of a personal data breach, we will notify you without undue delay and will cooperate with you to address an identified breach and to uphold the rights of a data subject.
We may from time to time send you information which we think might be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive that information please notify our office in writing.
If you have instructed us in a Will matter our file of your papers will be retained until after your death, or until we have been able to return the original file to you. Even if you make a later Will elsewhere, we may keep a copy of your Will, in case your later Will is challenged.
In all other matters the limitation period may vary depending upon the type of work undertaken. We will generally keep our file of your papers (except any of your papers which you ask to be returned to you) for a minimum of six years. We will keep the file on the understanding that we have the authority to destroy it six years after the date of the final bill we send to you for this matter. 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 not normally charge for such retrieval. However we may charge you for:
Our practice is subject to audit or quality checks by external firms or organisations. These external firms or organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your files.
Our liability to you for a breach of your instructions shall be limited to £3 million or such other higher amount as expressly set out in the letter accompanying these terms of business. 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.
These limitations apply only to the extent that they are permitted by law. In particular they do not apply to any liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence.
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. If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, you will be required to pay for the expenses which we have already paid and a percentage of our fees which is considered reasonable to cover the work we have already undertaken.
We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason. For example, if you do not pay an interim bill or there is a conflict of interest. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.
Once we have completed a matter and closed our file, we are not responsible for dates and deadlines that may arise. You should diarise critical dates such as expiry of time limits, exercise of option, rent reviews and renewal of leases.
We are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). We will adhere at all times to the mandatory principles as laid down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which are that we will act:
