We support businesses with commercially focused legal solutions that drive growth and protect and preserve your assets and reputations.
Whatever your business, we can help you prosper.
We provide legal support to address the major challenges in life and protect your family and finances.
From relationship breakdowns or personal injuries to property or criminal defence, we can help you achieve the best outcome for you and your family.
Coodes is the trading name of Coodes LLP, which is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with number OC383089. We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. A list of our members, all of whom are solicitors, may be inspected at our registered office: Elizabeth House, Castle Street, Truro, Cornwall, TR1 3AP.
In this document and in any communication with you, “partner” means a member of Coodes LLP or an employee or consultant with equivalent standing and “employee” means an employee of either Coodes LLP or any service company which provides services to Coodes LLP. “We” and “our” mean Coodes LLP and “you” means the person who is our client or, if more than one person, those persons who, together, are our client. Where we act for two or more clients jointly, it is on the understanding that we are authorised to act on instructions of either or both or any of them.
We aim to offer you quality legal advice with a personal service at a fair price and to do our very best to look after your interests. As a start, we should set out the basis on which we will provide our legal services and the way in which we will deal with your instructions.
We are committed to providing our clients with professional advice and excellent levels of service.
We will:
To help us provide this service we need you (the client) to:
Our normal hours of opening are 9.00am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday. We will tell you how to contact us outside those hours should it be necessary. You can communicate with us by phone, letter, fax and email, although we do not accept service of formal documents by fax or email. Please note what is said below about email communications with us. Appointments to see us are usually in our offices but can be arranged elsewhere if that suits you better.
The cost of communications with us are normally included in the firm’s charges. However, if we are requested to make special deliveries of documents, we may charge that as an additional expense to you.
If you provide us with an email address, we assume that we have your consent for us to communicate with you and related parties by this method of communication. If you do not wish us to communicate with you or any related parties in this way, please notify us. If you do not wish us to store your emails, please do not correspond with us by email.
Please note it is not our policy to encrypt our outgoing emails. Due to the insecure nature of sending unencrypted messages over the internet please note that there is a risk to you if confidential information is communicated in this way. We do not accept liability for any communication which is intercepted or otherwise falls into the hands of those other than the intended recipient or in respect of non-receipt, late receipt or corruption.
Although we regularly carry out virus checks we strongly advise you to carry out your own checks on all systems, data and communications whether in the form of computer disks, emails, internet use or otherwise. We accept no liability for any virus that may enter your system or data by these or any other means.
Our detailed Confirmation of Instruction letter will set out the scope of the work that we have agreed to do on your behalf. It will also detail any areas of work that we will not be doing on your behalf (if any). It is important that you understand these limitations to avoid any misunderstandings. Our charging structure and charges reflect this scope of work, so any work that we subsequently agree to do outside this scope will be charged separately to you. We will agree the scope and cost of the additional work before we agree to do any such work.
We do not advise on the law or legal implications of any legal jurisdiction other than England and Wales.
Any work that we do for you may have tax implications or necessitate the consideration of tax planning strategies. We do not consider that the scope of work that we are carrying out on your behalf includes any obligation to give advice in relation to any tax implications or tax planning strategies, unless we have specifically agreed otherwise. If you have concerns in this respect, please raise them with us immediately. Please note that we will not advise on VAT, Capital Gains or Corporation Tax aspects of the proposed transaction.
The transaction or matter that we will be undertaking on your behalf may involve considerations and decisions as to its financial, commercial or related viability or implications. The transaction may also have an impact on the environment in which it works. The work that we do for you will not include any obligation to give advice in relation to those matters or issues.
Information regarding our charges is set out below and more detailed information relating to your matter is contained in our Confirmation of Instructions letter. This sets out the basis of how our charges will be calculated and the expenses we expect will be incurred on your behalf.
In matters where work is charged on a time basis, we will provide an estimate of our charges to include VAT and expenses, either for the entire matter or to take the work to an agreed stage. An estimate is not a fixed price nor is it binding. At the outset of the matter, you will be told the hourly rates of the people who are likely to be dealing with your work. Our hourly rates vary according to the knowledge, qualification and experience of the person dealing with your matter. Unless otherwise advised to you separately in writing, our current rates below (excluding VAT) will apply:
| Grade | Hourly rate | |
|---|---|---|
| A | Solicitors and Legal Executives with over 10 years post qualification experience | £350 |
| B | Solicitors and Legal Executives with over 5 years post qualification experience and Lawyers of equivalent knowledge / experience | £320 |
| C | Solicitors and Legal Executives with up to 5 years post qualification experience and Lawyers of equivalent knowledge / experience | £300 |
| D | Trainee Solicitors and Paralegals and other Lawyers of at least 2 years experience | £220 |
| E | Other Lawyers of up to 2 years equivalent experience | £200 |
Our charges will be calculated by reference to the time spent in dealing with your matter. This includes meetings with you and others related to the matter, considering, drafting, preparing and working on papers, correspondence, making and receiving telephone calls and any travel.
Routine letters which we write, including email, and routine telephone calls made and received will be charged at one tenth of that hourly rate. More substantive letters and telephone calls will be charged on a time basis.
We will add VAT to our charges at the rate that applies when the work is done which may vary from the rate at the time we issue our quotation. The up to date rate can be found on the government website.
In addition to the time spent, we may take into account a number of factors which will include the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken, the expertise or specialist knowledge which the matter requires and, if appropriate, the value of the property or assets involved. Our rates may be higher if, for example, the matter becomes more complex than expected. If this becomes relevant, we will notify you in writing.
Our hourly rates will be reviewed from time to time, and we will notify you of any increase. Currently our rates are reviewed annually in October, to apply that November. If you have any questions about the revised rates notified to you, please contact us straight away.
If you are purchasing a property, you will be required to complete and sign a Stamp Duty Land Tax Form and you will be liable to pay the tax due. We will ask you to sign the form and to provide us with funds to pay the SDLT and will send both to HMRC. Just as with your Tax Return the responsibility for ensuring that the Stamp Duty Land Tax form is accurate is yours and whilst we will complete it from the information available to us you should ensure that it is accurate as we cannot accept responsibility for any errors that occur and subsequent liability. A charge will be made for the completion of the necessary form, details of which are set out in the schedule to the accompanying letter. We will inform you if any unforeseen work becomes necessary and the charge needs to be increased.
We will make separate charges for the work needed to make payments on your behalf using the Bank electronic payment system. The charges include our own charge for the work as well as the charge to us from the bank for sending the transfer. Both charges are set out in the schedule to the accompanying letter.
If you are a buyer requiring a mortgage, we will be instructed to act for your lender in its taking of security on the property. The lender will require you to pay their legal costs. We will send you a copy of the lenders invoice and payment is due from you prior to completion as set out in the schedule.
If we act for the lender, we will have a duty to pass to the lender information you give us that might be relevant to the lender’s decision whether to finance the purchase. This will include any differences between your mortgage application and the information that we receive during the transaction, any cash back payments or discount schemes that the seller is giving you. If you provide us with information which you do not want the lender to know, and such information is relevant to the lender we may have to stop acting for the lender and possibly also for you.
If you are a seller with a mortgage secured upon your property, we will be instructed to act for your lender in the discharge of its security upon the repayment of the mortgage debt. The lender will require you to pay their legal costs and we will send you a copy of the Lender’s invoice and payment is due from you prior to completion as set out in the schedule.
Our charges and expenses are payable whether or not the matter is successfully concluded, or a transaction completed. If any matter or transaction does not proceed to completion for any reason, then we will charge for the work done on the basis set out under the heading, “Charges calculated on a time basis”
You may want to ask, and we may agree with you to set an upper limit on our charges if we are charging you on a time basis. We will tell you in advance if we are reaching that limit and if we reach that limit, we will stop any further work and tell you that we have done this. You may then set a new limit, or just pay for the work done to date. Not all matters are suitable for this type of arrangement, particularly if court proceedings have been commenced.
One of our pricing options is that the cost of the work that we do on your behalf shall be fixed at an agreed sum. We offer a range of fixed charge services where the scope and extent of the work to be undertaken is clear from the outset. In addition to the fixed charge, you will be charged VAT and any expenses we may incur on your behalf such as court fees. Our Confirmation of Instructions letter sets out the work that we will do on your behalf and confirms the fixed charges that we will charge you for that work. The only variation will be if you ask us to do work outside the agreed scope of work or your matter becomes more complex and falls outside the agreed scope. If that happens, we will agree an alternative method of pricing and any revised charges with you before they are incurred.
Where a fixed charge is agreed, payment of our invoice is due at the outset of the matter, unless staged payments have been agreed in advance. Our charges and expenses are payable whether or not the matter is successfully concluded, or a transaction is completed. If a matter does not conclude during the period in which we are instructed, then we are entitled to the entire fixed charge. We may agree stage payments for a transaction. In the event that the matter does not complete in those circumstances we will not refund you for any work commenced and you will be responsible to pay the entire charge for the relevant stage we are working on. Our invoice will include VAT and expenses incurred on your behalf.
There will frequently be expenses that we have to incur on your behalf in dealing with your matter such as Search Fees, Court Fees, Expert and Barrister fees. We will normally obtain your approval before incurring any substantial expenses on your behalf. We require you to provide us with sufficient funds to cover such expenses before they are incurred. VAT is payable on certain expenses at the appropriate rate. We set out in our confirmation of instructions letter an estimate of those expenses.
Whatever the basis on which we agree to charge you we will inform you if any unforeseen extra work becomes necessary due to unexpected difficulties or if your requirements or the circumstances significantly change during the matter. We will also inform you in writing of the estimated cost of the extra work before incurring the additional charges.
We will send you interim invoices for our charges and expenses at regular intervals as set out in the Confirmation of Instructions letter. We will send you a final invoice for charges and expenses on conclusion of the matter. It is our normal practice to ask you for payments on account of our charges and expenses both at the start of a matter and as it progresses. Any amounts received will be shown as paid on your final invoice.
Our charges and expenses are payable, whether or not the matter is successfully concluded, or a transaction is completed. If any matter does not proceed to completion for any reason during the period in which we are instructed, then we will charge you for work carried out at our hourly rate. Our invoice will include VAT and expenses incurred on your behalf.
You can make payment to us in the following ways:
Where we have to pay money to you, it will be paid to you by cheque or bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party.
If we hold sufficient funds on your behalf, we will usually deduct our charges and any expenses that we have incurred on your behalf from these funds.
If you do not pay any invoice within 28 days of issue interest will accrue on the invoice at the rate of 8% per annum, calculated from the date of the invoice. Where an interim invoice remains unpaid for more than 28 days, you may be notified that no further work will be carried out on your matter until it is paid. We may also terminate your retainer with us, which means that we will do no further work for you on this matter at all and you will be responsible for our charges and expenses to the date of termination, together with the charges and expenses of applying to any court to come off the court record as representing you.
If you are unhappy about any aspect of our invoice you should follow the complaints process as set out later in this document under the heading of “Complaints”. In addition to our complaints process you have a further option which is to apply to the court for an assessment of the invoice under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.
It is possible that you may be able to recover our charges and expenses from some other person. It is important that you understand that in such circumstances, the other person is unlikely to 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. The other person will not be liable to pay the VAT element of your charges and expenses if you are able to recover the VAT yourself.
If you are successful in your action and a court orders another party to pay some or all of our 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 already paid some or all of our charges on account, but we are entitled to the balance of that interest.
It may be that part of this transaction requires you to pay the legal expenses of one of the other parties to the transaction. In litigation matters the result may be that you have to contribute to the legal expenses of the other party. We have no control over how those legal charges may be calculated by that parties’ legal representatives, but we will endeavour on your behalf to agree the basis upon which the charges will be made and so, if possible, obtain a firm figure or place a cap on the level of those charges.
Please also understand that we are frequently asked to provide an undertaking to the parties’ solicitors to pay those legal expenses. The effect of an undertaking is that we are professionally required to make that payment whether you agree or not. For that reason, we will ask you to pay those legal expenses to ourselves in advance, so that the funds can be paid over in compliance with the undertaking when necessary. If we have given an undertaking, because of our professional obligations, we will not be able to accept any countermanding of those instructions from you.
If we receive or hold money for you or on your behalf, we will deposit that money in a client account with Barclays Bank plc (a bank permitted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to accept deposits).
We shall not be responsible for any losses whatsoever suffered, sustained or incurred by you or any third party by reason of any failure or collapse of any bank at which client monies are deposited.
You consent to the disclosure by us to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) of details of your holding(s) of any money in any client account at a bank which fails or collapses. The FSCS imposes a limit on the amount of compensation which may be claimed. The limit applies to all monies held by a client with one bank regardless of the brands which that bank may use. If you hold personal money in the same bank in which we hold money for you then the FSCS limit presently £85,000.00 will apply to your entire money. You can obtain further information via the FSCS website at: www.fscs.org.uk.” The FSCS also provides a £1 million protection limit for temporary high balances held with a bank, building society or credit union if it fails. Further details relating to what constitutes a temporary high balance and the rules relating to the protection can be found at www.fscs.org.uk.
During the course of a transaction, we may hold money on your behalf. Interest on money held on your behalf shall be calculated by reference to our client interest policy from time to time and, subject to our de minimis limit, will be calculated at a flat rate daily by applying a percentage of the applicable Bank of England Base Rate. The said percentage shall be reviewed from time to time and in any event every 6 months.
We will only pay interest to you if the amount of interest exceeds £100 which is our de minimis limit.
Sometimes we ask other companies or people to do typing/photocopying/search application or other work on our files to ensure this is done promptly. We will always seek a confidentiality agreement with these outsourced providers. If you do not want your file to be outsourced, please tell us as soon as possible.
You are not entitled to bring any claim arising out of or in connection with the work that the firm does against any individual member, partner, employee or consultant of Coodes LLP in their personal capacity. Any duty of care which would otherwise, as a matter of law, be owed to you by any of our members, partners, employees or consultants is excluded from our contract with you. However, this does not alter or reduce any liability which Coodes LLP may have to you. We maintain Professional Indemnity Insurance in accordance with the rules of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Details of the insurers and the territorial coverage of the policy are available on request.
If, despite our efforts, we make a mistake (by which we mean any breach of our duty of care or other duties to you) and are liable to make a payment to you our liability shall be limited as follows:
The limitations and exclusions of liability in this paragraph shall not apply to any liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or to any other liability which cannot be lawfully excluded or limited.
The transaction or matter that we will be undertaking on your behalf may involve considerations and decisions as to its financial, commercial or related viability or implications. The work that we do for you will not include any obligation to give advice in relation to those matters or issues.
You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time. We will decide to stop working for you only with good reason and on giving you reasonable notice, for example if you do not pay our invoices or staged payments, or if your interests come into conflict with our own interests or those of another client or if you ask us to do the work in a way that conflicts with our regulatory code of conduct. If that happens we will explain the reasons for any such decision at the time.
If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, you will become liable to pay our charges. We are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while money is owing to us.
We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Our registration number is 611627. The SRA regulatory Code of Conduct under which we operate can be accessed on their website at www.sra.org.uk.
We want to give you the best possible service. However, if at any point you become unhappy with the service we have provided to you or you have any concerns, then you should inform us immediately so that we can do our best to resolve the problem for you. We ask that you contact the lawyer dealing with your matter in the first instance.
If still not resolved to your satisfaction, please contact the Department Manager identified in our initial confirmation of instructions letter to you or alternatively email the Complaints Team at complaints@coodes.co.uk . Please bear in mind that we will not be able to comment in detail until our investigations are complete. A hard copy of this complaint handling procedure is available on request.
We will:
Whilst we are committed to being a progressive and efficient provider of legal services to all our clients, occasionally mistakes are made and on occasion it proves difficult to meet our clients’ expectations. We hope to learn from our mistakes and correct them if we can. If there has been any misunderstanding, we hope to identify how that has happened and to adjust our procedures to avoid a reoccurrence. We will usually be able to accept responsibility if we have caused any avoidable inconvenience or costs, but if a financial loss has been suffered as a consequence of our actions or omissions, we will need to consider whether that should be a matter for direct compensation or whether it is a claim which should be dealt with by our insurers, and sometimes it may be necessary for us to obtain the consent of our insurers before we can admit liability.
If we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves, The Legal Ombudsman can help you. They will look at your complaint independently and this will not affect how we handle your case. This applies if you are an individual, a business with fewer than 10 employees and turnover or balance sheet not exceeding €2 million (£1.7 million), a charity or trust with a net income of less than £1m, or if you fall within certain other categories (you can find out more from the Legal Ombudsman website without eligibility).
Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. They allow us 8 weeks to consider your complaint and respond to you although we aim to provide a response within 21 days. Please note that there are time restrictions for you to do this. You should contact the Ombudsman:
The Legal Ombudsman their contact details are as follows:
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. If you feel that we may have been dishonest or treated you unfairly because of your age, disability or other characteristic, then please refer to its website: http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page
Further details setting out our complaints handling procedure can be found within the “Complaints Procedure” section on our website.
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are, however, included on the register maintained by the Financial Conduct Authority so that we can carry out insurance distribution activity, which is broadly the advising on, 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/firms/financial-services-register
Sometimes the work with which we are involved includes investments. As we are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, we may refer you to someone who is authorised to provide any necessary advice. We can, however, provide certain limited services in relation to investments, provided that they are closely linked with the legal services that we are providing to you. This is because we are members of the Law Society of England and Wales, which is a designated body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
If you have any problem with the service, we have provided for you with regard to investments then please let us know. We will try to resolve any problem quickly and operate an internal complaints handling system to help us to resolve the problem between ourselves. If, for any reason, we are unable to resolve the problem between us, then we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with whom you should raise concerns.
Like all solicitors, we are required by law to apply procedures to guard against the risk of being involved in any way with the proceeds of crime, however trivial. This is because solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of clients can be used by criminals wanting to launder money. We comply with legislation including the Proceeds of Crime Act designed to combat the laundering of money which is the proceeds of crime and as a result we have procedures in place to prevent the use of our business for the laundering of money.
The law requires solicitors to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identity of their clients, where relevant, other beneficiaries to a transaction and, in some cases, the source of funds. In the case of a corporate structure, trust or similar legal arrangement we also need to take steps to understand the ownership and control structure of the company, trust or arrangement and to apply measures to verify this. These are legal requirements on solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their clients, primarily to guard against them being used by persons wanting to launder money or obtain a mortgage fraudulently, both of which are criminal offences. The requirements apply equally to new clients and to those who may have been long standing clients with the firm for many years.
To comply with the law, we need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon as possible. Our practice is to verify your identity using online verification systems or other databases as we may decide. Any personal data we receive from you for the purpose of preventing money laundering or terrorist financing will be used for that purpose only.
If you cannot provide us with the specific identification requested, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss other ways to verify your identity and/or authority to instruct us. If you cannot satisfy these requests promptly your matter may be delayed and we have the right to cancel the Contract immediately on giving written notice to you.
At the start of any matter we will normally ask you to tell us the source of any funds you will be using. It is simplest for us if the source is an account in your name in a UK Bank or Building Society. If the source is an unusual one, such as an account in another country or in the name of someone other than yourself, please tell us as early as possible, including the reason for use.
Where we pay money out to you, we will do so by electronic payment into an account in your name or by a cheque made payable to you. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party.
We are professionally and legally obliged to keep your affairs confidential. However, solicitors may be required by anti-money laundering legislation to make a disclosure to the National Crime Agency where they know or suspect that a transaction may involve money laundering. If we make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we may not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made. We do not accept liability for any loss or delay that may be caused to you in complying with this legislation.
We may be required by law to reveal certain information and documents about you to authorities such as the Police or HM Revenue and Customs in relation to matters such as tax, fraud and money laundering. In the unlikely event we may have to share information with third parties, you agree to waive our duty of confidentiality and “legal professional privilege” relating to your matter.
The Money Laundering Regulations 2017 include provisions which in practice require us to establish whether an individual for whom we are asked to act is a Politically Exposed Person (“PEP”).
For the purposes of this firm’s Terms of Business, a PEP is a person who is or has been within 12 months of the date of instruction of a specific matter, any of the following: a person who has been entrusted with one of the following prominent public functions in the UK or by the UK government or in or by a state other than the UK or by a European Community institution or an international body: heads of state, heads of government, ministers and deputy or assistant ministers members of parliament members of supreme courts, of constitutional courts, or of other high-level judicial bodies whose decisions are not generally subject to further appeal, except in exceptional circumstances members of courts of auditors or of the boards of central banks ambassadors, chargés d’affairs and high-ranking officers in the armed forces members of the administrative, management or supervisory bodies of state-owned enterprises.
In addition to the primary PEPs listed above, a PEP also includes family members of a PEP – spouse, partner, children and their spouses or partners, and parents; known close associates of a PEP – persons with whom joint beneficial ownership of a legal entity or legal arrangement is held, with whom there are close business relationships, or who is a sole beneficial owner of a legal entity or arrangement set up by the .
If you are currently a PEP or have been a PEP during the last 12 months or you are a family member or close associate of a PEP, please let us know without delay.
We carry out conflict checks in every matter as soon as it is practicable to do so. We have a number of procedures in place to ensure that any issues which arise can be discussed with you and dealt with as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We have a professional obligation not to act for you, or any other client, in a situation where there is an actual or significant risk of a conflict with either the interests of another client or our own interests.
If you become aware of an actual or potential conflict of interest at any time while we are acting for you, please discuss it with us immediately so that we may endeavour to resolve the issue in the most advantageous way to all clients concerned. If we do have to cease acting for you, you will still be responsible for our charges up to that time.
We are committed to treating all clients fairly and 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 processed in accordance with your instructions and the principles of the data protection law. To view our full Privacy Policy please visit our website https://coodes.co.uk/about-us/privacy-policy/. This policy sets out the legal basis for processing your data. If you would like this policy in another format (hard copy, audit, large print, braille) please contact our Data Protection Officer by email at dpo@coodes.co.uk or by telephone on (01326) 318900.
From time to time we would like to send you relevant information; newsletters; legal updates and invitations to events which we think may be of interest to you. To do this we use a variety of direct marketing methods of communication.
Please note that we will never pass your details on to third parties, unless as part of our legal requirements or in relation to our quality standards. If you wish to receive these legal updates, please click on this link, or visit our website and subscribe using the link provided at the top of every page.
You may unsubscribe at any time by contacting us by email, telephone or writing to us. Contact details can be found on our website www.coodes.co.uk.
We are committed to a policy of continuous improvement in the quality and efficiency of the services we provide to you. To assist us in achieving this we may be subject to periodic file checks or audits by external organisations in connection with recognised quality assurance schemes, such as Lexcel. Unless you advise us in writing to the contrary, we will assume that you agree to our permitting such file checks in relation to files we may open for you. In the case of Legal Aid Agency Audits, this is part of your own contract with the Legal Aid Agency. These external organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your files.
The services provided by us are for your benefit alone and solely for the purpose of the matter to which they relate. They may not be used or relied upon for any other purpose or by third parties. Our duty of care is to you as our client and does not extend to any third party. No third party shall have any right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any of the Terms, provided that no right or remedy of any such person which exists or is available otherwise than by virtue of that Act shall be adversely affected by the Terms.
After completing the work, we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for our charges and expenses. On completion of your work, we will keep a file relating to your instructions in electronic or paper format or in some instances both (excluding any of your papers which you ask to be returned to you) for at least six years from the date of sending you our final invoice and on the understanding that we have your authority to destroy/delete our file together with any papers belonging to you after six years. We will not destroy Deeds, Documents or Wills that you ask us to deposit in safe custody.
If we take papers out of storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act for you, we will not normally charge for such retrieval. However, we will charge you for the time spent producing stored papers that are requested for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with your instructions in relation to the retrieved papers. If you require a copy of any document after completion of your matter, we reserve the right to make a modest charge for its retrieval and supply.
Acceptance of any Deed, Will or other original document for safe custody by us does not imply that we accept that we have any continuing responsibility to inform you of any changes in the law that may affect the effectiveness of any of the terms of such Deed, Will or Document.
Given recent high profile media cases of email interception and fraudulent alterations to bank details and in particular, those relating to solicitor firms, PLEASE NOTE that you cannot rely on any bank details sent to you by email, even if they appear to come from this firm. It is your responsibility to check with us that you are using the correct bank details for any payments to be made to us in order to avoid any fraud. Please also note we will not be held responsible for any liability arising out of funds being sent by any party to an incorrect account.
