Our contract with you
These terms of business (as updated from time to time) apply to all work we do for you. This page includes important information, and you should ensure that you fully read this information.
Each time you instruct us on a new matter we will send you a letter confirming your instructions and setting out:
- the details of the work we will carry out for you;
- our fees; and
- any specific terms that will apply to the work.
This letter is called the letter of engagement. You should read these terms of business together with the letter of engagement. Together they form the contract between you and us.
If there is any inconsistency between these terms of business and the letter of engagement, the letter of engagement will take priority.
By you instructing us to carry out work for you, you are accepting the terms of the letter of engagement and these terms of business, and this is the same as you signing your acceptance of the terms set out in both these documents.
Unless you and us agree otherwise, these terms of business will apply to all future instructions you give us on this or any other matter. We may change these terms of business from time to time, and the most up-to-date version will be on our website at www.robsols.co.uk/terms-of-business.
The contract between you and us, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it (including non-contractual disputes or claims), will be governed by, and interpreted in line with, the laws of England and Wales.
The letter of engagement and these terms of business constitutes the entire agreement between you and us and supersedes all prior agreements and understandings, both written and oral.
Except as otherwise provided in the letter of engagement and these terms of business, neither you nor us may assign any of its rights or obligations under this contract without the prior written consent of either of us.
About us
We, Robertsons Legal Ltd (trading as Robertsons Solicitors, Robertsons Family Law & Education Legal Advice), are a company incorporated in England and Wales. Our registered office is at 6 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3RS, and our company registration number is 9645024. A list of directors is available upon request or by visiting our registered office.
You can find details of the addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of our offices on our website at www.robsols.co.uk.
We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA is the independent regulator of all solicitors, and most law firms, in England and Wales. We and our solicitors, registered European lawyers and registered foreign lawyers are governed by codes of conduct and other professional rules. You can see these on the SRA’s website (www.sra.org.uk) or get copies by calling 0370 606 2555.
Our SRA authorisation number for our registered office is 625915. All the legal services we provide are regulated by the SRA.
We are registered for VAT. Our VAT registration number is GB359409132.
About you
References to ‘you’ in these terms of business mean the client (or clients) named in the letter of engagement, and anyone authorised to give instructions on their behalf.
Receiving instructions from you
If two or more people are named as clients in the letter of engagement, we can act on instructions given by any or all of you – any of you have authority to provide instructions unless we are told otherwise. If the client named in the letter of engagement is a company, unless we are told otherwise we will accept instructions given by any or all of your employees, directors and officers.
We can act on instructions that are not given in writing.
Our responsibilities and your responsibilities
What you can expect of us. We will…
- Treat you fairly and with respect;
- Communicate with you in plain language;
- Review your matter regularly;
- Tell you about any changes in the law that affect your matter;
- Tell you about any reasonably foreseeable circumstances and risks that could affect the outcome of the work we are carrying out for you.
What we expect of you. You must…
- Provide documents when we ask for them, and respond promptly when we ask for instructions or information;
- Tell us if your contact details change;
- Tell us immediately if your expectations change or if you are not sure you understand what we have discussed;
- Tell us any time limits or objectives that might not be obvious to us;
- Tell us immediately if you receive any email or other communication that appears to be from us and stating that we have changed our bank details or payment arrangements;
- Let us know about any other changes that may affect the way we carry out our work for you;
- Conduct all interactions and communications in a professional and respectful manner. This includes refraining from any rude, aggressive, or disrespectful behaviour towards our staff.
As a client, where appropriate, it is crucial to maintain all documents pertinent to your case, as these materials may play a pivotal role in supporting your legal position. It is your responsibility to disclose all relevant information and documents to us, when requested, including those that may not align with your interests. Notably, a court order may impose a duty of disclosure, necessitating full transparency and cooperation. Therefore, it is imperative to uphold transparency and diligently preserve all relevant documents throughout your case, ensuring compliance with legal obligations.
Our legal services
Details of the services we will provide are set out in the letter of engagement.
We will provide our services to you with reasonable care and skill. However, it is not possible to guarantee a particular outcome.
Unless we agree otherwise in writing, we will advise you only on or in connection with English law.
We will not advise on surveying, valuation, commercial viability, trading, or marketability issues. We only advise on tax if we have agreed in writing to do so. We do not provide financial services or advice, except as described at the ‘Financial services’ section of these terms of business.
If you ask us to get advice from another law firm or other professional company, that firm or company will be responsible for the advice they provide.
Unless we agree otherwise in writing, our advice and any documents we prepare:
- are for use only in connection with the specific matter you have instructed us to deal with;
- can only be relied on by you; and
- reflect the law in force at the time.
We may use legal advice, including barrister’s opinions, obtained for specific cases, for the purpose of informing and strategising in other cases, while ensuring strict confidentiality is maintained in relation to your details.
All documents provided by us are protected by copyright law and are our property unless otherwise stated. By accessing or using these documents, you agree to use them solely for their intended purpose and not to reproduce, distribute, or modify them without authorisation. The license granted is non-transferable, and all rights, title, and interest in the documents remain with us so far as applicable.
Service standards
We are normally open between 9am to 5pm from Monday to Friday.
We will regularly update you by phone or in writing (including by email) on our progress on your matter and explain the legal work we are carrying out. Email is our preferred choice of communication, and you should inform us if you would prefer an alternative method.
We will keep you updated on the likely timescale for each stage of your matter. Whenever there is a significant change in circumstances associated with your matter, we will update you on whether the potential outcomes still justify the estimated costs and risks.
We will update you on the cost of your matter at the intervals set out in the letter of engagement. If appropriate, we will continue to review whether there are alternative ways of funding your matter.
We are committed to acting in a way that encourages equality, diversity and inclusion in all our dealings with people. Please contact us if you would like a copy of our equality and diversity policy.
Our liability to you
Your contract is solely with us, and we alone are legally liable for the work we do for you. No individual representative, director, officer, employee, agent or consultant of ours will have any personal legal liability for any loss or claim.
Unless we agree otherwise in writing, the following apply.
- We do not have any obligation to any person other than you.
- We do not accept any liability or responsibility for consequences arising from any person other than you relying on our advice.
- We are not responsible for any failure to advise on or comment on any matters falling outside the scope of your instructions, as set out in these terms of business and the letter of engagement.
- Our maximum liability to you (or any other party we have agreed can rely on our services) in connection with any single matter or group of related matters will be £5 million in total, including interest and costs, unless we state a different amount in the letter of engagement.
- losses that you or we could not have foreseen when the contract was formed;
- losses not caused by any failure or negligence of ours; and
- business losses, including losses suffered by any person not acting for the purposes of their trade, business or profession.
Nothing in these terms of business restricts or removes our liability for:
- death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
- fraud or fraudulent statements or assurances;
- any losses caused by misconduct or dishonesty; or
- any losses which, by law, we cannot limit.
Please ask if you would like us to explain any of the terms relating to liability.
Our charges and billing
You are liable to pay legal costs (which attract VAT at the standard rate of 20%) as set out in the letter of engagement, which also explains the arrangements for billing. We will usually discuss this with you before we start the work for you. Unless your matter is covered by a legal aid certificate, it is not usual for us to use external companies to draft your bill, but we reserve the right to be able to do so.
You may also need to pay disbursements, which refer to the various expenses incurred during the provision of legal services that are passed on to you. These expenses are separate from the fees charged by us for our professional services and may include costs such as court filing fees, barristers’ fees, expert witness fees, travel expenses, photocopying, postage, courier charges, and other miscellaneous costs directly related to the handling of your matter.
On occasions, we may not be able to incur disbursements, unless we have a payment on account. This is defined as a prepayment or advance payment made by you to us for the external services required. If we do not ask for payment on account, these disbursements shall either be itemised separately on the next bill after they have been incurred, or (if applicable) we shall ask you or pay them once we have received the necessary invoice from the provider of the service and provide you a copy of that invoice.
There may be occasions where we pay an introducer commission payments or referral fees for introducing you as a client. Any such fees are incurred solely by us and will not be passed on to you.
It’s essential to note that if we are acting for you in a litigation case and we obtain a costs order in your favour, it may not cover all the costs incurred throughout the legal proceedings. In such cases, you would remain liable for any shortfall in our bills not covered by the costs order. Conversely, if there is a costs order against you to the opposing party, those costs are payable in addition to our own legal fees. While costs orders can alleviate financial burdens, it’s important to understand that they may not always fully offset expenses. Therefore, we advise maintaining awareness of potential costs implications and budgeting accordingly to manage any financial responsibilities effectively.
We may send you bills electronically. Please let us know if you have any particular needs for receiving our bill.
You must pay our bills forthwith (ie. on the day of it being presented to you). You are deemed to accept the bill if it is not disputed within 14 days of receipt. We may charge interest on overdue bills, at a rate of 4% above the Barclays Bank base rate at the time. Should payment not be received in accordance with these terms, we may apply to the court to recover outstanding monies.
In the event of non-payment of any bill, (or for other reasons as set out in the ‘Ending the Contract’ section below) we reserve the right to stop acting for you with immediate effect. This includes, but is not limited to, us ceasing to provide ongoing legal work, advice, representation in legal matters, attending court hearings and access to any documents or materials prepared or obtained in the course of providing our services. If we are acting for you in a matter that is within the court process, we may apply to the court to come off the record as acting for you and you will thereafter be representing yourself.
We will charge a fee of £35 + VAT if a cheque is returned unpaid (that is, if it ‘bounces’). If we need to undertake work in relation to recovering outstanding bills, in addition to the monies due under the bill (and any interest that is payable due to late payment) we shall also charge you the following:
- any disbursement costs we incur in tracing or verifying your address; and
- £75 + VAT if we send you a Letter Before Action; and
- £75 + VAT if we issue a money claim at court.
Letters and any documents may be served at your home address and deemed good service in accordance with the postal rules.
Please tell us if you would like a third party to be responsible for paying our bills or any part of them. We must approve this in advance, and we will need the third party’s name, contact details and any other information or ID we ask for. You will always be responsible for our bills, even if someone else has agreed to pay some or all of them, and our bills will still be addressed to you. If someone else pays only some of our bills, you are responsible for paying the rest.
You have the right to complain about our bill. Please see the ‘Complaints’ section for details of how to complain.
You have the right to challenge our bill by asking the court to assess it under the Solicitors Act 1974. The usual time limit for applying to the court for an assessment is one month from the date the bill is delivered.
Confidentiality
We will keep your information confidential, unless:
- you give us permission (consent) to share the information;
- we have to provide the information by law; or
- these terms of business state otherwise.
Unless you instruct us otherwise, we will communicate with you by email. We use a range of information-security measures, but we cannot guarantee the security of information or documents sent by email. If you do not want us to communicate with you by email, please let us know.
Sometimes we ask other companies or people to carry out typing, photocopying, billing and other administration activities to help us provide efficient, cost-effective legal services. We make sure those companies or people keep to service agreements that are consistent with our legal and professional obligations, including in relation to confidentiality. For more information, see our privacy policy at www.robsols.co.uk/client-privacy-policy.
External organisations such as the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Law Society, qualification boards and the SRA may from time-to-time conduct audits or quality checks on our work. They may want to check your case file and related papers for this purpose. We will make sure that these external organisations keep any information involved in an audit or quality check confidential.
Conflicts of interests
A conflict of interest is a situation where the concerns or aims of two different parties are incompatible. Before we accept any instructions from you, we will consider relevant legal or professional regulations to determine whether following your instructions would create a conflict of interest. Similarly, we will not act for another client in connection with the subject matter of your instruction, or a related matter, if this would create a conflict of interests, unless legal or professional regulations allow us to also act for that other client.
If a conflict of interest arises while we are carrying out work for you, we may have to end the contract with you. However, we could continue to provide advice as long as that was allowed under legal or professional regulations.
We will not be liable to you for any losses arising from us ending the contract if we have to do so as a result of a conflict of interest.
If we have arrangements in place to protect your documents or information which are or may be relevant to any instructions for another client, we can act for that other client.
We are under a professional duty to keep your documents and information confidential and will not reveal them to any third party outside our firm without your permission. You agree that we may share your information with other parties within our firm if we have a legal or professional obligation to do so.
Privacy and data protection
We use your personal information mainly to provide legal advice and services to you, but also for related purposes such as administration, billing, record keeping, and to tell you about our services and events that we think you may be interested in.
How we can use your personal information is controlled by:
- your instructions;
- the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR);
- other relevant UK laws; and
- our professional duty of confidentiality.
We take your privacy very seriously. Please read our privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on how and why we collect, process and store your personal information. It also explains your rights relating to your personal information and how long we will keep your personal information.
We may record phone calls and monitor emails for training and monitoring purposes.
We use third-party service providers (including ‘cloud’ service providers) to help us provide efficient, cost-effective legal services. We make sure all third-party service providers keep to service agreements that are consistent with our legal and professional obligations, including in relation to confidentiality, privacy and data protection. If you instruct us to use an alternative provider for storing, sharing or exchanging documents or information, we are not responsible for the security of the documents or information, or the provider’s security standards.
We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, text message, phone or post) about legal developments that might be of interest to you or information about our services, promotions or new services. You can opt out of receiving such communications by:
A copy of our privacy policy can be found at www.robsols.co.uk/client-privacy-policy
Banking and related matters
Our client account
Unless we agree otherwise, we hold clients’ money in various accounts with UK banks regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A client account is a type of bank account that holds funds on behalf of you. These funds are kept separate from our own money, ensuring that client monies are protected and managed according to regulatory standards.
Changes to our bank details
We will never tell you about changes to important business information, such as bank account details, by email. If you receive any email or other communication claiming to be from us and stating that we have changed our bank details or payment arrangements, please tell us immediately and you must not send monies to the bank account.
Paying interest on client money
We aim to account to you for interest at a reasonable rate of interest. As the holding of your funds is incidental to the carrying out of your legal instructions, the rate we obtain on money we hold on your behalf is unlikely to be as high as the rate you may be able to obtain when depositing money elsewhere. In most cases we must ensure that money held on client account is immediately available and so the need for instant access is taken into account when setting the rate of interest we can pay to you.
We are not obliged or required to pay interest at a rate that exceeds the sum we have obtained.
Where interest is to be paid on money held in our general client account, this will be paid at the same rate of interest available, at the time of payment of interest, from our bank, Barclays Bank plc, on their standard Instant Access Current Account. We will account to you for interest on sums in excess of £10,000 held by us for at least seven days. We may also account to you for interest on smaller amounts if held for longer periods and if we have agreed in writing to do so.
The payment of interest is subject to a de minimis rule, made by the Law Society, which means that no interest will be payable if the amount involved is less than £100.
Please also note the following
- Interest will be calculated from the time the funds become cleared for interest purposes.
- For amounts received by debit or credit card, interest will start to accrue from the date of actual receipt, usually three working days after the transaction has been authorised.
- For direct transfers or same day payments the funds will become cleared on the day after receipt.
- For amounts paid by cheque, interest will start to accrue three days after the date of the deposit.
- Interest will be calculated on a daily basis and calculated on amounts held overnight from the day the funds become cleared for interest purposes.
Where interest is payable, it will be paid at the end of the matter.
Signing the letter of engagement and/or providing instructions to us to act for you, will confirm your agreement to our retaining of interest as above.
Financial Services Compensation Scheme
We are not liable for any losses you suffer as a result of any bank that client money is held with being unable to pay back the money in full. However, you may be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The FSCS can pay compensation of up to £85,000 if a banking institution cannot pay, or will likely be unable to pay, money it owes.
The compensation limit is £85,000 per banking institution. If you have an account of your own in the same banking institution as our client accounts, the compensation limit is still £85,000 in total. Some banking institutions have several brands. The compensation limit is £85,000 per institution, not per brand.
The FSCS also provides up to £1 million of short-term protection for certain high balances (for example, the proceeds from selling a home, inheritances, divorce settlements, redundancy payments, and personal-injury compensation). This is called the temporary high balance scheme and, if it applies, protection lasts for up to six months.
The FSCS (including the temporary high balance scheme) will apply to eligible balances held in our client account. If a banking institution which holds client money is unable to repay it, we will (unless you tell us otherwise in writing) give your details to the FSCS.
More information about the FSCS can be found at www.fscs.org.uk
Receiving payments from you
Our policy is to only accept cash payments of up to £500 per matter we are instructed upon. If you try to avoid this policy by paying cash directly to our bank, we may charge you for any checks we decide are necessary to prove the source of the funds. Those checks could also delay our work for you. This also applies if we receive money relating to your matter from an unexpected source.
Making payments to you
If we have to pay money to you, we will pay it to you by cheque or bank transfer. We will not make any payment in cash or to a third party.
Preventing money laundering and terrorist financing
To keep to anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing requirements, we are likely to ask you for proof of your identity and may make enquiries for this purpose. We may also need to verify the identity of other people associated with you. If you or they do not provide the required information promptly, your matter may be delayed.
We may carry out checks using online systems or other databases, as we see fit.
You must not send us any money until we have told you that we have completed any necessary checks.
We may ask you to confirm the source of any money you have sent us or will send us. If you do not provide that information promptly, your matter may be delayed or we may not be able to continue to act for you.
Any personal information we receive from you for the purpose of preventing money laundering or terrorist financing will be used only for that purpose, or will only be used:
Except where the ‘Our liability to you’ section says otherwise, we will not be liable for any loss arising from or connected with us keeping to any legal obligation we have (or have good reason to believe we have) to report matters to the relevant authorities under anti-money laundering or terrorist financing laws.
Financial services
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, but we are included on their register (under reference LS625915) so that we can carry on ‘insurance distribution activity’, which broadly means advising on, selling and managing insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for settling complaints if something goes wrong, is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Our Insurance Distribution Officer is Mr Christopher Barber who can be contacted at our registered office.
You can check the FCA register at https://register.fca.org.uk/
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in relation to credit arrangements. However, because we are regulated by the SRA, we may be able to provide limited consumer credit services that are closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you.
We are also not authorised by the FCA to provide investment advice. If you need advice on investments, we may refer you to someone who is authorised by the FCA to provide the necessary advice. And because we are regulated by the SRA, we may be able to provide limited investment advice that is closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you.
If you are unhappy with any financial service you receive from us, you should raise your concerns with the SRA or the Legal Ombudsman. See the ‘Complaints’ section below for more information.
Professional indemnity insurance
We have professional indemnity insurance to cover claims against us up to the level of £5million. We can give you details of this insurance, including contact details of our insurer upon request. Individual staff members are not liable to you directly for any advice or work undertaken and are covered by our professional indemnity insurance.
It is a condition of our professional indemnity insurance that we tell our insurer, or the broker who arranged the cover, about any circumstances which may give rise to a claim being made against us. In this situation we may provide documents and information to our insurer, broker and insurance advisers. They are contractually obliged to keep all information we pass to them strictly confidential.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with our service
We want to give you the best possible service. However, if you become unhappy with or concerned about the service we have provided, you should tell us immediately so we can do our best to solve the problem. If you wish to make a complaint, our process can be found at: www.robsols.co.uk/client-care-complaints/.
If you are unhappy with our behaviour
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.
The SRA’s website (www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor) contains information about raising concerns about solicitors and law firms.
Ending the contract
You may end the contract at any time by giving us notice in writing. We can keep all your papers and documents while you still owe us money. See the ‘Storing and Releasing files’ section below for more information.
We will only end the contract and stop acting for you if we have good reason, for example
- if we feel that the relationship between you and us has broken down;
- you do not pay a bill within a reasonable time;
- if you fail to maintain effective communication;
- if you give us misleading information;
- if you repeatedly disregard legal advice or engage in conduct that undermines the representation;
- if you act in an abusive or offensive way;
- if we determine, in our professional judgment, that continuing representation would be ineffective or contrary to your best interest;
- if you become incapacitated or unable to provide instructions, making it impractical for us to continue representation;
- if continuing representation would result in a violation of legal or regulatory obligations, such as conflict with professional rules or court orders.
We will give you reasonable notice before we stop acting for you.
If you or we decide to end the contract, we will charge you for the work we have done so far and, if appropriate, for transferring the matter to another adviser you specify. We will calculate the amount you owe as set out in the letter of engagement.
We are not responsible for reminding you about important dates or any deadlines after the contract has ended.
Right to cancel
If you entered into the contract:
- during a visit we made to meet with you outside our office, or after an offer you made during that visit;
- on your business premises; or
- by phone, email or other communication that is not face-to-face;
the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 may apply to the contract. If so, you will have the right to cancel the contract, without giving any reason, within 14 days of the day the contract started. This 14-day period is referred to as the cooling-off period.
To cancel within the cooling-off period, you must tell us this by:
- writing to Robertsons Solicitors, 6 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3RS;
- phoning 029 20237777;
- sending an email to law@robsols.co.uk; or
- filling in the cancellation form on our website at www.robsols.co.uk/cancellation-form
Effects of cancellation
If you cancel this contract during the cooling-off period, we will refund all payments we have received from you, unless you asked us to do any work before the end of the cooling-off period (see ‘Work carried out during the cooling-off period’ below).
We will pay the refund:
- no later than 14 days after the day you tell us that you want to cancel the contract; and
- by the method you used to make the payment to us, unless you and we agree otherwise.
You will not have to pay any fees to receive a refund.
Work carried out during the cooling-off period
We will not start work during the cooling-off period unless you ask us to, or sign a waiver to confirm that we can commence work and that the ‘cooling off period’ will not apply.
In most cases, if you ask us to do any work during the cooling-off period, you will not lose your right to cancel. If you go on to cancel the contract during the cooling-off period, we can charge you for the work we have done. This charge will be a proportion of the full cost of the work, as set out in the letter of engagement.
You will have to pay the full cost set out in the letter of engagement, and lose the right to cancel, once we have completed all the work, even if this happens within the cooling-off period.
Storing and releasing files
We may create and hold client files as paper copies, electronically (stored on a computer or database), or a combination of both.
In the event of any outstanding or unpaid bills for legal services we shall have the right to retain a lien on all documents, papers, files, evidence, property, or other materials that have been provided, produced, or procured by us during the course of our contract with you, until such time as all outstanding fees, costs, and disbursements are fully paid.
We normally store your file (except any of your papers you ask us to return) for six years after we send you our final bill, after which time we may destroy it. Unless you tell us otherwise, we may scan paper documents onto our system to be stored electronically and then destroy the paper copies. However, we will not destroy original documents such as Wills, deeds and other securities which we have agreed to hold in safe custody, but we may return them to you, after giving you reasonable notice.
We will not charge you anything for storing your file, or for the safe-keeping of original documents such as wills and title deeds, unless the letter of engagement says otherwise.
If you need to view your file in connection with specific work we are carrying out for you, we will not normally charge for this.
If you ask to view your file for another reason (including once the matter has been concluded), we may charge you for:
- time spent retrieving the file and providing it to you;
- any tasks we need to carry out to meet your request, including reading and producing correspondence;
- copying of any documents; and
- copying of the file so that one can be retained on our system.
We will provide an electronic copy of the file unless it is not appropriate to do so.
Version 16 – Updated 08.04.2024
