Terms and Conditions

Charges and expenses

Our charges are usually calculated by reference to the time actually spent by solicitors and other staff on the work they do on your behalf. This includes attending meetings with you and others, carrying out any necessary research, drafting and considering documents and other papers, writing and dealing with correspondence, telephone calls made and received, preparation of any detailed costs calculations, as well as travel and waiting times. Full details of the charges that will apply in your case or, in the alternative, our best estimates of the charges are set out above.

Like every other firm of solicitors, there are occasions when we have to pay out various expenses on your behalf. These expenses are traditionally referred to as "disbursements" and this is an expression still used, for example, by the courts in relation to the assessment of costs. We require that you provide us with funds in advance of our paying out these expenses. We must make it clear that we are not under any obligation to pay these expenses unless you have provided us with funds.

Should this matter not be carried through to completion, a charge will be made in respect of the work that has already been completed, and you will also be billed for any expenses incurred.

Payment arrangements

Payment is due to us within 7 days of the date of the invoice. In conveyancing matters payment is always required on completion. We reserve the right to charge interest. Interest will be charged on a daily basis at 4 per cent over Lloyds Bank Plc's base rate from the date of the bill in cases where late payment is made.

It is our normal practice to ask clients to pay money from time to time on account of the charges and expenses which are expected in the following weeks or months. We find this helps clients budgeting for costs as well as keeping them informed of the expenses which are being incurred. If such requests are not met with a prompt payment, delay in the progress of the case may result. In the event of any bill not being paid or request for payment not being met, we may at our complete discretion refuse to act for you further.

Please note that, in accordance with the Law Society's accounting rules, we require at least five working days for clearance of cheques, before drawing against them.

Other parties' charges and expenses

In some cases and transactions a client may be entitled to payment of some or all of their 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 public funding 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 and expenses on account, but we are entitled to the balance 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.

In a court case, a client who is unsuccessful 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 sometimes 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.

Our Contract with you

Once you have received this Case Fact Booklet, then unless we hear to the contrary, we will proceed on the basis contained in this Case Fact Booklet. We will then have entered into an agreement which will mean that the hourly rates and charges set out or referred to in the Case Fact Booklet will be fixed. In view of this agreement your right to challenge hourly rates will be restricted.

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.

The following should be read in conjunction with your Case Fact Booklet and our initial letter to you.

Our hours of business

The normal hours of opening at our offices are between 9.00am and 5.15pm on weekdays. At our discretion appointments can sometimes be made out of normal working hours.

Contacting us

Our main office switchboard telephone number 01271 372128 is answered by receptionist between 9.00am and 5.00pm. Messages can be left on the telephone answering service outside those hours. In addition, the person dealing with your work has a direct dial telephone number, with voicemail, which is identified on our letters to you and on your Case Fact Booklet.

The person dealing with your work also has an individual e-mail address, which is identified on our letters to you and on your Case Fact Booklet.

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

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 that might be of interest to you unless you request us not to do so.

People responsible for your work

The person responsible for dealing with your work is the person whose name appears on your Case Fact Booklet. The Case Fact Booklet also sets out the personal assistant/secretary who may help with your enquiries and who will be pleased to take any message from you. We will try to avoid changing 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 partner with the supervisory responsibility for work done in the department is the partner whose name appears on your Case Fact Booklet.

Care of our Clients

We are delighted to provide a quality service to all our clients. In the event of any concern about the service provided or the process that you are involved in, please do not hesitate to contact the person dealing with your case as set out in your Case Fact Booklet. Please let us know immediately and he or she will try to provide a straightforward answer.

In the event that the person dealing with your case is unable to resolve matters to your satisfaction, please contact the partner in charge of the department whose details are as set out in your Case Fact Booklet.

Our experience is that we are almost always able to resolve any difficulties in this way, but our Partner Christopher Jones has responsibility for our Complaints Procedure and if the partner in charge of the department within which your work is being undertaken cannot resolve your concern you can contact him by writing to him at 10 Cross Street Barnstaple with details of your complaint.

Financial Services

Many of our clients require financial advice – which we are not authorised by our regulatory body to provide. We have arranged to refer appropriate cases to the Professional Financial Centre (North Devon & Quantocks) Ltd which has been specifically established to serve the needs of solicitors' clients and is regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

Where appropriate we will introduce you to the Centre and confirm in writing the advice required. The Centre will produce a written financial report for you and send a copy to us in order to enable us to verify that the recommendations made are consistent with any legal advice given. We will also liase with the Centre to provide ancillary advice and information and to ensure that the best advice consistent with our instructions is available. The Centre will confirm to you if any remuneration is payable to us for this service and arrange to pay us direct.

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 reserve the right to store your file on microfiche – this involves the papers being copied and the copies certified as true and complete before the original papers are destroyed. We will keep your files 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 your files 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.

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 for producing stored papers or documents to you or another at your request. We may also charge for the reading and correspondence or other work necessary to comply with your instructions.

Limited companies

When accepting instructions to act, 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 unreasonably 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.

Quality standards

We are proud of the fact that we are accredited to Lexcel the Law Society's Practice Management Standard.

As a result of this we are 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 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 we 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. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can explain this further or if you would like us to mark your file as not to be inspected. If you prefer to withhold consent please put a line through this section in the copy you return to us.

Anti-Money Laundering Rules

Following the introduction of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and Money Laundering Regulations 2007, we are obliged to request evidence of your identity if you are a new client and undertake certain other procedures to establish your credentials and the legitimacy of your instructions before acting upon them. These procedures may require us to take fuller instructions from you than previously, and may, in rare cases, introduce some small delays into your matter. We will, of course, strive to keep these delays to a minimum.

We may also have a legal obligation to report to the Serious & Organized Crime Agency any information which comes to our attention concerning any matters covered by the new law. If we make a report we may not be allowed to tell you or anyone else that we have done so. We may be ordered to stop the work you have instructed us to do. In that case we will not be able to tell you or anyone else why we have stopped work.

Also, in the light of the law, this firm will no longer be able to accept cash payments in excess of £250.00 except by special arrangement. In addition, any funds required from you will be required by the firm in the form of cleared funds at least 7 working days in advance of the date they will be required to further or complete your matter.

Apart from these new measures, it is, and remains, our policy to keep all information about the personal and business affairs of our clients confidential and to complete your instructions with all due diligence and speed.

ADDITIONAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS: PROPERTY TRANSACTIONS

• We will often need to obtain your deeds in order to prepare your sale contract. If you have a mortgage your deeds may be held with your lender. Most institutional lenders will charge a fee for releasing your deeds to us. Generally the fee will be debited to your mortgage account. Sometimes we will be asked to pay the fee upfront. In all cases you will be liable for any fees incurred in obtaining your deeds and will indemnify us against any liability we incur in obtaining your deeds.
• When we receive your deeds from your lender we are obliged to hold the deeds to the order of your lender and to return them to your lender on demand at any stage during the transaction until any mortgage(s) are wholly redeemed
• Where we are holding deeds that are not subject to a mortgage we shall : -
• Send them to your buyer or your buyer's legal representative on completion of the transaction
• Not release them to you or any third party without your instruction and authority which we may require in writing
• Exercise a lawful lien over them in respect of any liability owed by you to us

Repaying your Mortgage

It is a basic obligation of every seller to discharge any subsisting mortgage on the property on or before completion of the sale. You are responsible for ensuring that you have or will have sufficient money available to put us in funds to discharge any subsisting mortgage(s) on the property at completion. We will: -

• obtain redemption figures for your mortgage(s) following exchange of contracts
• redeem subsisting mortgages on completion where (but only where) we are holding sufficient cleared funds to do so
• account to you for the proceeds of sale thereafter
• treat your instructions to exchange contracts as being your irrevocable instruction and authority to redeem your mortgage(s) on the property from the monies received at completion.

Note that it is not part of the contract for us to : -

• obtain redemption figures for your mortgage(s) prior to exchange of contracts
• redeem your mortgage(s) without being in receipt of cleared funds sufficient to enable us to do so and to discharge any liabilities you may have to us

Your Instructions

• We shall treat your signature on the agreement(s) for your sale and purchase as your irrevocable

authority to exchange contracts

• Where you are selling and/or buying jointly with others you warrant to us that we may accept instructions by any one of you as being given with the authority of all of you and you promise to indemnify us against any claims arising from a breach of this warranty
• We reserve the right in our absolute discretion to verify instructions from all of you as we see fit before accepting instructions
• We reserve the right to decline instructions at any time without reason

Acting for your Mortgage Lender

We will often be required to act for your lender for example on a purchase with a mortgage your lender will generally instruct us to act for your lender as well as for you. Usually your lender will require you to pay all legal fees associated with your lender's instructions to us even though we are obliged to treat your lender as a separate client to whom equal and separate duties are owed. Unless we are instructed to the contrary by your lender you will be liable to us for and indemnify us in connection with all costs and disbursements arising from instructions received from your lender.

We may be required to disclose confidential information about your transaction or you obtained in acting for you to your lender in order to comply with your lender's instructions. Where necessary we shall seek your prior consent to any such disclosure and where you decline to permit it we shall cease to act for you and/or your lender where continuing to do so would be incompatible with your lender's instructions.

Sales Instructions

In dealing with your sale we shall: -

• Obtain your deeds (subject to conditions above) and/or your Home Information pack where one has been prepared and prepare and send out the sale contract and related documentation
• Send to you for completion and return the Property Information Form and Fixtures Fittings and Contents List
• As appropriate seek your instructions on any queries raised by the purchaser's legal representative
• Deal with exchange of contracts and legal completion

We shall not be obliged to: -

• Negotiate the non-legal terms of your sale relating to price, contents completion dates etc
• Pay monies to third parties except in so far as we hold cleared funds in our client account to enable us to do so
• You will be obliged to : -
• Give vacant possession of the property on the day of completion ( generally by not later than 1p.m. unless you have made alternative arrangements with the purchasers )
• Leave the property empty of all furniture and personal effects except those agreed in writing with
• the purchasers as being included in the sale
• Sign the transfer deeds and any other documents necessary to give effect to the sale