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 hours of business

• The normal hours of opening at our offices are between 9.00 am and 5.00 pm on weekdays. Messages can be left on the answer phone outside those hours and appointments can be arranged at other times.

People responsible for your work

• The person responsible for dealing with your work is set out in our engagement letter to you. 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.

The principal of this firm with final responsibility for work done in the firm is Anne Coles.

Conduct of Work

• With your agreement, we will allocate the conduct of your work to ensure that your matter is undertaken by members of the firm with the appropriate expertise. We will tell you the names of any person we propose would be the most suitable person to deal with any part of your work.
• However, you can at any time telephone or write to the Supervising Solicitor who is also named in your engagement letter. The Supervising Solicitor's concern is to see that regular reports on progress are given to you, that you are notified of unexpected delays or changes in the character of the work undertaken, and that your matter is otherwise satisfactorily dealt with.
• We aim to offer an efficient and effective service to all our clients and we will deal with your business in a competent and professional manner, with care and diligence. Should circumstances arise which result in a conflict of interest at any time during the conduct of a matter on your behalf, we may have to cease acting for you. You will appreciate that, in that event, you will be responsible for our charges up to that time.
• If you have any concerns about the way in which your work is handled, please get in touch with your Supervising Solicitor, who will discuss the matter with the person responsible and with others, if appropriate.
• Should you still have cause for dissatisfaction, then please write giving full particulars of the problem to Anne Coles, the partner who has special responsibility for dealing with such matters. A copy of our complaints procedure will be made available to you upon request if you wish to pursue a formal complaint.

We will respond promptly, keeping a record of all action taken and the eventual outcome.

Your Instructions

• If your initial instructions to us are not in writing, we will normally write to you confirming the scope of the work to be carried out by us. In any event, we will notify you of the basis upon which our fees are to be charged and other relevant details. This will include the name of a Supervising Solicitor who will have overall responsibility for your matter.
• You will appreciate that it is important to supply to us, as soon as you can, all relevant information to enable us to act and to continue to act effectively on your instructions.

Charges and expenses

• Our charges will be calculated mainly by reference to the time actually spent by the solicitors and other staff in respect of any work

AMC Law Terms and Conditions of Business

which they do on your behalf. This may include meetings with you and perhaps others; reading, preparing and working on papers; making and receiving telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and text messages; preparation of any detailed costs estimates, schedules and bills; attending at court; and time necessarily spent travelling away from the office. From time to time we may arrange for some of this work to be carried out by persons not directly employed by us; unless we notify you in advance such work will be charged to you at the hourly rate which would be charged if we had done the work ourselves.

• Our hourly rates have to be reviewed periodically to reflect increases in overhead costs and inflation. Normally the rates are reviewed with effect from 1 January 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 including any need to carry out work outside our normal office hours, the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action has to be taken, any particular specialist expertise which the case may demand. An increase in the rates may be applied to reflect such factors. In matters involving a substantial financial value or benefit to a client, a charge reflecting, for example, value of the financial benefit may be considered. It is not always possible to indicate how these aspects may arise but on present information we would expect them to be sufficiently taken into account in the rates which we have quoted. Where an increase in the rates or a charge reflecting any special value element is to be added we will explain this to you.
• Solicitors have to pay out various other expenses on behalf of clients ranging from counsel’s fees, Land or Probate Registry fees, court fees, experts' fees, and so on. 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 work done and expenses incurred.

Payment Terms

• Invoices are due for payment upon issue and if they remain unpaid after the expiry of 30 days from the date of issue, then we reserve the right to charge interest at the statutory rate on the whole or outstanding part of an unpaid invoice. You will also be responsible for any costs and expenses we incur in recovering amounts due from you and for our standard administration charge for recovery.
• Where you are entitled to recover our charges from a third party and you are registered for VAT, our invoice will be addressed to you to enable you to recover VAT (although you yourself must pay that VAT on delivery of our invoice).

Your Money

• Your money will be held in a client bank account. Any interest earned in excess of £20 (see section on interest payment below) which becomes due to you may be paid gross and not net of basic rate income tax unless you are resident overseas.
• Please remember that for tax purposes, you should disclose to the Inland Revenue details of any interest payments we make to you.

Payment arrangements

• It is normal practice to ask clients to pay monthly bills and sums of money from time to time on account of the charges and expenses which are expected in the following weeks or 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 firm reserves the right to stop acting for you further.
  • Payment is due to us within 14 days of our sending you a bill. Interest will be charged on a daily basis at 4% over Barclays Bank’s base rate from time to time from the date of the bill in cases where payment is not made within 28 days of delivery by us of the bill.
  • The common law entitles us to retain any money, papers or other property belonging to you which properly come into our possession pending payment of our costs, whether or not the property is acquired in connection with the matter for which the costs were incurred. This is known as a ‘general lien’. We are not entitled to sell property held under a lien but we are entitled to hold property, other than money, even if the value of it greatly exceeds the amount due to us in respect of costs.

AMC Law Terms and Conditions of Business

• If we are conducting litigation for you, we have additional rights in any property recovered or preserved for you whether it is in our possession or not and in respect of all costs incurred, whether billed or unbilled. We also have a right to ask the court to make a charging order in our favour for any assessed costs.
• We do not accept payments to us in cash in excess of £500. Monies due to you from us will be paid by cheque or bank transfer, but not in cash, and will not be made payable to a third party.
• If we have to commence proceedings for unpaid fees you will be responsible for our Court fees, charges and cost of recovery.

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 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 no costs are likely to be recovered.
• 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 payment

• Any money received on your behalf will be held in our Client Account. Subject to certain minimum amounts (currently interest of less than £20) and periods of time set out in the Solicitors' Accounts Rules 1998, interest will be calculated and paid to you at the rate from time to time payable on [name of bank]’s Designated Client Accounts. The period for which interest will be paid will normally run from the date(s) on which funds are received by us until the date(s) of issue of any cheque(s) from our Client Account. At present we are not required to account to you for interest of less than £20.
• Where a client obtains borrowing from a lender in a property transaction, we will ask the lender to arrange that the loan cheque is received by us a minimum of four working days prior to the completion date. If the money can be telegraphed, we will request that we receive it the day before completion. This will enable us to ensure that the necessary funds are available in time for completion. Such clients need to be aware that the lender may charge interest from the date of issue of their loan cheque or the telegraphing of the payment.

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 one 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.

AMC Law Terms and Conditions of Business

• 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 at the junior administrator hourly rate for producing stored papers or documents to you or another at your request or of any handling or dispatch charges that we are charged by any off site secure storage company we use. We may also charge for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with your instructions.
• If we retrieve papers or documents from storage at your request where there are no ongoing instructions we may at our discretion make a charge to cover our reasonable administration costs.

Financial services

• If, while we are acting for you, you need advice on investments, we may have to refer you to someone who is authorised by the Financial Services Authority, as we are not. However, as we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, we may be able to provide certain limited investment services where these are closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you.

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 the request for a payment on account, we will tell you the reason and give you notice in writing.
• Under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000, for some non-business instructions, you may have the right to withdraw, without charge, within seven working days of the date on which you asked us to act for you. However, if we start work with your consent within that period, you lose that right to withdraw. Your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business will amount to such consent. If you seek to withdraw instructions, you should give notice by telephone, e-mail or letter to the person named in your engagement letter as being responsible for your work. The Regulations require us to inform you that the work involved is likely to take more than 30 days.

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 firm. 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 consideration 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 raise them with us 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 for you.

Liability

• The following provisions set out the entire financial liability of AMC Law (including any liability for the acts of omissions of its staff) to you in respect of:-
  • Any breach of the agreement; or
  • Any representation, statement or tortuous act or omissions including negligence arising under or in connection with the performance of the services.

AMC Law Terms and Conditions of Business

• All warranties, conditions or other terms implied by statute or common law are to the fullest extent permitted by law excluded from the agreement.
• Nothing in the agreement excludes or limits the liability of AMC Law for death or personal injury caused by AMC Law’s negligence or its liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Subject to the above:-
  • AMC Law’s total liability in contract, tort (including negligence or breach of statutory duty), misrepresentation or otherwise arising in connection with the performance of the services or the agreement shall be limited to £3 million in respect of any one claim;
  • AMC Law will have no liability to the client arising from any of the circumstances set out above unless the client notifies AMC Law of the claim in writing within six months following the date on which the client became aware or should have been aware of the circumstances giving rise to the claim;
  • The liability of AMC Law to the client shall be limited to that proportion of the total loss or damage incurred by the client (after taking into account the client’s contributory negligence (if any)) which is just and equitable having regard to the extent of the responsibility of AMC Law for the loss or damage concerned and the extent of responsibility of any other party for such loss or damage.
  • For the purpose of the above clause the reference to a “claim” shall mean all claims arising from the same act, omission, circumstance or event.

Force Majeure

• AMC Law will not be liable to the client for any failure or delay in performing the services if it is prevented from or delayed in doing so due to circumstances beyond its reasonable control including, without limitation, Acts of God, governmental actions, war or national emergency, riot, civil commotion, terrorism, fire, explosion, flood, disruptive weather conditions epidemic, lock outs, strikes or other labour disputes.

Conflict of interest

• AMC Law shall be entitled to refuse to provide any particular services if in its reasonable opinion the provision of such services in the circumstances prevailing at that time would result in a professional conflict of interest.

Identity, disclosure, confidentiality requirements and Anti Money Laundering Requirements

• We are entitled to refuse to act for you if you fail to supply appropriate proof of identity for yourself or for any principal whom you may represent. The cost of any such search or enquiry that we need to carry out will be charged to you. If the amount is in excess of £10 including VAT, we will seek your prior agreement.
• 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: legislation on money laundering and terrorist financing has placed solicitors under a legal duty in certain circumstances to disclose information to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. Where a solicitor knows or suspects that a transaction on behalf of a client involves money laundering, the solicitor may be required to make a disclosure. If, while we are acting for you, it becomes necessary to make such a disclosure, we may not be able to inform you that it has been made, or of the reasons for it, because the law prohibits ‘tipping-off’. Where the law permits us, we will tell you about any potential money laundering problem and explain what action we may need to take.
• Our firm may be subject to audit or quality checks by external firms or organisations. We may also outsource work. This might be for example typing or photocopying or costings, or research and preparation to assist with your matter. Information from your file may therefore be made available in such circumstances. We will always aim to obtain a confidentiality agreement with the third party.
• In order to comply with court and tribunal rules, all documentation relevant to any issues in litigation, however potentially damaging to your case, have to be preserved and may be required to be made available to the other side. This aspect of proceedings is known as ‘disclosure’. Subject to this, we will not reveal confidential information about your case except as provided by these terms of business and where, for example, your opponent is ordered to pay your costs, we may have to meet obligations to reveal details of the case to them and to the court.

AMC Law Terms and Conditions of Business

Confidentiality and Privacy

• Information of a confidential nature about you and your affairs is held in the strictest confidence by this firm and will not be disclosed by us to any third party without your consent, unless we are required to do so by law for example as referred to above. Where we are undertaking work for you in conjunction with your other advisers, we will assume that we have your authority to discuss relevant confidential information with them unless you tell us otherwise.
• Please also refer to our privacy policy published on our website for details of how we may use your personal information. If you are unable to access our website, a copy of our privacy policy is available upon request.
• We will be pleased to correspond with you by e-mail when appropriate although we are bound to point out this may not be secure. Should we receive an e-mail from you we will assume you are happy for us to respond by e-mail, despite the likely confidential nature of our communication.

Communication between you and us

• Our aim is to offer all our clients an efficient and effective service at all times. We hope that you will be pleased with the work we do for you. However, should there be any aspect of our service with which you are unhappy, please raise your concern in the first place with the person undertaking your work. If you still have queries or concerns, please contact our principal Anne Coles, at 25 White Delves, Wellingborough, NN8 5XW who is the Client Care Partner to whom any final difficulty can be reported. If Anne is unable to resolve the issue either you or Anne can refer the matter to our Company Secretary, Mr Nicholas Warne c/o Cottons Accountants Regency House, Albion Place, Northampton NN1 1UD.
• We will aim to communicate with you by such method as you may request. We may need to virus check discs or email. Unless you withdraw consent, we will communicate with others when appropriate by e-mail or fax but we cannot be responsible for the security of correspondence and documents sent by e-mail or fax.
• The Data Protection Act 1998 requires us to advise you that your particulars are held on our database. We may, from time to time, use these details to send you information which we think might be of interest to you.
• Where we act for two or more clients jointly it is on the clear understanding that we are authorised to act on instructions from either, both or any of them unless you all jointly notify us to the contrary.

Marketing

• We usually enter details of new clients and client contacts on to our marketing database in order to send to clients newsletters, publications, etc which may be of interest, together with invitations to seminars we regularly run. Please let us know
  if you would prefer not to receive such information.

Rights of third parties

• Except to the extent otherwise expressly agreed with you in writing by a partner in this firm, the contract between us shall not confer a benefit on any third party and no third party shall be entitled to enforce any of its terms or otherwise to rely upon it.

Law

• The contract between us shall be governed by and construed in all respects in accordance with English law and, save in respect of actions by us to recover sums due from you, the Courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction in respect of any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with the contract between us.

Terms and conditions of business

• Unless otherwise agreed, and subject to the application of then current hourly rates, these Terms and Conditions of Business shall apply to any future instructions given by you to this firm.
• Our engagement letter incorporates these terms and conditions, so by signing and returning that letter to us or allowing us to work under the terms of that letter without requesting us to stop work, you also agree to these terms and conditions of business.