Terms & Conditions of Business
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 commitment to you
We will:
REPRESENT your interests and keep your business confidential.
EXPLAIN to you the legal work which may be required and the prospects of a successful outcome.
MAKE SURE that you understand the likely degree of financial risk which you will be taking on.
ADVISE YOU if legal aid might be available to you.
KEEP YOU regularly informed of progress or, if there is none, when you are next likely to hear from us.
TRY to avoid using technical legal language when writing to you.
DEAL with your queries promptly, for example, we will always try to return your telephone calls on the same day.
Our hours of business
The normal hours of opening at our offices are between 9.00am and 5.30pm Monday – Thursday and 9.00am to 5.00pm on Friday.
People responsible for your work
The person responsible for dealing with your work will be David Wells, who is a
Solicitor and Radhia Karaa who is a Barrister. 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 partners of this firm with final responsibility for work done in this department is both Radhia Karaa and David Wells.
Charges and expenses (please ignore if you are in receipt of Legal Aid)
Our charges will be calculated mainly by reference to the time actually spent by the solicitors and other staff in respect of any work which they do on your behalf. This will include meetings with you and perhaps others, reading and working on papers, correspondence, including e-mails, preparation of any detailed costs calculations, and time spent travelling away from the office when this is necessary. From time to time we may arrange for some of this work to be carried out by persons not directly employed by this firm. You will be charged at rates not greater than those set out below.
Routine letters / emails are charged as 6 minute units of time. We charge for the time spent on making and taking telephone calls in 6 minute units, and time spent considering incoming letters/ emails is charged as units of 3 minutes per page.
Radhia Karaa’s and David Wells’ current hourly rate is £400 to which we will add VAT to these at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present, VAT is 20%. If your case were to be passed to any other fee earner within the firm we would inform you of that fee earner’s hourly rate in advance of transferring your case.
These hourly rates have to be reviewed periodically to reflect increases in overhead costs and inflation. Normally the rates are reviewed with effect from 1st 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 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 particularly specialist expertise which the case may demand.
Solicitors have to pay out various other expenses on behalf of clients ranging from court fees, experts’ fees, and so on. We have no obligation to make such payments unless you have provided us with the funds in advance for that purpose. VAT may be payable on certain expenses. We refer to such payments generally as ‘disbursements’.
If, for any reason, this matter does not proceed to a conclusion, we will be entitled to charge you for work done and expenses incurred. In the event of a change in circumstances and an application for Legal Aid is made and granted, any monies paid on account will not be refunded.
Payment arrangements
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. We find that this helps clients in budgeting for costs as well as keeping them informed of the legal expenses which are being incurred. Bills will be rendered monthly subject to a separate arrangement having been made with the Partner supervising the matter. 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 must reserve the right to stop acting for you further.
Payment is due to us within 28 days of our sending you a bill. Interest may be charged on a daily basis at 4% over Bank of England 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.
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 may be claimed on them from the other party from the date of the court order. We will account to you for any 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.
Interest Policy
In accordance with the SRA Standards and Regulations 2019 and the SRA Accounts Rules 2019, it is the firm’s policy to account to its client for interest on a fair and reasonable basis, to both the client and the firm.
DWK Law Ltd holds one general client account; this is an instant access account which ensures immediate access to client funds.
If it is deemed fair and reasonable to do so, interest will be calculated at the relevant Bank of England base rate, applicable over the period for which the funds are held. Such determination shall be made on a case-by-case basis by the Managing Partner, Radhia Karaa.
Due to administrative costs involved, DWK Law Ltd will not pay interest if the sum calculated is less than £50.00 in total for the period which we hold your money in client account.
This policy will be reviewed annually to ensure that it continues to deliver a fair outcome to clients.
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 six years, following which they will be confidentially destroyed.
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 copying stored papers or documents to you or another at your request. We may also charge for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with your instructions.
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 Contract Regulations 2013, you have the right to cancel this contract within 14 days of the date on which you asked us to act for you, if the contract has been made off-premises or is a distance contract i.e not made in our office. You must do this in writing either by letter or email, addressed to the person named in this Terms of Business as being responsible for your case. In an off-premises or distance contract, we shall not provide a service to you before the end of the cancellation period unless you make an express request for us to do so, in writing. This means that if you later cancel the contract, you must pay for work done up to that point. If you cancel an off-premises or distance contract within 14 days and you have paid fees on account, we shall reimburse you using the same means of payment without undue delay and not later than 14 days after the day on which you advise us of your wish to withdraw or cancel the contract.
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.
Identity and disclosure 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.
Solicitors are not allowed to disclose information about a client’s affairs without the client’s authority.
We will not be liable for any loss, damage or delay arising out of the firm’s compliance with any statutory or regulatory requirement.
Communication between you and us
Our aim is to offer all our clients an efficient and effective service at all times. We are proud that we hold the SQM accreditation and our clients and our staff are of first importance to us. 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 Radhia Karaa. If you still have queries or concerns, please contact our Senior Partner, Mr David Wells at this office. David Wells is the client care partner to whom any unresolved difficulty can be reported.
We will aim to communicate with you by such a method as you may request. When agreed, we shall communicate by e-mail. Our emails are encrypted.
The Data Protection Act 2018 requires us to advise you that your particulars are held on our database. Please refer to our Privacy Notice which you will have been sent and which is also available on the firm’s website.
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.
Although your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to an acceptance of these Terms and Conditions of Business, it may not be possible for us to start work on your behalf until one copy of them has been returned to us for us to keep on our file.