TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

The basis upon which we provide legal services and the payment for those services is as follows:

1.         We shall endeavour to both advise you and promote your interests as professionally and efficiently as we can, but we cannot guarantee a successful outcome to any particular matter.

2.         Responsibility for the conduct of your matter will usually remain with the fee earner whom you have instructed initially and whose name and status appear on our letterhead.  If a transfer of the matter needs to be effected to another fee earner, we shall inform you and explain the reasons to you.

 3.        We shall seek to keep you informed as to progress on any transaction over which you have instructed us, but we would ask you in turn to respond promptly to our own communications with you.

4.         Where it appears to us that your case requires a different kind of expertise or a greater degree of ability than we have ourselves, we may need to arrange for it to be dealt with by someone else possibly from a different firm altogether.  In which connection, please note that we are not authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 to conduct investment business, but we are able, in certain circumstances, to offer a limited range of investment services to clients because we are members of the Law Society.  We can supply these investment services if they are an incidental part of the professional services that we have been engaged to provide. 

5.         We charge for work undertaken in one of two ways: according to fixed scales or an estimate provided to you in advance, or according to the hourly rate of the member of the firm dealing with the transaction for you.  Where the matter is particularly important, complex or urgent, we reserve the right to mark up the hourly rate by up to 50% as appropriate.  Please note that we shall charge for all work carried out, even if the particular transaction does not actually come to a successful conclusion, and that we are required to charge VAT at the prevailing rate on all our accounts.  Furthermore, we reserve the right to charge in excess of an estimate provided in advance if we undertake additional work not envisaged at the outset.  In all instances, we should be pleased to discuss the costs of any individual matter with you, either at the outset or whilst the work is in progress.

6.         Where a transaction is likely to be either costly or prolonged, we shall ask you to make a payment on account in advance and we shall render you interim invoices.  We shall also require that you put us in funds to meet the disbursements (out-of-pocket expenses) connected with the matter. 

7.         We are required to account to you for any commission received of more than £20 unless, having disclosed the amount to you or the basis of the calculation of the commission or (if the precise amount or basis cannot be ascertained) an approximation of it, we have your agreement to retain it.  

8.         Where funds are requested in order, say, to complete a conveyancing transaction, we require that those funds be in our account and cleared well in advance of the specified date (both personal and building society cheques normally take 4-5 working days to clear). Your failure to provide cleared funds in time will have a detrimental effect on the outcome of the transaction itself. 

9.         (a)        As you may be aware, there has in 2002 and 2003 been extensive new law designed to stop money laundering and we as solicitors are caught "in the middle" of all of this.  We are seen as "Gatekeepers".  In other words we are told that people are likely to use our services in a way that may expose both this firm and our clients to criminal prosecution;

            (b)        As part of our initial discussions with you, it will be necessary both to request evidence of and ask you a series of questions about your own identity and place of residence.  This is an obligation that we have to comply with under the Money Laundering Regulations 2003; 

10.       (c)        Additionally, at the initial stage, and also as matters develop, we will have to ask other questions about your instructions to us, especially concerning the proposed source and flow of funds.  We may also have to ask further questions, as appropriate, to satisfy ourselves that there is no suspicion of money laundering and/or that you as the client, and we as your advisers, are not becoming involved in any offence.  This is an obligation that we have to comply with under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002;

            (d)       We are sorry that we have to undertake this new level of enquiry, and we assure you that we are only following those procedures that are essential for both of us to comply with the new law.  However, this should also protect you from an attempt by someone else to use your identity without your knowledge;

            (e)       Please also note in this connection that, unless you have a pre-agreement with regard to receipt of funds by us, where you are proposing to send funds to us you now have to obtain our prior (written) consent.  This is so that we can control funds which come into our possession.  Again this is so that we comply with the new legal obligations.  We regret that if funds arrive at our bank in circumstances where this prior consent is not obtained we will not be able to receive them.  Furthermore, we may not be able to return such funds immediately if we are suspicious of the circumstances; indeed we may have to make a report to the authorities and wait for their consent to continue;

            (f)        Should you require further information on the Money Laundering Regulations, please let us know and we shall provide it. 

11.       We require that all invoices rendered to you be settled within seven days.  Your failure to settle within this period may mean that we have to withhold undertaking further work on the matter unless and until payment is made.   In certain circumstances and if appropriate, we may also apply to come off the Court record as acting for you and, where we are entitled to do so, charge interest at the rate payable on judgment debts from one month after delivery of our bill. 

Should it become necessary, we may even have to take action to recover our costs and such interest as we are entitled to claim. To that end, we are required to give you the following notice pursuant to the Solicitors Remuneration Order 1994: 

We hereby give you notice of your right to require us to obtain a certificate from the Law Society, either that the sum charged in our bill is fair and reasonable, or what other sum would be fair and reasonable, and that you may apply to the High Court for our bill to be reviewed by the Court, a process known as "Taxation".  If the Law Society certifies a lesser sum than we have charged, then it is that lesser sum which you will have to pay.  Should you require us to obtain a certificate from the Law Society, you would need to inform us within one month of receipt of the invoice.

 12.      If, unfortunately, you are not satisfied with the service that you are receiving from the fee earner who has the conduct of your matter, please address your concern to Major Somerton if the fee earner is Peter Fletcher or Robert Stratton, and to Peter Fletcher if the fee earner is Major Somerton. 

Notwithstanding the above, we believe that you will be satisfied with our services and hope that we shall have the opportunity to assist you on many occasions in the future.

January 2007

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