Terms and Conditions

TERMS OF BUSINESS OF BALOGUN KIRVAN SOUTH SOLICITORS
(“BKS”)

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is the governing body of solicitors.  Professional rules laid down by the SRA require that clients of solicitors be informed of certain terms of business.  Accordingly, the following indicates the basis on which BKS Solicitors (“the firm”) carries out professional services on behalf of our clients.

1  Address and Office Hours

The firm has three offices and your matter will be handled by a designated fee earner located in one of our offices.  The normal hours of business of all three offices are between 9.00 am and 5.30 pm on weekdays.  Appointments will be arranged outside these hours when necessary in the interests of a client.

2  People responsible for your work

Your fee earner will be mainly responsible for this matter but others may also carry out work on your file, as the office works as a team.

The Partners of this firm have ultimate responsibility for your work.

If for any reason the partner is unavailable, please ask for the partner’s secretary who will be happy to take any message for you.

We try hard to avoid changing the people who are handling your work but if this cannot be avoided, we will notify you promptly who will be handling your matter (and why the change was necessary).

In the event that the fee earner with primary conduct is unavailable and work is carried out by other fee earners in his or her absence the firm reserves the right to charge for time in accordance with the standard charging rate for that fee earner as set out below.  For instance, where the principal fee earner is either absent from the office due to holiday and sickness or Court commitments then another BKS fee earner will work on your file.

3  Exclusions and Limitations of Liability

In common with other professional advisers, it is our policy to cap our liability under our Terms of Engagements.  The Liability Cap which will apply to this engagement is £5 million.

We shall not be liable to you for any failure or delay for the consequences of any failure of delay in performance of your instruction if it is due to any event beyond our reasonable control including, without limitation, acts of God, war, industrial disputes, protests, fire flood, storm, tempest, explosion, acts of terrorism and national emergencies.

Save as stated in the final sub-paragraph of this paragraphs 3, our total liability to you in respect of our engagement for any loss, liability or damage however caused, whether in contract (by way of indemnity or otherwise), tort (including negligence), misrepresentation, restitution or otherwise (in each case whether caused by negligence or not) and whether related to any act, omission, services provided to you or not provided to you or failure to act or delay in acting by BKS Solicitors will be limited to an amount recorded in writing (the “Liability Cap”).  The Liability Cap:

• In respect of loss of damage to your tangible property arising due to our negligence is £5 million; and
• In respect of all other loss of damage, is as set out in the Engagement Letter.  If the Engagement letter does not address the Liability Cap (and we have not agreed otherwise with you in writing) the Liability Cap in respect of all other loss and damage is £1 million.

The extent to which any loss or damage will be recoverable by you from us will also be limited so as to be in proportion to our contribution to the overall fault for such loss or damage, taking into account any contributory negligence by you, your other advisers and/or any third party responsible to you and /or liable in respect of such loss.

Nothing in these Terms of Engagements shall affect liability which we may have to you in respect of any personal injury or death resulting from our negligence, any loss caused by our fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation or reckless disregard or our professional obligations or any other situation where the law prohibits us from excluding or limited our liability to you.  The provisions of this paragraph 3 shall continue to apply notwithstanding the termination of our engagement for any reason.

4   Charges and Expenses

Our charges are based on the time we spend in dealing with a case. Time spent on your affairs will include meetings with you and perhaps others; any time spent travelling; considering, preparing and working on papers; correspondence; and making and receiving telephone calls.

We will charge in accordance with the schedule below for each hour or part of an hour engaged on your matter from now until the review date in November of each year.  In case the principal fee earner is assisted by others as the matter progresses, please note that the current hourly rates for our solicitors and executives are as follows:

Routine letters that we write and routine telephone calls that we make and receive will be charged as units of 1/10th of an hour. Routine letters received will be charged as units of 1/20th of an hour. Other letters and calls will be charged on a time basis.

On 1st November in each year we will review the hourly rates to take account of any changes in our overhead costs and notify you in writing of any increased rate.

In addition to the time spent, we may take into account a number of factors which include the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken, the expertise of specialist knowledge which the case requires and, if appropriate, the value of the property or subject matter involved. On the basis of the information currently available, we expect these factors to be adequately covered by the hourly rates set out above. The rates may be higher if, for example, the matter becomes more complex then expected: we will notify you of this.

In property transactions, in the administration of estates and in transactions involving a substantial financial consideration or benefit to the client, fees may be calculated both by reference to the time spent and also by reference to a value of the financial benefit.  The value element reflects the importance of the transactions and the consequent responsibility falling on the firm.

Fees are payable whether or not a case is successfully concluded or a transaction is concluded.  If any case or transaction does not proceed to completion for any reason during the period in which the firm are instructed then it shall be entitled to charge for work done on the basis set out above but in its absolute discretion the firm may waive part or all of such entitlement to fees.

If you have a query about the level of any revised rates notified to you, please contact your fee earner straight away.

We will add VAT to our charge at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present, VAT is 17.5%.

There may be certain other expenses, including payments we make on your behalf, such as court fees, fees for medical reports and barrister’s fees which you will have to pay. VAT is payable on certain expenses.

We will inform you if any unforeseen additional work becomes necessary (for example, due to unexpected difficulties or if your requirements of the circumstances significantly change during the course of the matter). We will also inform you of its estimated cost in writing before any extra charges and expenses are incurred.

You may set a limit on the charges and expenses to be incurred. This means that you must pay those incurred up to the agreed limit without our needing to refer back to you.  We will inform you as soon as it appears that the limit may be exceeded and will not exceed the limit without first obtaining your consent.

If, for any reason, this matter does not proceed to completion, we will charge you for work done and expenses incurred.

7   Payments on account

In property transactions an account will normally be rendered following exchange of contracts and payment is required prior to or by the date of completion.  If payment of the account is not made before completion the firm can refuse to complete.  Where funds are payable to the client upon completion any amount due to the firm can be deducted from such funds unless otherwise agreed in writing.

In the administration of estates it is our usual practice to deliver interim accounts at intervals during the administration.  An interim bill will normally be submitted when the Grant has been obtained.  If it then transpires it will take some time to complete the administration, further interim accounts will be delivered.

It is normal practice to ask clients to pay sums of money from time to time on account of the charges and expenses which are expected in the following weeks or months. This helps to avoid delay in the progress of their case.

We will ask for a sum on account of our charges and to enable payment of expenses before we start work on your matter. We may request further payments on account for charges and expenses to be incurred as the matter progresses. When we pay these payments towards your bill/s we will send you a receipted bill. We will offset any such payments against your final bill, but it is important that you understand that your total charges and expenses may be greater than any advance payments.

8   Billing Arrangements

In certain matters we will send you an interim bill for our charges and expenses at the end of each month while the work is in progress.  This enables you to budget as the matter progresses. We will send a final bill after completion of the work.  Payment is due to us within 7 days of our sending you a bill. We will charge you interest on the bill of 8% per year if you do not pay our bill within this time.  Interest will be charged on a daily basis.

If you have any query about your bill, you should contact your fee earner.

If payment of our account is not made within the time limit stipulated by us, then we do reserve the right to cease acting on your behalf.  If we are on the Court record as your solicitors, then we will file the notice of change in acting attached to this letter to come off the Court record.  This would mean that you would be without legal representation were we to take such a step.  We emphasise that such a step will only be taken if we have made considerable efforts to obtain payment of our costs from you and you have refused to pay those charges.

9  Other party’s charges and expenses

It is important that you understand that you will be responsible for payment our bill/s. We will discuss with you whether your charges and expenses might be paid by another person. Even if you are successful, the other party may not be ordered to pay all your charges and expenses or these may not be recovered from then in full; if this happens, you will have to pay the balance of our charges and expenses. If the other party is legally aided, you may not get back any of your charges and expenses, even if you win the case.

If you are successful and the court orders that the other party 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 the charges and expenses of seeking to recover any charges and expenses that the court orders the other party to pay.

In some circumstances, the court may order you to pay the other party’s legal charges and expenses; for example, if you lose the case. The money would be payable in addition to our charges and expenses. We will discuss with you whether our charges and expenses and your liability for another party’s charges and expenses may be covered by insurance, and, if not, whether it would be advisable for you to have insurance to meet the other party’s charges and expenses.

10   Identity and Disclosure Requirement

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.

Solicitors are not allowed to disclose information about a client’s affairs without the client’s authority or unless we are compelled to do so by law.

We will not be liable for any loss, damage or delay arising out ot the firm’s compliance with any statutory or regulatory requirement.

11  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. We will keep our file of papers in off site storage.  We will not destroy documents you us to deposit in safe custody.  If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your affairs, we will make a charge based on time spent by a fee earner in considering or working on retrieved papers. We may also charge for reading, correspondence or other necessary work necessary to comply with the instructions given by you or on your behalf.

12 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.
 
In some circumstances, you may consider we ought to stop acting for you, for example, if you cannot give clear or proper instructions on how we are to proceed, or if it is clear that you have lost confidence in how we are carrying out your work.  For that reason we ask you to complete and return the attached notice of change in acting. 

We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason, for example, if you do not pay an interim bill or comply with our request for a payment on account. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.  If we do have to give sudden notice then we will file the notice of acting with the count which will mean you will be unrepresented.

If you or we decide that we will no longer act for you, you will pay our charges on an hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier.

13  Conflict

If an actual or potential conflict between your interests and interests of another client of BKS arises during the course of an engagement, we will discuss the position with you to determine the appropriate course of action.  Professional Conduct Rules may require us to stop acting for you on that matter.

14  Equality

BKS Solicitors are committed to promoting equality and diversity in all of its dealings with clients, third parties and employees.  Please contact us for a copy of our equality and diversity policy.

15  Data Protection

The Data Protection Act 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 may be of interest to you.

16  Communication between you and us

We are confident of providing a high quality service in all respects.  If, however, you have any queries or concerns about our work for you, please raise them in the first instance with the senior partner.  If that does not resolve the problem to your satisfaction or you would prefer not to speak to the senior partner, then please contact Matthew Stubbs who is this firm’s client care partner.

All solicitors must attempt to resolve problems that may arise with their services.  It is therefore important that you immediately raise any concerns you may have with us.  We value you and would not wish to think you have reason to be unhappy with us.

We will aim to communicate with you by such method as you may request.  We may need to virus check disks or e-mail.  Unless you withdraw consent, we will communicate with you and others when appropriate by e-mail or fax but we cannot be responsible for the security of the correspondence and documents sent by e-mail or fax.

17 Quality standards

The firm is working towards the Lexcel quality standard of the Law Society.  As a result of this we are or may become subject to periodic checks by outside assessors.  This could mean that your file is selected for checking, in which case we would need your consent for inspection to occur.  All inspections are, of course, conducted in confidence.

If you prefer to withhold consent, work on your file will not be affected in any way.  Since very few of our clients do object to this BKS propose to assume that we do have your consent unless you notify us to the contrary.

We will also assume, unless you indicate otherwise, that consent on this occasion will extend to all future matters which we conduct on your behalf.

If you would prefer to withhold consent please put a line through this section and return to me.

18  Agreement

Unless otherwise agreed, these terms of business apply to any future instructions you give us.

Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business.  Even so, we ask you to please download, sign and date the attached version of these terms and return it to us immediately.  We can then be confident that you understand the basis on which we will act for you.

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