DARBY & DARBY SOLICITORS
(SRA registration no.: 61431)
The following Terms are our standard terms across all of our areas of work. The following terms are available to you from your Fee Earner and through our website.
Your continued instruction of our Firm amounts to acceptance of the following Terms.
(i) Partner - £295 +VAT @ 20% per hour (£354 per hour)
(ii) Consultant Solicitor - £295 + VAT@ 20% (£354 per hour)
(ii) Assistant Solicitor - £240 +VAT@ 20% per hour (£288 per hour)
(iii) Licensed Conveyancer - £200 +VAT @ 20% per hour (£240 per hour)
(iv) Conveyancing/Legal Executive - £150 +VAT @ 20% per hour (£180 per hour)
If you have instructed us remotely without meeting one of our team or attending our Offices, you have the right to cancel this contract within 14 days of your initial instruction without giving any reason.
To exercise the right to cancel, you must inform us by contacting the Fee Earner dealing with your matter, or Ben Darby (Managing Partner) ben@darbylaw.co.uk of your decision to cancel this contract by a clear statement in writing via letter or e-mail.
To meet the cancellation deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right to cancel before the cancellation period has expired.
If you cancel this contract, we will reimburse to you any payments received from you on account of our fees.
We will make the reimbursement without undue delay, and not later than 14 days after the day on which we are informed about your decision to cancel this contract.
We will make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of the reimbursement.
If you sign and accept our terms of business within the cancellation period we will take that as your request for us to commence work before allowing the period of 14 days to pass.
Darby & Darby is committed to high quality legal advice and client care. If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received or about the bill, please contact Ben Darby (Managing Partner) at this office on the contact details at the top of this letter. Alternatively you can email him on ben@darbylaw.co.uk. We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints, which is available at our office.
If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH or via www.legalombudsman.org.uk or on 0300 555 0333 or email at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk to consider the complaint. You will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint.
The time limits for referring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman are no later than:
(i) one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or
(ii) one year from the date when the complainant should have realised that there was cause for complaint.
In order to comply with the law on money laundering, we need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon a practicable. We should be grateful if you would provide us with documents to verify your identity and address as set out on the attached sheet.
Our firm’s policy is to only accept cash up to £2,500.00 per matter.
If clients circumvent this policy by depositing cash direct with our bank we reserve the right to charge for any additional checks we deem necessary regarding the source of the funds.
We have a duty to inform you if we are acting for you and your lender, we have a duty to fully reveal to your lender all relevant facts about the purchase and mortgage. This includes (this is not an exhaustive list):
Any work that we do for you may involve tax implications or necessitate the consideration of tax planning strategies. We may not be qualified to advise you on tax implications of a transaction that you are instruct us to carry out, or the likelihood of them arising. If you have any concerns in this respect, please raise them with us immediately. If we can undertake the research necessary to resolve the issue, we will do so and advise you accordingly. If we can not we may be able to identify a source of assistance for you.
Vital and important instructions should be confirmed to us by post. Email communications cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error free and may be lost or delayed. If you do decide to contact us by email we do not accept liability for any losses suffered as a result. Please let us know if you do not wish us to contact you by email.
Darby & Darby Solicitors are registered with the Information Commissioners Office under Registration number Z2138820.
During the course of your transaction/matter it is inevitable that we will receive, hold and share personal data. The data we receive is used primarily for the provision of legal services to you and for related purposes including: updating and enhancing client records; analysis to help us manage our practice; statutory returns; and legal and regulatory compliance. The following paragraphs outline our data and data privacy policy:
You are our main source of your data. We will ask you for personal information including your name, address, date of birth as well as financial information including bank details, national insurance number. We will also receive data, on your behalf and depending on the nature of your instruction to this Firm, from 3rd parties such as a Mortgage Company, Estate Agents, Courts, Solicitors acting on the other side.
To enable us to progress your matter we utilise the data we receive. We only use that data to:
(a) to fulfil our Contract – completing your instructions in this matter.
(b) to comply with a Legal Duty – such as external audit or a disclosure to HMRC, a Court or the Land Registry (for example).
(c) Our own legitimate interest – we check for Conflicts between existing and prospective clients to ensure that no dispute arises.
(d) In accordance with your consent – we will ask you for consent to us eyour data in accordance with these terms of business.
Your data is retained in either paper and/or electronic format. Paper copies of your data will be retained on your personal file. Electronic data is stored within our Legal Software Case Management system. Only the staff of Darby & Darby will have access to your physical and electronic files. Their access is password protected and encrypted.
Internally your data is available to all Partners and Staff at Darby & Darby. Their access to your data is limited for their use in the furtherance of your matter.
Externally, as detailed further under 12 below, we will use your data to advance your matter. It would be impossible to actively provide legal services without the ability to share your data, where necessary or relevant. It is for this reason we seek your specific consent.
We DO NOT share your data with 3rd parties outside the scope of your consent or the purposes of advancing your instructions.
We may from time to time send you information which we think might be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive that information please notify our office in writing.
Under the GDPR legislation you are entitled to:
To request any of the above to be actioned you can send a “Subject Action Request” in writing to the person responsible at this Firm namely Ben Darby. Your Subject Action Request should be sent for Ben Darby’s attention at the Torquay Office or to his email ben@darbylaw.co.uk.
We endeavour to deal with all complaints and concerns direct with you as swiftly as possible. Should you not be satisfied with our response you can complain to the Information Commissioner. Further details can be found at https://ico.org.uk.
In the absence of an earlier successful Subject Access Request from you to destroy your data your paper file of papers will be destroyed after a period in archived storage which will be notified to you at the end of your matter. It is intended that electronic data we hold will be stored on our computer system to assist with future audit processes and to mitigate the risk of Conflicts of Interests arising in future matters.
Solicitors are under a professional and legal duty to keep the affairs of clients confidential. During the course of your transaction we will have to disclose certain details to third parties (eg: Mortgage Company, Estate Agents, Solicitors, Barristers etc..) to further your instructions. Save for these aforementioned routine disclosures there are three further scenarios that we bring to your attention at this stage:-
Our Liability to you for breach of your instructions shall be limited to £3,000,000, unless we expressly state a higher amount in the letter accompanying these terms of business. We will not be liable for any consequential, special, indirect or exemplary damages, costs or losses or any damages, costs or losses attributable to lost profits or opportunities.
We can only limit our liability to the extent the law allows. In particular, we cannot limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
Please ask if you would like us to explain any of the terms above.
Any disputes or legal issue arising from our terms of business will be determined by the law of England and Wales, and considered exclusively by the English and Welsh Courts.
After completing the work, we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for charges and expenses. In addition, we will keep your file of papers for you in storage for a period of six years. After that period storage is on the clear understanding that we have the right to destroy your file after such period as we consider reasonable or make a charge for storage if we ask you to and you fail to do so.
This firm is committed to promoting equality and diversity in all of its dealing with clients, third parties and employees. Please contact us for further information about our equality and diversity policy.