TERMS OF BUSINESS 

NORTH EAST BARRISTERS CHAMBERS

VERSION MAY 2024. 

1. I am willing to give all clients a 15 minute free telephone consultation and to set this up you must call the office and set up an appointment on 0191.3692383. NOTE This call is simply to understand if yours is a type of case that I can take on and also for me to check my diary for free dates. To be clear it will only be for 15 minutes, if you want more time that has to be billed. 

2. If you decide to instruct me I will send terms of engagement to be  signed and I cannot act for you until you sign and return that with ID and proof of address. If you instruct me I will usually be able to commence work on your case within 7 days of you signing the terms of engagement.  If you need work done urgently you must make that clear in the 15 minutes call. 

3. If you want me to review any papers to advise you on the merits of your case I will charge a minimum of 1 hours time. I will not accept numerous calls or numerous emails for you to "seek clarification" before instructing me and if you do that then the time will have to be billed. Of course if you call me back "after you have thought about it" any free dates I had may have become booked, 

4. My fees will either be on a fixed fee or on a time basis where the  charges will be calculated by reference to all time spent working on the matter. This will include meeting you and where appropriate others, considering, preparing and working on papers, correspondence (letters and emails), making and receiving telephone calls, research, internal consultations and travelling.  

5. Such time working on a case is recorded and charged in minimum 6-minute units at the hourly rate. Phone calls in/out are charged in minimum 3-minute units at the hourly rate. Emails in/out are charged in minimum 1-minute units at the hourly rate. 

6. Our rates are exclusive of VAT.  Charging rates will be reviewed from time to time and you will be notified of any changes as soon as reasonably possible.

7. If I am acting on an hourly rate, you will have to pay a retainer before work can start and invoices for ongoing work done will then be sent out every 3-4 weeks with 14 day payment terms. 

8. If I have to attend Court you will be sent separate invoices for me to attend Court. I must be paid to attend court at least 3 days before any hearing and you must email me proof of payment - for the avoidance of doubt I will not book any train ticket or hotel, until funds have cleared. If you do not pay at least 3 days before a hearing date. If the funds are not in the accounts at least 72 hours before the hearing start time I will only chase you once by email and in that email I will set out a clear deadline for when payment must be made, failing which I will not attend Court and if I am on the record I will tell the Court I am no longer acting. TO BE CLEAR the onus is on you to pay me, not for me to chase you for payment.

9. You accept that upon instructing me, that should your case, if listed at court concludes early (and that includes if we agree to settle a case not long after arriving at court), no refunds will be due. 

10. I can agree fixed fees for certain matters, otherwise my hourly rate is currently £225ph (plus VAT). If my litigation assistant does any work on your case that will be charged at £125ph (plus VAT). 

11. Fees are dependent on a number of factors depending on the complexity of the issues, the specialism, the number of pages involved, the number of procedural steps that need to be taken on the case, the location of the hearing, the number of days in court or tribunal, is the case with litigation (with me preparing your case) or without litigation (you preparing your own case) amongst other things. One of the major factors on your fee liability will be how many times you choose to email or phone the office.  Any fees quoted do not include advising on or pursuing an appeal.

12. Some cases will develop over time and it will be dependent on the requirements at each stage as to how many additional hours need to be spent on preparing a case or presenting a case in court and that may then change any fee indication.

13. I generally do not litigate (come on the record) on low value small claim cases (these are cases up to £10,000) as you cannot recover legal fees (99% of the time) so it is often not financially viable for you to pay me to prepare your case and represent you at trial if e.g. you are pursuing a claim of £2,000 or £3,000. 

14. I do not do road traffic accident claims, medical negligence claims, or tripping and slipping injury cases.

15. I do not prepare Immigration Cases but I can represent clients at an immigration tribunal.

16. Note that in Family Cases (Child Access) and Financials After Divorce Cases you cannot recover legal fees (99% of the time). 

17. If I am preparing your case at an hourly rate, I will charge my time in preparing your case and will bill you every 3/4 weeks. 

18. I also charge for phone calls and dealing with emails or letters. DO NOT phone me several times a day or send me multiple emails in a day as YOU WILL BE BILLED for that time. Consider at all times if the contact you make with us is necessary or not.

CLICK HERE FOR FEE STRUCTURES 

19. I am a registered barrister, who is independent, I provide legal services in civil, commercial, defamation, family, will disputes, divorce, road traffic, employment, criminal matters (magistrates and crown court) and can deal with criminal appeals.

20. I can appear in all courts and tribunals in England and Wales, (not Scotland - where I can only appear in a tribunal) including those of regulators, the magistrates courts, crown courts, civil courts, county and high courts, court of appeal and Supreme Court / Privy Council.

21. Unlike solicitors I do not have a client account so I cannot pay 3rd parties - including Court fees - on your behalf. 

22. Experts will charge fees to do reports and for attendance at court. Each expert will have their own charging structure. You will be liable to pay for any experts you seek to instruct and you will have to pay any court fees.

23. COST RISKS: In some cases you may be liable for the legal costs of the party you are litigating or defending against if you lose a case. There are no guarantees that your own costs will be recovered in full or at all.

24. I do not have a legal aid contract. If you need legal aid you should contact a firm of solicitors who have a legal aid contract.

25. You can view the Legal Aid Commission website which has an eligibility calculator for legal aid. If you are a high earner you may not be eligible for legal aid or you may have to make a high contribution which may amount to more than you would end having to pay me by going private.

26. You may have an insurance product, domestic and residential, commercial or professional, that provides legal cover for some types of cases. You should look at the document and identify whether this is possible in your case. We are content to look at such documents to assist, where requested. You should speak to your insurer or broker direct. Insurance cover is usually capped at a certain hourly rate and global limit. Many insurance products do not cover regulatory proceedings.

27. I am not obligated to take on any case. In any event a fee must be agreed and paid before any instructions are formally accepted.

28. I generally do not provide legal services on Conditional Fee (No Win No Fee) basis.

29. Fees and Costs can be affected by a number of factors, such as those mentioned above and below. Some clients need greater hand-holding and support, whereas some clients can undertake much of the legal work that is needed (with my support) so keeping the costs down.

CLICK HERE FOR FEE STRUCTURES 

30. On occasions, courts or tribunals may run out of time on a day we attend, to such a degree that means their will be additional costs, e.g. you pay me for 1 day in Court but it then becomes 2 days. If that happens you must pay for any additional hearing time. 

31. Some legal cases will be more complex than others because of the needs of clients or because of the conduct of the other parties to a case.

32. Factors that can increase fees and affect any timescale for delivery of Legal Services include the location of the hearing and any ancillary costs such as travel costs, accommodation and subsistence. The area of law, evidence or procedure concerned, and its complexities. The complexity of the case including any legal issues in the case and the amount of drafting and legal research that is needed. The volume of the legal and other paperwork involved affecting reading. The need for further documentation and the time it takes to obtain it from you or third parties. The approach of the regulator, courts, tribunals or the opposite party to the case or prosecuting authority, and the possible intervention of third parties. The estimated length of any court hearing, and any ongoing interim stages or appeals. Whether additional support is required from a a legal assistant. The amount of court forms and bundles that need to be drafted, served on other parties of filed with the courts. The availability of court or tribunal time, and associated delays; court waiting times.

33. I do the utmost to be clear about likely fees and can usually set out likely costs, at least as a ballpark figure. I can agree a maximum amount I will do before I come back for approval to incur more fees. The vagaries of court and tribunal life, and law generally, can lead to the occasional unexpected fees but thankfully this is relatively rare. Our aim is to seek to avoid surprises where possible.

34. Courts charge fees for lodging claims and these will be dependent on the nature and value of the claim. They can range from a few hundred to a few thousands of pounds. See the HMCTS guide to fees for more information. If you are on benefits or a low income you may be able to apply to have those fees waived. 

35. If you pay me a deposit to hold a date in my diary and then decide before the hearing date to cancel the booking, I will give you a refund but deductions will be made for any work I have done on the matter (over and above the original emails confirming your instructions to act for you). This includes any prep I have done on your case and dealing with emails and phone-calls and they will be billed at the hourly rate and the refund will set out the matters charged and deducted.   

36. I offer litigation services (i.e. coming on the court record and preparing the case) generally only on Fast Track or Multi Track Civil Claims, and High Value Will Disputes.

37. I am reluctant to take over a case where you have now decided, due perhaps to rising fees or slow progress, to dismiss your solicitors and so ask me to take the case over, as I will not be clear on what advice they have given to you and what they have done for you, up to whatever stage you are at. In such cases I charge 1 hour of my time to review the papers and I will then decide if I can take the case over or not. If I decide I cannot take the case over, I may still be able to represent you at court and assist you with drafting documents and preparing a bundle for a hearing but in such cases you will have to act as a litigant in person as I will not take liability for what was prepared by previous lawyers you have instructed. 

38. If you had previous lawyers acting YOU MUST confirm you have dismissed them and I MUST be sent the full case file as I cannot be held liable if I give you legal advice when I have only seen a proportion of the case papers. In all cases you will warrant I have seen all relevant paperwork for the case and you agree that I will not be held liable if any advice I give you turns out NOT TO BE VALID due to the fact that you have failed to disclose any relevant documentation. The real issue is that you SHOULD NOT instruct me until you are certain you have sourced and disclosed to me ALL relevant documents on the case.  

39. Please also consider the position in litigation, as unless your claim is under £10,000 (and so will be classed as a small claim, which means neither party usually recovers legal costs) or if it is a family case involving children or a divorce case over financials after divorce (where it is highly unusual for either party to recover costs), costs will generally be an issue where the loser in a civil litigation case usually has to pay the other sides costs. That is why mediation, or seeking to settle litigation early may often be the correct approach.

40. Specific terms will apply depending on whether I am preparing your case and attending court, or if I am only attending court for you.

36. To instruct me on a case, I only accept initial instructions by meeting with you face to face, or by email or by letter. I generally DO NOT want original documents. I will TELL YOU if I need original documents, if not you must only send me copies, as unless I agree to accept original documents, I will have no liability for them. If you deliver documents to the office I will assume that they are not originals and they will be shredded after they have been scanned onto our computers. 

41. Ongoing instructions on a case must at a meeting or by email only to jb@barristerjohnbrown.co.uk or by letter to 8 Charlotte Street, Stanley, DH9 7AT. Unless agreed I will not accept ongoing instructions from a client by text, by WhatsApp or by any other social media messaging platform sent to me. If you call the office number that will only be for you to seek updates on your case and you will be charged for the time. 

42. These terms of business apply to all work done by Dr John Brown of North East Barristers Chambers. 

43. If you instruct me to act for you you are warranting that you accept these terms (and you warrant that you accept any additional terms that may be highlighted to you).

44. References in these terms shall include any letter, document or email sent to you which sets out, amongst other things, the scope of the work we will be carrying out for you, any assumptions we have made about the scope of the work, any exclusions from the scope of the work, the anticipated timescale, and an estimate or proposal in respect of fees we will charge for the work undertaken on your behalf.

45. If you decide to take time considering instructing me after we have had an initial phone call (maybe for a few days), I am not obliged to keep any booking free in my diary and so you may find that when you call back I am then not free to take on your case. I also will not hold any booking when you tell me you are phoning around for quotes. I only secure a booking when I am paid a RETAINER (if I am preparing a case) or a NON REFUNDABLE BOOKING FEE (if I am booked just to attend court). Regarding attending court I have to paid in full in advance at least 3 days before a hearing date/time otherwise I will have no obligation to attend court for you. 

46. In all dealings with clients we aim to provide a professional quality of service. We shall endeavour to meet your objectives within an agreed timescale, subject to external factors over which we may have little or no control.

43. The general timescales are that any emails sent to us shall be replied to within 72 hours (not including weekends). If I am in court and cannot give a substantive reply I will acknowledge your email within that 72 hour timescale and tell you when you should get a substantive reply. The email address you should use to correspond with is jb@barristerjohnbrown.co.uk

47. Do not send an email to my CJSM account, unless you have a CJSM account and are sending the email from your CJSM account, as emails from other accounts will not go through to a CJSM email account. 

48. The office is open 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, unless it is a UK holiday day. We will only accept calls during that time. We have a landline number and a WhatsApp number. Note the WhatsApp number may be unmanned during the day depending on commitments. If you have an urgent matter you can call the WhatsApp number on Saturdays (only) between  9am and 11am. Between  5pm and 9am and all over the weekends, the landline will divert to voicemail and any voicemail messages will be emailed to us and we will reply to the voicemail within 24 hours. For the avoidance of doubt, unless prior agreement has been made to speak to us outwith the above times such calls will not be answered. 

49. Our advice is provided solely to you, the client. Without our prior written consent, our advice may not be used for any purpose other than the one for which it was given. You may not disclose our advice to any person other than those who normally have access to your records and papers, such as your employees, agent, and other professional advisers. You may not quote or refer to us or our advice in any public document or communication without our consent.

50. Our duty of care is to you and not to any third parties. No third parties (unless we specifically agree) shall have the right to rely on or enforce any term of our agreement with you under the Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 or otherwise.

51. We may act for and provide advice to more than one person or organisation jointly in relation to the same matter. In such a case, we will be acting for all of you, collectively. We may sometimes need to take instructions from one of you on behalf of the others, for example, because it is more convenient to do so.

52. We do not give advice on taxation or accountancy matters. If we believe that you require such advice, we shall advise you to seek it from suitably qualified professionals. Similarly, we can only advise on the law in England and Wales and not in any other jurisdiction. If you require advice on the law of any other jurisdiction then we may, with your permission, seek advice from a suitably qualified legal adviser in the relevant jurisdiction. You will be responsible for their fees.

53. If a third party is needed on your case (e.g., an expert) we will agree who will be the third party with you, but you will have to appoint that third party and pay him/her. Services provided by any such third party will be subject to their terms of business (as provided to you).

54. From time to time, we may use temporary legal staff. Although they are not all our employees, we supervise such staff as if they were employees and place them under similar obligations as to confidentiality so to protect your confidential information and preserve your right to privilege. If practicable we will advise you of any such arrangements made in relation to your work.

55. At the start of any new matter, it is important that we clearly understand what you want to achieve as well as the timescale in which you wish to achieve it and, if you have a budget in mind, your expectations in respect of legal costs. If your timescale later changes I may not be able to meet that new timetable and so  may have to terminate the agreement for me to act for you.

56. Having taken your instructions, we will address the following matters and issues:

a) your requirements and objectives; 

b) the scope of the work that we will be carrying out for you and any exclusions or assumptions to the work; 

c) an explanation of the issues and an outline of your options; 

d) what we will do and what we will not do for you; 

e) we will identify any unusual level of risk or uncertainty in the proposed matter; 

f) identify if you will act as a litigant in person or if I will come on the court record; 

g) consider if we have any potential conflicts in carrying out the work for you; 

h) we will, if appropriate, estimate the likely timescales of the matter and advise as to any specific issues which may affect timing; and

i) if possible, we will provide you with an estimate of the fees likely to be involved which will be updated from time to time as the matter progresses.

52. Our responsibilities to you are:

a) to act in accordance with your instructions; 

b) to exercise a high degree of professional care in our dealings with you; 

c) to be proactive in ensuring you meet your objectives; 

d) to communicate with you at regular intervals by telephone and email; 

e) to notify you of any material developments or occurrences; 

f) (if agreed with you) provide you with a cost benefit analysis of the matter (i.e. our assessment as to whether the likely outcome of a disputed matter will justify the expense or risk involved, including, if relevant, the risk of having to bear an opponent's costs);

g) to act in your best interests at all times; and

h) to ensure that you are advised of the legal issues arising in this matter and the options available to you in respect of these.

57. Your responsibilities to us are:

a) to inform us of all material factors of which you are aware which may affect the matter;

b) to be truthful about the facts of a civil claim and if it transpires that a matter, which has been signed with a statement of truth is later found to be not true, I may then be professionally embarrassed and so would have to stop acting as I could not then promote the claim for you in court as set out in the document you have signed with a statement of truth;

c) to provide us with appropriate evidence as to your identity and, where requested, that of your organisations;

d) to provide us with relevant paperwork and provide prompt, accurate and appropriate instructions when required. I do not want original documents as I scan all relevant paperwork into a folder. If you give me original documents and want them back you must make that clear;

e) to provide an appropriate level of funding as required by these terms;

f) to settle our bills promptly when delivered; 

g) if despite ongoing emails or calls, you fail to keep in contact and update your instructions as matters move on, or if you fail to make contact with us for over 6 weeks we will be entitled to withdraw the services and will be under no obligation to refund you any fees you have paid; and

h) act politely when contacting the office by phone or by email. 

Breaches of above can lead to me longer being willing to act for you

58. The decision as to whether you proceed to instruct us in relation to any matter (and the course to be taken in relation to that matter) will be made by you based upon your own commercial assessment.

59. Only in very rare situations, will I offer No Win No Fee Services (if I do agree such terms, I will still require a £500 payment for incidentals and any such No Win No Fee Agreement does not include me paying for my own travel and accommodation costs to from court). 

60. All direct access work is private paying - I do not have a legal aid contract so I cannot offer Direct Access Clients legal aid services.

61. If you have an insurance policy you may find you have cover for legal costs, If so you should find out if you can claim my fees on your policy.

62. I will beat any quote you receive from another direct access barrister, simply show me a written quote. I will also beat any quote you get from a firm of solicitors by at least 20%, simply provide me with a written quote that is not more than 30 days old.

63. In the case of estimates, we reserve the right to change or amend the estimate at any time while we are carrying the work out for you. We will, however, notify you beforehand if we need to revise our estimate upwards.

64. You will always be liable to pay any court fees e.g. to submit a claim, or if you are obligated to pay a trial fee and you will also have to pay for any experts fees.

65. If you are only instructing me to attend a court/tribunal hearing, a booking fee will be required for me to put the matter in the diary. The remaining balance for any hearing (whether only instructed for that hearing or attending the hearing as part of a case I am preparing) must be paid at least 3 days before the hearing, failing which I am not obliged to attend court.

66. Any booking fee is not refundable as I am committing myself to attend your hearing and will then turn down other work. If you contact me and then seek time to "consider" instructing me, I will not hold a booking for you. You agree that it is at your risk if when you call back I am then not free to take on your case.

67. If I have to travel to court, I will have to charge additional travel or petrol costs and if the case is listed more than 100 miles away, I will also have to charge B&B costs to ensure I am on site for 9am, so not having to set off at 5am to travel to court. If the case is listed for more than 1 day I will require a B&B for the other nights. 

68. Generally, we will agree any correspondence with you and will then put it into PDF format for you to post. However if we post anything on your behalf you agree to meet the postage fees. If we have to photocopy more than 5 pages we will have to charge our copying expenses to you. 

69. We reserve the right to retain funds, correspondence, documents, records and title deeds belonging to you which have come into our possession until all our fees and disbursements owed to us by you have been paid. 

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

70. The following should be read carefully as it limits the extent of our liability to you. Any such liability arising from or in connection with the services provided to you by us is the liability only of Dr John Brown. Our partners, employees and contractors shall have no personal liability to you.

71. Our liability of for loss or damage cause by our negligence, breach of contract, misrepresentation, is limited to a maximum sum of £500,000 (five hundred thousand pounds) for each single originating cause, which amount includes all legal and other costs which we may incur in defending any actions against us.

72. Our liability is covered by Bar Mutual Insurance.

73. This limitation of liability provision shall apply to each and every matter we handle for you unless otherwise agreed with you in writing.

74. You also agree to indemnify us and hold us harmless against all losses, damages or costs howsoever caused which we may suffer in acting for you in this engagement (including, without limitation, our compliance with our statutory obligations), subject to the limitation in liability set out in the preceding paragraph.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

75. We are not allowed to act for you if there is a conflict between your interests and ours. For example, we normally cannot act for you if the other party in the transaction is a regular client of ours. If in the course this engagement a conflict of interest arises, we will let you know as soon as we become aware of it and discuss with you the course of action required.

MONEY LAUNDERING

76. We are required to comply with our statutory obligations under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (as amended by the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019, otherwise known as the 5th Money Laundering Directive) (together “the Money Laundering Regulations), to carry out certain checks in order to verify identity and the source of funds supplied by a client.

77. If you instruct us, you must send me a proof of ID and proof of address.

79. We are also under a duty to report any suspicion that we have of money laundering and this duty may override our duty of client confidentiality. We shall not incur any liability to you for any loss you may suffer as a result of our compliance with the Money Laundering Regulations to include any delay in dealings with or concluding your matter. While this may seem excessive, we are required to adhere to the Money Laundering Regulations and may not be able to act for you if we cannot comply with these Money Laundering Regulations.

COMMUNICATION BY EMAIL

80. We generally communicate with and send documents to clients by e-mail. You accept that the internet is not a secure medium and that electronic transmission of e-mail may become lost, delayed, intercepted, corrupted, delivered incomplete or fail to be delivered. Any large documents will be sent by WeTransfer.

81. We shall use our reasonable endeavours to ensure that our e-mails are free from viruses and other obstructions and shall expect you to do the same. However, you should note that e-mail cannot be guaranteed to be secure, error-free or confidential and that we shall have no responsibility or liability for any error, omission, claim or loss arising from or in connection with any communication to you via email, in the absence of any bad faith or wilful default on our part.

82. Do not send us original documents unless we specifically ask for them (only send us photocopies). We hold no liability for original documents unless liability is agreed before they are sent to us. If you send original documents they will be scanned and you must collect the originals from me. If you provide me with any media footage (e.g. CCTV) it will be assumed you have the original.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

83. All copyright and intellectual property rights in any work and materials that we develop or create for you shall be our property unless specifically agreed otherwise. You are, however, permitted to use any such materials for the purposes for which they were created.

84. For the purpose of advising you or other clients, and subject to our duties of confidentiality to you, we shall be entitled to use, analyse, share and develop the knowledge, experience or skills of general application gained through working for you.

DATA PROTECTION

85. As part of our engagement with you, we expect to receive personal data from you or from persons connected with your business. This could be personal data about you, people who work for or with your business, or third parties, including people at organisations you do business with or are in dispute with. We are required under the Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA”) and the General Data Protection Regulation (EU 2016/679) (“GDPR”) (the GDPR and the DPA collectively, “data protection law”) to inform you about the uses to which we put your personal data.

86. We will comply with the data protection law in our own handling of personal data (including any personal data we obtain from third parties for your engagement) but will not be responsible for any action taken by the Information Commissioner (or any other data protection regulator), data subjects or other persons arising from any transfer of personal data to us by you (or its processing in order to fulfil your instructions) contrary to data protection law.

87. We may use third parties to process your personal data for us in order to obtain goods and services related to your engagement or appropriate for the running of our firm. We do not sell personal data to third parties for marketing or other commercial purposes.

88. Data protection law requires that all personal data kept by us is accurate and up to date, so please keep us informed of any changes to personal data, including email and mobile phone numbers, which you supply to us in connection with our engagement.

CONFIDENTIALITY

89. As a Barristers Chambers, we are under strict rules of confidentiality and shall not disclose any confidential information received from you unless instructed by you or as required by law. Equally, we cannot use or pass on confidential information obtained from other clients for your benefit.

90. Occasionally, we may be requested to refer in general terms to work done for you. For example, we may be requested to give information for reports to be published in the legal or business press of transactions where we have acted for one of the parties, or we may wish to disclose that we have acted for you in a particular deal or matter. In such cases, we will ask for your consent before disclosing and, if given, this consent will also apply to future similar disclosures by us or one of you to deal with us, or because the matter needs to be dealt with quickly. You authorise us to do this without needing to confirm the instructions with all of you.

TERMINATION

91. You may terminate your instructions in writing at any time, but any retainer paid is only refundable under specific terms and you will be liable to pay any fees due till the termination date.

92. We may stop acting for you where we believe that we have a good reason to do so, for example, if a conflict of interest arises, if you persistently refuse to provide information that we require, if you persistently refuse to take our advice, if you do not pay your invoices on time or do not provide an interim payment when requested, or are rude to myself or my staff either over the phone or in person. 

93. Termination shall not affect any accrued rights of either party.

COMPLAINTS POLICY

94. We are committed to providing a high-quality service to our clients. This includes a commitment to putting things right when they go wrong. If you do not feel that we have fulfilled our responsibilities, or the standard of our service has been less then you expected, then please let us know in writing.

95. The Bar Standards Board will help you 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. They will not generally look at a complaint until you have allowed us to respond first.

96. The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case. Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

The timescales have recently changed, this now means you must take a matter to the Ombudsman; 

a) Within SIX MONTHS of receiving a final response to a written complaint from us; and 

b) No more than ONE YEAR from the date of act/omission; 

97. If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them using one of the options: Visit: legalombudsman.org.uk, Call: 0300 555 0333 or email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk, or write to Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ.

STORAGE OF YOUR DOCUMENTS

98. We shall keep an electronic file for long as we consider appropriate, but for no more than 6 years. We will only then retain an electronic copy of the papers, but you agree we may destroy any paper copies. If you wish to have any paperwork you must collect it within 14 days of us confirming to you that we are closing the file, otherwise you authorise us to destroy it.

VARIATIONS TO THESE TERMS

99. From time to time, we amend our Terms. If we do these Terms will have a published date on them and will replace any previous Terms provided to you.

100. Our Scope of Works (including these Terms) shall form the entire agreement between us in relation to its subject matter. The terms and conditions of an agreed Scope of Works may not be modified or amended other than by written agreement between us.

GOVERNING LAW

101. These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. You agree that the English courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction in any dispute that may arise between us.

THE BAR STANDARDS BOARD

102. We are authorised and regulated by the Bar Standards Board.