Terms of Business
Amounts payable to other people
When money needs to be spent on your case, for example in relation to searches for a conveyancing matter, we may pay for those ourselves first. We will ask you for money on account of those costs and when we have incurred them, by signing below, you confirm your authority for us to the use the money you pay us to repay those sums. This will involve us transferring money from our Client account (where we will hold the money you send to us) to our Business or Office account from which we will have paid the amounts out.
Identity Checks
We may carry out an electronic identity check using a third party application and if we do so, the fee charged by that third party will be payable by you. The charge varies, including in relation to the type of case involved. Current cost is between £5.34 and £49.02 per person. The cost may vary for a company or other entity and there are additional charges for international address verification.
Identity
The law requires you to identify yourself and sources of money we handle. You will provide us with the information we require.
Problems
If you have any problems with our services, you should contact Daniel Sproull. We are governed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Handbook issued by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. This can be found at www.sra.org.uk/rules. The Legal Ombudsman assists in resolving complaints about solicitors, although it requires the solicitor’s own complaints procedure to be exhausted first. Its contact details are: website www.legalombudsman.org.uk Telephone 0300 5550 333 between 8.30am and 5.30pm Email enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk or write to Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167 Slough SL1 0EH. Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within a year of the act or admission about which you are complaining occurring or one year from the date when the complainant should have realised there was a cause for complaint.
Our Fees
We will record all the time we spend on your case. Each telephone call, letter and email are charged at a minimum of 1/10th of the hourly rate of the person who deals with it. We will charge you for the time we spend on your case. Our charges will also reflect other factors which may be relevant to your case, for example, the value of the property involved, the speed with which you require the work to be carried out and the complexity of your case. We review our rates once a year. We will write to you with a costs update as appropriate. If you want an update at any time, please ask. If you want to set a limit on fees, at which point we must consult you, please let us know.
If we are acting for you under a Conditional Fee Agreement, the clauses of that agreement, in relation to the basis upon which we will charge, will apply instead of these terms.
In some cases, the winner may have to pay the loser’s costs. It is unusual for that to cover all of our fees and so we reserve the right to recover the balance from you. We will explain this further if relevant to your case.
If your instructions to us terminate before our work is complete (whether on a fixed fee or otherwise), you will have to pay us for the work that we have done to date which may be by reference to a proportion of a fixed fee.
If we transfer money electronically, we make a charge for this of £40.00 plus VAT (total £48.00). This charge is for the time spent by this firm in organising this service and is not a charge made by our bank.
Our Responsibilities
In providing services to you, we will rely upon the information and instructions given by you, or others authorised to do so, on your behalf. Our ability to give the appropriate advice will depend on the nature and extent of the information and instructions we receive and the timeframe in which we are operating. You must understand that
If we are asked to provide advice in an abbreviated format or in a short time scale, you will not receive all the information you might otherwise have obtained.
Advice is provided in relation to a specific set of facts and, as a result, we do not accept any responsibility for the applicability of that advice to other situations or to other parties or for any reliance placed upon it by such parties or any such situations.
We will not give advice on the tax implications of your instructions unless we specifically agree to do so in writing in advance. If you need taxation advice, please consult your accountant.
We do not provide financial advice. If you need such advice, please seek it from a suitably qualified professional.
Your Responsibilities
We need to work together. It is your responsibility to
Provide us with clear instructions and a full set of facts and documentation
Update us as things change
Seek our advice before taking any action in relation to the matter in hand
Pay our fees
Data Protection
We are registered with the Office of the Information Commissioner with number Z5372793. You confirm that we may contact you from time to time with legal updates or other communications. We will not pass your details to any third party without your permission.
Contacting us
Our office hours at 8.45am to 5.00pm. You can contact us by telephone on 01208 72328 (Bodmin and Wadebridge office) and 01840 212 315 (Camelford office). We encourage all clients to communicate with us by email as this enables us to operate more efficiently and devote more time to case work. Please make an appointment before calling in to see us to ensure that the relevant person will be available to see you.
Payment of Fees
Unless we are acting for you under Public Funding, we will send you monthly bills. These must be paid within seven days. If a bill is not paid, we will cease working on your case until it is paid. In the following cases, bills are payable in different ways
Conveyancing – on completion
Wills and Powers of Attorney – when you sign
Estates – interim bills will be raised with a final bill when the estate is wound up
Conditional Fee Agreements (no win, no fee) – on conclusion of the case
If a sale or purchase falls through, or you cease to provide us with instructions in any matter, a bill will be sent to you which will be payable within seven days.
Unpaid bills carry interest at 8% per annum. We may deduct money owed to us (overdue or not) from money we hold for you. You will reimburse us for payment we make to others for you, e.g. search and court fees. We may require money on account, a charge over property you own or other security for the payment of our fees. Any amounts paid to us will be allocated first to our fees, and if there are unpaid bills, to the oldest bill first.
Sproull Solicitors LLP is registered for VAT and its registration number is 144 3500 02.
You are entitled to complain about our fees. You may have the right to object our bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman 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 at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167 Slough SL1 0EH tel: 0300 5550 333
Limitation
Legal services are provided to you by Sproull Solicitors LLP and not by any individual member of the firm or person employed by it. Under no circumstances shall our liability to you in relation to this contract exceed £3,000,000.00, nor shall any member or employee of Sproull Solicitors LLP be personally liable to you.
Retention of Records
We store all case papers for 10 years after which time they are destroyed. Deeds and Wills can be stored with us free of charge.
Ownership of Papers
The files and papers we will create in relation to your case will belong to us and not to you. It is your responsibility to retain copies of all documents which we send to you and of documents which you send to us. Letters and documents received by us from third parties will be made available to you.
Third Parties
No person other than you is bound by, or can benefit from, this contract.
STEP – Will Code
We follow the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners’ Will Code. A copy of that is available on request.
Companies
Any person who signs this contract on behalf of a Limited Company, or other body with limited liability, guarantees that company or other body’s liabilities under this contract. We reserve the right to ask for further guarantees at any time and failure to provide these will justify termination of the contract by us.
More than one of you
If there is more than one of you, we may accept instructions from any one person on your behalf.
Confidentiality
We will keep your affairs confidential. You accept, however, that there are exceptions to this. Money laundering and terrorist financing legislation places solicitors under a duty to disclose information to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. If we need to make a disclosure, we may not be able to tell you we have done so or why.
Cash
We do not accept cash in excess of £500.00
Bank Deposits
We will not be liable to you for any failure of a bank, building society or other financial institution. We maintain a client account at Barclays Bank Plc. Current guidance is that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme limit of £85,000 applies to each individual client. This does mean that if you hold other personal monies in the same bank as our client account is maintained, the total limit is £85,000. You should bear in mind some deposit taking institutions have several different brands. You should check with your own bank, the Financial Conduct Authority or Financial Advisor for more information. You consent to the disclosure by us of your details to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the event of the bank failure.
Insurance
Sometimes we assist in arranging insurance, typically household cover and defective title indemnity insurance. We are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Termination
This contract is not an “entire contract”. This means that it may end before the work is completed. We may terminate our retainer at any time, for example: -
Ø If you fail to pay a bill or provide money on account as requested
Ø If you refuse to follow our advice
Ø If you provide misleading or inaccurate information
Ø If you are abusive or otherwise act inappropriately towards our staff
Ø If you fail to give timely instructions
Ø If, in our opinion, there is a breakdown in confidence between us
ID Fraud
We do not accept any liability to you in circumstances where an ID fraud has occurred, and you suffer a loss resulting from it in circumstances where a third party is represented by another solicitor. If you have any queries on this, please raise it with a member of Sproull Solicitors LLP.
Professional Indemnity Insurance
We maintain Professional Indemnity Insurance and full details of this are available on request.
No Ongoing Duty
We do not accept any ongoing duty to review the subject matter of our instructions at any time in the future, nor to notify you of any changes in the law or circumstances which might be relevant. It is a matter for you to keep your affairs under review and take advice at the appropriate time.
Climate Change
Our firm tries to do its best to assist the world in adapting to climate change. Please note, however, that we are not qualified to advise you on any climate change implications of, or the law in relation to, the matter we are handling for you. There may be areas of law in connection with climate change which impact upon you and your case. Our advice will not include such matters and you should take your own separate specialist advice.
Interest
The firm will pay to clients the interest which accrues on money it holds on its client account. Interest will be paid at a rate which sums lodged with us would have achieved if invested on a typical high street current account requiring no notice for withdrawal. As such accounts change very rapidly, if in any doubt, the firm will rely upon an account selected by it, acting reasonably, offered by its bank. It will provide details of the account upon which it has based its rate to a client on request.
The payment of interest will be subject to de minimis rule to the effect that if interest earned is less than £50.00, it will be retained by the firm.
Exceptional Circumstances
Our ability to carry out our work may be affected by exceptional circumstances beyond our control. These may include, but are not limited to, any effects of the Covid 19 (Coronavirus) outbreak. We will do our best to inform you of any effects on your case, but we will not be responsible for the consequences of any failure to comply with a deadline, attend a meeting or court hearing, or the taking, or failure to take, any step which results from such exceptional circumstances or is otherwise beyond our reasonable control. If we are prevented, in our reasonable opinion, from dealing with your case in what we regard as a satisfactory manner, we may request that our retainer be suspended for a period we specify. If you do not agree to that, we reserve the right to terminate our retainer. You will not agree to any deadline or time limit in relation to your case with any third party without our agreement.
Undertakings
We may give undertakings. These are promises to third parties which we are bound to keep. We may ask you for money on account to enable us to give an undertaking. We may also accept undertakings from other Solicitors or Licensed Conveyancers. You authorise us to accept undertakings from Partnerships, Limited Companies and Limited Liability Partnerships. You accept that undertakings from the latter two may be more difficult to enforce than from the former.
Right to Cancel
If this contract was not arranged at our business premises, you have the right to cancel it within fourteen days. By signing this contract, you instruct us to proceed. This means we can get on with your work without delay, but if you subsequently cancel, you will have to pay us a reasonable amount for the work we have done. You may use the template below, if you wish.
To Sproull Solicitors LLP of 42 Fore Street, Bodmin, Cornwall PL31 2HW Telephone 01208 72328 Fax 01208 77881 main email address bodmin@sproullllp.co.uk
I/We* give notice that I/we* cancel my/our* contract of sale for the supply of the following service [fill in what you have asked us to do].
Name of Consumer:
Address of Consumer:
Signature of Consumer:
Date:
*delete as appropriate
February 2025