Terms and Conditions of Business
Table of Contents
- People Responsible for Your Work
- The Next Steps
- Costs
- Client Identity
- Referral Agreement
- Public Funding
- Alternative Ways of Funding Your Case
- Billing Arrangements
- Service Levels
- Hours of Business
- Our Responsibilities
- Your Responsibilities
- Termination of Retainer
- Storage of Papers and Documents
- Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing
- Complaints Procedure
- Diversity Equality and Inclusiveness
- Data Protection
- External Audit and Vetting of Files
- Applicable Law
- Distance Selling Regulations
- Acceptance of Terms & Conditions
- People responsible for your work
Andrew Isitt is a solicitor specialising in Civil Litigation. He is a Partner in the firm of EDC Lord and Co Solicitors trading as ClickLaw24.com, and is ultimately responsible for your matter. If you need to contact us please ask to speak to Andrew Isitt.
- The next steps:
Upon receipt of your request for legal advice, and receipt by us of your fixed fee payment for that advice, we will instruct a practising barrister to provide a written answer. Although we expect it to be rare, we reserve the right to decline to answer your query at our sole discretion without giving any reasons. In that event, you will be notified by e-mail that we are unable to provide you with a response to your query, and your paypal account or payment card which you used to pay the fixed fee will be credited with the full amount of your payment.
- Costs
You only pay the fixed fee which we have notified to you at the outset of your matter, which fee is inclusive of VAT at the current rate. If we instruct a barrister to answer your query, we will pay for the barrister’s services as an overhead from our costs, and you will not be required to make any extra payment by way of a disbursement for the use of that barrister’s services.
- Client Identity:
The person identified to us via the ClickLaw24.com website as the person requiring an answer to their legal query will be our client for the purposes of providing an answer to the legal query. If that is incorrect, or if you or any other person named is acting in a representative capacity, eg: as a trustee, agent, attorney, company director, partner, etc, then you must tell us immediately.
- Referral Agreement
We (E D C Lord & Co) have a financial arrangement with various affiliates for the referral of clients seeking legal advice. Under the terms of that agreement, we pay affiliates a referral fee equivalent to 15% plus VAT of the fee invoiced by us on your matter.For conveyancing instructions we may pay a fixed referral fee of up to £100 per confirmed instruction , depending upon the individual case. However, any advice which we give to you in response to your legal query is given independently and we will always advise you in accordance with your best interests. Any information which you disclose to us when we are instructed to advise you, will not be disclosed to an affiliate without your consent. However, if a conflict of interest arises, we may decline instructions to advise you.
- Public Funding
We are unable to advise you as to whether you would qualify for Public Funding to seek advice. We do not hold a Legal Services Commission Franchise and therefore cannot apply for Public Funding on your behalf. However, you are free to approach another Solicitor with a Legal Services Commission Franchise who can advise you whether or not you would be eligible. If you think you may be entitled to Public Funding, or if you are uncertain, we advise you to seek advice from a franchised firm, and if you are eligible, to instruct that firm to advise you on a Public Funded basis, rather than instructing us on a private paying basis.
- Alternative Ways of Funding Your Case
Even if you are not eligible for public funding, you may still be able to get help with paying your legal costs. You should consider whether our fee for providing you with advice can be met by any other means. We recommend that you check all of your existing insurance policies and contact the insurers, including motor, building and contents insurance on your home and/or business, to see if they can provide legal expenses cover to cover all or part of your legal charges and expenses, for seeking advice on your legal problem. If you are a member of a Trades Union, Staff Association or Trade Association, they may be able to help you to pay for legal advice, and you should explore with them as soon as possible whether or not any help in paying your legal costs is available to you. It may be a requirement of any 3rd party funder that you instruct a solicitor of their choosing. We should remind you that you are free to choose your own solicitor , whether us or any other firm, and you are free to make your own decision as to whom you wish to advise you.
- Billing Arrangements
We require you to pay in full in advance for the legal advice to be provided by us to you under this fixed-fee legal advice scheme. We will provide you with an electronic invoice for your payment at the time of instruction, but we will not send you any paper copy. If you have any query about your invoice, you should contact Andrew Isitt, or Kishan Gahunia straightaway.
- Service Levels
- We will communicate with you in plain language, without using legal jargon.
- We will give you honest advice about the strengths and weaknesses of your case, within the limitations of providing low-cost fixed-fee advice to you, and we will explain to you the options available to you to resolve your problem.
- We will always seek to respond to your query within 7-10 business days of its receipt by us. However, in some cases we may need to contact you to obtain further information to enable us to supply a response to your query. In that case, we will contact you by e-mail to set out precisely what further information we require. In that event, we will seek to respond to your query within 2 business days of receipt from you by e-mail of the further information which we have requested from you.
- Hours of Business
Our offices are open 9.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday excepting Bank Holidays. We do not provide any out-of-hours emergency telephone service, but you may leave a message on the main switchboard answering service at any time. You may, however, submit your legal query at any time on-line 24/7 and it will be answered in accordance with our service standards above.
- Our Responsibilities
We must:
- always advise in your best interests.
- explain to you the risks and benefits of taking legal action ( if relevant);
- Your responsibilities
You must:
- give us clear, timely , and accurate instructions to allow us to advise you properly;
- not ask us to work in an improper or unreasonable way;
- not deliberately mislead us;
- co-operate with us;
- Termination of Retainer
Our retainer is limited to providing you with initial fixed-fee advice in response to your legal query. By the nature of this service we can only provide you with preliminary general advice. Once we have fulfilled that function our retainer under these terms and conditions will be deemed to be terminated. If you would like us to advise and/or act for you further to pursue or defend any legal claim or remedy in respect of which you may wish to instruct us further, then we will consider in each case whether we are prepared to accept further instructions to act for you, and in each case we will provide you with a new client care letter and a revised set of terms and conditions which will apply in the event of us accepting further instructions from you.
- Storage of papers and documents
Our fixed-fee advice service is provided on the basis that all queries are submitted and answered electronically, and any documents which you wish us to, or which we require to, see in order to advise you, are also submitted by you as electronic attachments. We will not ordinarily print off any copies of your e-mail or attachments, although we reserve the right to do so if this becomes necessary for the purposes of providing you with legal advice. Any such copies which may be printed off will be destroyed by us when your query has been answered and we will not retain any non-electronic records of your query. You must not send us any paper documents including any original documents unless we specifically ask you to do so. Any such paper documents submitted by you to us at our request will be returned to you after our retainer has terminated, and you must, when submitting any such documents, supply us with a return address in England and Wales to which any such documents can be sent. We will return such documents by ordinary first class post unless you wish to make other arrangements with us. If you wish us to return your documents by any means other than ordinary first class post to an address within England and Wales, you must first put us in cleared funds for the reasonable costs of returning the documents to you by your chosen method.
- Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing
Ordinarily, we will not carry out client due diligence procedures where you are merely seeking fixed-fee legal advice, because that does not constitute regulated business under current anti-money laundering legislation. However, we may have to carry out client due diligence where your query amounts to regulated business within the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 or such legislation which is in force from time to time relating to anti-money laundering procedures and which place any duty upon us to comply. Accordingly, we reserve the right , in any individual case, and at our sole discretion to carry out client due diligence procedures, including electronic checks, and in that event we may make an additional fixed charge, which we will notify to you if it is required to cover the cost of making an electronic ID check. If we decide that we must in any particular case, carry out money laundering ID checks, then we cannot advise you on your legal query until such time as those checks have been completed satisfactorily. We may, either as a result of those checks, or if you refuse consent for us to make those checks and/or fail to put us in funds to cover the costs of an electronic ID check, refuse to advise you, and in that event, any advance payment by you of the fixed fee for advice will be refunded to you in full.
- Complaints Procedure The firm's Client Care Partner is Brent Urwin. We have a formal complaints procedure , a copy of which you may obtain upon request. Your right to complain about any aspect of our service includes a right to complain about our fees. This may include a right to object to a bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman , and/or by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.__The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted on 0300 555 0333 or by post at PO Box 15870, Birmingham B30 9EB.All solicitors must attempt to resolve problems that may arise with their services. It is therefore important that you immediately raise any concerns that you have with us. We value you as a client and we would not wish to think you have reason to be unhappy with us.
- Diversity Equality and Inclusiveness
We believe that being an equal opportunities firm means going beyond mere compliance with anti-discrimination legislation. Equality of opportunity, trust, fairness and acceptance of differences plus the rights of individuals, which includes the right to work in an atmosphere free from discrimination and prejudice are important principles of E D C Lord & Co and we aim to provide an environment where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. A copy of our full Diversity, Equality and Inclusiveness policy is available on request.
- Data Protection
We use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal advice to you and for related purposes including:
- Updating and enhancing client records
- Analysis to help us to run our practice
- Statutory returns
- Legal and regulatory compliance
Our use of your information is subject to your instructions; the Data Protection Act 1998 and our duty of confidentiality as your solicitors. Our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as other professional advisers. You have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you.
- External Audit and Vetting of Files
External firms or organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice. These external firms or organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your files.
- Applicable Law
The Law of England and Wales will apply to these terms and conditions, and any dispute arising from them will be considered exclusively by the courts of England and Wales.
- Distance Selling Regulations
In accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 (as amended), you have the right to cancel your instructions to us within the period of seven working days beginning with the day after the day on which you accept this notification as part of our Terms of Business, subject to the exceptions set out below. Cancellation must be notified to us in writing either by post, by hand, by fax or by e-mail within the seven day period.
You should note that if you instruct us to start work before the period of seven working days is up, your right of cancellation will cease. If we have already started work on your instructions prior to your receipt of this notice, your right of cancellation will not be affected unless we complete the work we have been instructed to do for you within the seven day period, in which case your right of cancellation will cease on completion of the work.
By clicking the "submit" button to submit your legal query to us, you instruct us to commence work on answering your query and accordingly your right to cancel under the Distance Selling Regulations as set out above will cease as soon as we have started work on your matter.
- Acceptance of Terms and Conditions
Receipt of your on-line request for advice on your legal query together with receipt by us of your fixed fee payment for that advice and by you clicking “I accept” in relation to our terms and conditions will be accepted by us as constituting your instruction of EDC Lord and Co Solicitors trading as ClickLaw24.com to act on your instructions and to supply you with an answer to your query in accordance with the above terms and conditions.
DIVERSITY STATEMENT
Click Law 24 encourages and values the diversity of its people, through strong management and effective supporting policies.
We are committed to treating everyone fairly and reasonably according to their individual merits and abilities measured against our justifiable business needs. Therefore we will not tolerate any form of unlawful discrimination or harassment on the ground of race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender re-assignment status, being married or a civil partner, religion, belief, disability or age.