Office Hours

Our normal opening hours are 9am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday. Our main reception desk is on 020 8861 8310.

People responsible for your work

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 dealing with your case and why the change was necessary.

Charges and expenses

Unless a fixed or standard fee has been agreed with you our charges are based on the time we spend in dealing with a case and on the experience and expertise of the fee earner dealing with the case. Time spent on your matter may include attending court, meetings, waiting time, and any time spent travelling, considering, preparing, and working on papers, correspondence (including e-mails) and making and receiving telephone calls. We also charge out of pocket expenses incurred e.g., travelling costs. Our charges are subject to review from time to time by our firm; this normally takes place in January of each year. If a review is made during your matter, we would give you 28 days prior notice before any new change rates come into effect. Please refer to your Client Care letter that gives details of the charging rates in respect of your matter.

Time is charged for in 6-minute sections. Routine letters and calls will be charged as units of 1/10th of an hour. Other letters will be charged on a time basis. In addition to the time spent, we may take in to account a number of factors, which include the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken and the expertise or specialist knowledge that the case requires.

We reserve the right to charge an enhancement for work done on your matter outside office hours.

In property transactions and transactions involving a substantial financial consideration or benefit to you, fees may be calculated both by reference to the time spent and also by reference to a value element based on eg. the price of the property, the size of the estate or value of the financial benefit. The value element reflects the importance of the transaction and the consequential responsibility falling on us.

If the matter is litigious, the amount of our costs which you will have to pay may be greater than the amount you can recover from another party to the case.

We will add VAT to our professional fees at the rate that applies when the work is done – currently VAT is 20%

There may be certain other expenses, including payment we make on your behalf such as court fees, land registry fees and Counsel’s fees, which you will have to pay. VAT is payable on certain expenses.

Anticipated costs and Billing Arrangements

It is our practice to request payments on account of our charges and expenses which we expect to incur. This helps to avoid delay in the progress of your case.

You will appreciate that we cannot give a definite figure as issues, which may not have been within reasonable contemplation, can arise with any type of legal matter. Notwithstanding this, we will try to provide an estimate wherever possible.

The estimates may change as matters proceed, where this is the case, you will be notified as soon as it becomes apparent.

Upon an initial instruction we will deliver a bill within a relatively short space of time thereafter for payment. This is a result of the fact that normally a substantial amount of work is undertaken within the initial period of instruction. Following the initial bill, bills are normally delivered on a monthly basis for work carried out during the conduct of case, unless there is a substantial amount of work undertaken within a short period of time, this being the case a bill would be delivered for this work earlier than your normal monthly account. Bills may also include or be solely in relation to disbursements incurred such as: Counsel's fees, Expert reports, such as surveyors and other forensic reports, excessive photocopying, courier charges, taxi fares, etc.

You may set a limit on the charges and expenses to be incurred. This means that you must pay those costs incurred up to the agreed limit without our needing to refer 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 any case or transaction does not proceed to completion for any reason during the period in which we are instructed, then we will charge for work done on the basis set out above but, in our absolute discretion, we may waive part or all of such entitlement to fees.

If we have quoted a fixed fee for the work to be done this will assume the case goes ahead in the usual way without unexpected difficulties or delay and we shall let you know if it has to be varied.

Where we agree a fixed fee, if the work does not complete for any reason, a time charge based on the above will be made.

We reserve the right to off set any monies recovered on your behalf against any outstanding bills or disbursements whether due for payment or not.

Interest Payments

Any money received on your behalf will be held in out Client Account. Subject to certain minimum amounts and period of time set out in the Solicitors Account Rules 1998, interest will be calculated and paid to you at the rate from time to time payable on HSBC Bank Plc Solicitors’ Client Account.

Money held in a general client account – we will account to you for interest when if it fair and reasonable to do so in all the circumstances having regard to the principles and practices as detailed below: -

• We will normally calculate and pay interest once your matter has been concluded, however, there may be instances where it might be more appropriate to account for interest at intervals throughout the matter.
• Due to regulatory requirements and administrative costs involved we will not pay interest if the sum calculated is less than £20 in total for the full period during which we hold your client money in client account.
• We will retain interest paid to us by the bank on the aggregate of all client money held in general client account.

Interest will be calculated and paid by reference to applicable rates over the period for which we hold cleared funds.

Billing Arrangements

We would be grateful if, you can ensure that payment of any bill is made promptly, we are sure that you will understand it assists in our cash flow and enables you to budget costs. You will appreciate that in the event of a payment not being made, we must reserve the right to decline to act any further and that the full amount of work done up to that time will be charged to you. Accounts must be settled within 14 days of receiving the bill. Where an account is not settled within 14 days, interest will be charged on bills at the prevailing court rate or pursuant to the provisions of the late payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 from the date on which payment of our bill is due if you do not pay our bill within this time. Interest may be charged up to a maximum rate of 8% above HSBC Bank Plc Solicitors’ Client Account and will accrue on a daily basis until payment.

Invoices will be sent to you by e-mail unless an alternative procedure is agreed in advance, and an invoice sent by email will be deemed to be delivered on the date that the e-mail is sent by us.

If you receive a bill and are unable to pay it within 14 days of receipt, you should notify us immediately. Please note notification does not change the details contained in the paragraphs above but does mean we can consider whether any discretionary action should be considered by this firm.

If you dispute any element of a bill, please contact us immediately to discuss but no later than 7 days of receipt of the bill. Where a bill is sent to you by post you are deemed to have received it by the following day. Where a dispute arises, we reserve the right to charge for additional time and costs incurred in answering your queries and dealing with the issues. Please also note, that where as a gesture of goodwill any reduction has been made to a bill, we reserve the right to charge the full amount if, a dispute arises over the bill.

Non-payment of any invoice outstanding for more than 30 days will result in the matter being escalated to our debt enforcement team.

There may be a right to object to a bill by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors’ Act 1974. You should note that where all or part of a bill remains unpaid the firm may be entitled to charge interest.

Other parties’ charges and expenses

It is important that you understand that you are responsible for paying 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 or any of your charges and expenses or these may not be recovered from them in full. If this happens, you will have to pay the balance of our charges and expenses. If the other party is receiving Legal Aid, 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 the other 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 already paid our charges and expenses, however, we are entitled to retain interest equivalent to that part of our charges and expenses that have not been previously paid.

You are 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 will 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.

How we will deal with your enquiries

As we are sure you appreciate our solicitors are often engaged on the telephone, in meeting with clients or at court. Whilst we always endeavour to return calls promptly if any staff member is unavailable, there are many circumstances when our support staff can successfully deal with the queries. We would request that you do explain your query, so that the person taking the call can provide you with as much assistance as possible or can provide a detailed message to enable the lawyer who has conduct of your case to get back to you quickly. We do value your time as much as our own.

We may communicate with you and with third parties by telephone, post, fax and e-mail and we may send legal advice and documents to you and third parties through the internet. The internet is not secure and we make no representations as to the security of our system. Our e-mails carry disclaimers and electronic communications takes place subject to the terms of those disclaimers.

If you prefer not to take the risk of communicating by email, please let us know.

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 charges and expenses. We will also keep our file of papers for no more then 6 years from the date of settlement of your case, or the date of the final order if court action is taken. We reserve the right to destroy our file, at any time after a period of 6 years has elapsed. We will not destroy documents, which we agree in writing to hold in safe custody on your behalf.

We try to operate a paperless office and store all documents sent us electronically in electronic form for at least 6 years.

If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your affairs, we will normally charge for such retrieval. However, we may make a reasonable charge for delivery of documents or stored papers to you or another at your request. We may also charge for reading correspondence, photocopying or other work necessary to comply with the instructions given by you or on your behalf.

Termination

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time. If you do not respond to letters or fail to provide further instructions upon request at any time, such omissions will be taken to mean that you are terminating your instructions to us. If our instructions are terminated we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owing to us for our charges.

In some circumstances for a good reason, we may decide to stop acting for you, for example if our costs are not paid, if you are acting unreasonably, if we are unable to comply with your instructions, or if we consider that the solicitor/client relationship between us has broken down. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.

Confidentiality

We will not divulge any confidential information obtained from you otherwise than in accordance with your instructions, although any confidential information relevant to the issues in the case may have to be disclosed to the court and your opponents, subject to suitable safeguards. Likewise, in keeping with our duty to other clients, we cannot pass on or use for your benefit confidential information obtained by us from or on behalf of any other client of the firm.

However, we are entitled to assume where we obtain confidential information as a result of jointly acting for a number of clients that is relevant to the instruction, that this information may be shared between all those joint clients.

Should a situation arise where any person in our firm is in possession of a client’s confidential information that may reasonably be expected to be material to work undertaken for another client (the ‘Other Client’) and the Other Client has an adverse interest to the client whose information this is, we will ensure:

• The persons in possession of that information will not undertake work for the Other Client, and
• Proper arrangements will otherwise be put in place to ensure that the information is protected.

If for any reason we do not believe that proper arrangement can reasonably be put in place, we may cease to act for one or both clients.

You agree to us dealing with confidential information in this way whether you are the client whose confidential information this is, or whether you are the Other Client. You also agree that by continuing to instruct us you are representing to us that you understand this clause. If you do not understand this clause, you must let us know and we will explain this to you in greater detail.

Data Protection

In order to keep our clients advised on our services or matters that may affect our clients’ businesses, your personal and business details, which may include the details of your employees and third parties, will be maintained on our databases.

We act as a data processor in respect of all personal data provided to us by you (‘Personal data’) and will only process such personal data in accordance with your instructions. We employ appropriate operational and technological processes and procedures to keep the Personal Data safe from unauthorised use or access, loss, destruction, theft or disclosure.

In order to ensure that we are able to give as efficient a service as possible we would ask you to notify us of any change of address, telephone number, contact name and any other personal data (including email) as soon as possible.

We use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal service to you and for related reasons – updating and enhancing client records, analysis to help us manage our practice, statutory returns and legal and regulatory compliance.

Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the Data Protection Act 2018 as amended from time to time and our duty of confidentiality. Please note that our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as expert witnesses and other professional advisers. You have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you.

Please notify us in writing if communications are to be sent to you other than at the address or fax or e-mail you have provided and whether particular advice is to remain undisclosed to any other person associated with you.

Please also notify us in writing or by e-mail if you do not wish to be kept informed of upcoming events and developments at Templetons Solicitors.

Conflict of interest

Prior to agreeing to accept your instructions we will carry out a conflict search to ensure that there is no conflict of interest present which prevents us from acting for you.

In the event that a conflict arises with an established client of this firm, even after we have started to act, we reserve the right to choose whether or not to continue to act for you.

Communication between us and problems/complaints

While it is the policy of our firm to strive for excellence in client care standards, we do encourage all our clients to immediately notify us in the rare event of any problem or complaint.

Identity and Disclosure Requirements

We are entitled to refuse to act for you if you fail to supply appropriate verification of identity for yourself and any principal whom you may represent.

As part of your acceptance of our terms and condition and in order to facilitate the opening of your matter you understand that we will undertake a search with Experian for the purposes of verifying your identity. To do so Experian may check the details you supply against any particulars on any database (public or otherwise) to which they have access. They may also use your details in the future to assist other companies for verification purposes. A record of the search will be retained.

Money Laundering

We have in place procedures and controls which are designed to forestall and prevent money laundering.

In compliance with various money laundering regulations, we must conduct certain verification procedures before acting on your behalf. For example, we are obliged to obtain various proof of identity from new clients.

Further, if we suspect that someone is committing a money laundering offence defined by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, we will in accordance with our legal responsibilities disclose the suspicion to the relevant public body or agency currently the National Crime Agency (NCA).

If we know or suspect that you (or any other party involved in the matter) are involved in money laundering or hold proceeds of crime, we are required by law to make a report to the NCA without necessarily advising you that we are doing so. We are also prohibited from confirming or denying that a report has been made. These requirements override our duty of confidentiality to you.

Proceeds of crime are assets or income which have been derived from some form of illegal activity, for example drug trafficking, nonpayment of tax and benefit fraud. If a report is made to NCA we must stop work until we are authorised to proceed. Any fees, payments made on your behalf and expenses incurred in complying with the above will be charged to you. There maybe circumstances in which we consider it appropriate, in order to protect our position, to make a report to the NCA which later proves not to have been required by law. By instructing us you agree that such reports can be made.

We do not accept liability for any losses arising from any delay or otherwise as a result of making reports to the NCA and ensuring compliance with our statutory obligations.

The money laundering regulations restrict us in the handling of cash.

Liability

This firm’s liability for negligence in respect of the work that is the subject of these terms and conditions shall be limited to £3,000,000 (three million pounds).

Third Parties

There may be occasions when advice of a Third-Party expert Is required such as a barrister, doctor or surveyor etc. If the advice of a third-party expert is required you will be consulted about this, in particular the choice of expert and the likely cost.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS FIRM WILL NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADVICE OF ANY THIRD PARTY INSTRUCTED

Equality & Diversity

This firm is committed to promoting equality and diversity in its dealings with clients, third parties and employees. We will not discriminate in the provision of our services on the grounds of, for example, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, age, race, nationality, colour or disability.

Agreement

Unless otherwise agreed, these terms and Conditions of Business will apply throughout the course of your matter. Please read the terms carefully. Your continuing instructions in your matter will amount to your acceptance. Should there by an conflict between any Terms of Engagement letter and these general Terms & Conditions of Business the Terms of Engagement will take precedence.

The laws of England and Wales govern these Terms and Conditions of Business. Templetons Limited is authorized and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA Standards and regulations can be accessed through their website.