The following definitions apply in all cases:
The covering letter, these Terms, and any written amendments that we agree with you shall form the Contract. This Contract will be concluded:
Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, if you have engaged us in a personal capacity and are not acting on behalf of your trade, business, craft or profession, then you may be entitled to a 14 day cooling off period during which you may cancel the contract if any of the following circumstances apply:
To exercise your right to cancel you must inform us of your decision to cancel this agreement by a clear statement, for example a letter by email, post or fax. You may use the model cancellation form but this is not obligatory. We will acknowledge receipt of such a cancellation form on a durable medium, for example by email without delay.
Please note that if you ask us to commence work before the end of the 14 day period, you will be liable to pay us for any work done prior to any subsequent cancellation. If you have authorised us to commence work early, your right to cancel is lost if all the work is completed before you cancel.
Subject to the covering letter, or unless otherwise agreed to the contrary in writing, our advice shall not include advice on matters relating to:
We assume that you will be instructing other professionals such as but without limitation, Accountants, Financial Advisors, Surveyors, Planners Architects, Tax Advisors. We do not assume any responsibility for work of third parties engaged on your behalf.
If you are a company, partnership or other organisation, we may accept instructions from anyone within your organisation unless you have written to us identifying which individuals we are to take instructions from.
When our Contract is with more than one person, unless otherwise agreed in writing, we may:
The law requires solicitors to obtain satisfactory evidence of: the identity of their clients; where relevant, other beneficiaries to a transaction; and in some cases, the source of funds. We may refuse to proceed with a matter if we are not reasonably satisfied about the source and legitimacy of funds. This is because solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their client can be used by criminals wanting to launder money. To comply with the law, we need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon as possible. Our practice is to verify clients identity either by way of verification of physical documents or by means of e-verification.
We reserve the right to undertake an electronic verification of identification documents and information with an Anti-Money Laundering electronic service provider. This type of check may leave a soft footprint in respect of your credit rating.
If you cannot provide us with the specific identification requested, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss other ways to verify your identity and/or authority to instruct us. If you cannot satisfy these requests promptly, we have the right to cancel the Contract immediately on giving written notice to you.
The individuals named in the covering letter shall have primary responsibility for your work, but may delegate appropriate parts of the work to our junior fee-earners acting under proper supervision. The individual with final responsibility for your work is the partner in charge of the department in which your work is being carried out.
If you instruct us in relation to issues that fall outside the range of work that is normally done by the named individuals in the covering letter, we may refer you to other fee-earners within the firm who can assist you, subject to your agreement. Sometimes we ask other companies or people to undertake work such as but not limited to typing, photocopying and administration work on our files to ensure this is done promptly. We will always seek a confidentiality agreement with these outsourced providers. If you do not want your file to be outsourced, please tell us as soon as possible. If we instruct counsel, we will do so on your behalf as your agent.
Our Fees are calculated by reference to many criteria, such as the amount of time taken in providing the services in question, the value of any property involved, any skill and specialised knowledge that may have been required, and the degree of urgency. We will provide you with a covering letter for each new matter that will set out the basis on which you will be charges, see Clause 10 below.
The amount of time taken is generally valued at an hourly rate for the individual concerned. Our current hourly rates are set out in the covering letter. We may increase our hourly rates in the course of any matter on which we are working on for you and we shall notify you if this should be the case. We generally review our rates once each year.
Unless we agree to the contrary, any time spent by us in travelling or in waiting to attend any meetings shall be calculated with reference to the hourly rates of the fee-earner in question.
Our Fees are subject to Value Added Tax (VAT) where applicable. You will provide us with all relevant information in this respect. If your information proves to be incorrect, you shall reimburse us on demand for any interest, penalties or legal costs which we incur as a result.
Our Fees are payable irrespective of whether a matter proceeds to completion. We shall be entitled to pay our Fees out of any sums that we receive or hold on your behalf, such as the proceeds of a sale of property.
Our currently hourly rates are set out in the covering letter.
In addition to our Fees, you shall also pay to us, with VAT if applicable all Disbursements. We may require you at any time either to pay us sums on account of any Disbursements that we may have to incur.
Such disbursements may include photocopying charges, courier costs, travel expenses, overseas telephone calls, facsimile charges and the costs of using the services of other professionals and other persons (such as surveyors, accountants, advocates and other agents). Also payable may be fees to central and local government, regulatory and other bodies (such as court fees, search fees, company searches and so on), charges to transfer funds by electronic or other means and banker’s drafts. VAT is normally payable on these items.
Estimates and Quotations are generally based upon your initial description of the matter in question and upon any documentation that you might have given us to consider. Such information may not be sufficient to give an Estimate or Quotation, particularly if documentation needs to be prepared or negotiated, or if any complicated legal points are involved.
Where a Quotation is given, it must be in writing to be of any effect. Such effect will in any event be limited in that sometimes a matter is more complicated than we could reasonably have expected from your description or from a preliminary review of that documentation, or unforeseen issues arise as a matter progresses which have a bearing on the amount of time which we need to spend. We shall advise you of any such changes in circumstance, as these matters will fall outside the scope of any Quotation which we have given. We shall seek to agree with you an additional fee for such matters, but if no agreement is made, we shall have the right to cancel this Contract on giving immediate written notice to you.
If it is not possible to calculate our charges with reference to a Quotation we have given, they shall be determined with reference to our hourly rates.
Unless we specifically advise to the contrary, all Estimates and Quotations are exclusive of VAT, Disbursements and other costs.
We reserve the right to require you to pay one or more sums on account of our Fees and/or any likely Disbursements or costs at any time before and/or during the course of the work. Any sums we ask you to pay on account may include an element to reflect any VAT that may be chargeable. These sums will be held in your name in our client account accruing interest for you.
In accordance with the SRA Accounts Rules we are required to account to you for interest on money held by us in our client account when it is fair and reasonable to do so. The holding of client money is incidental to the carrying out of clients’ instructions. In addition, we are required to hold client money in an instant access account to facilitate transactions. As a result, the rates of interest paid under this policy are unlikely to be as high as those obtainable by yourself.
Where money is held in relation to separate matters for you, we will treat the matters and money as separate, unless the matters are so closely related that they should be considered together.
Where client monies are held in our general client account, we will pay interest without deducting tax at source. You will be responsible for declaring any interest to HM Revenue & Customs. Where client monies are held in a separate designated client account, interest is usually paid net of basic rate income tax.
Interest will be calculated pursuant to our Interest Policy and on a daily basis, using the rate of interest offered to business customers on instant access deposit accounts at the bank where we hold general client funds. Interest will be calculated on cleared client funds. In the case of cheques received, this will be 10 days after the cheque has been deposited with our bank, and for amounts received in cash, or via credit or debit card, standing orders, BACS and CHAPS, interest will accrue from the day of receipt into our client account. We will normally account to you for interest at the conclusion of the matter. You may contract out of receiving interest by signing a written agreement with us. This interest policy, including the de minimis limit of £50, will be reviewed periodically, particularly if changes are made to the Bank of England’s Base Rate.
From these sums, we shall be entitled to settle our invoices for Fees, Disbursements or costs after we have advised you of the Fees, Disbursements and costs in question. If it transpires that our invoiced amounts at the end of a matter are less than the sums that we are holding on account, we shall refund the balance to you.
We will hold any funds which you remit to us to be held on your behalf in our designated client account(s). We will only hold your money at a bank or building society as defined by Section 87 of the Solicitors Act 1974 in that:
Whilst we monitor circumstances relating to our banks and take such action we feel is necessary to protect our finances, we may not be liable to repay money lost through a banking failure. If you are acting in the capacity of a private individual or small business, you may be eligible to obtain compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) up to a maximum of £85,000 in the event of the bank failing. The compensation limit applies to one individual per failed entity, and so if you hold personal monies with the same bank (or member of a group to which it belongs), the limit remains at only £85,000. If at any time you wish your funds to be held in a specific account or in any particular bank or in any other way you should advise us as soon as possible and confirm any such instruction in writing. We undertake no responsibility to advise you where or how your funds should be held.
We will never email you to change our Bank Account details.
If you receive any email/s purporting to be from us and relating to financial transfers, you must assume these are fraudulent communications; do not act on them and report them as soon as possible to us and to the Police. If you ignore this warning and send monies to a different account from the one set out immediately above, we will not be liable for any losses.
If relevant to your matter, we will ask you at our first meeting / at the outset of your matter, for the account details of where funds should be transferred to you at the appropriate time. It is our policy to do this in person (as far as possible), and to obtain evidence in support (such as bank statements, which may be required in any case to comply with our Anti-Money Laundering obligations. It is our policy never to accept these instructions or any subsequent changes in bank account details by email and to only accept this and other non-face to face communications (letter, phone call etc) after authenticating this with you in person or by a telephone call initiated by us and using the agreed contact number you provide to us at the outset of this retainer. We accept no liability for delays as a result of this due diligence and expect full cooperation and timely responses from clients in validating or refuting any such instructions.
Subject to any special terms in the covering letter we shall invoice you as frequently as we think appropriate. Relevant issues in determining the frequency of our invoices will include the nature of the matters on which we have been asked to act, the amount of our unbilled Fees, the amount of time that is being spent on your matters and your financial circumstances. We generally invoice our clients on a monthly or quarterly basis and on completion of the transaction.
Our invoices are payable in full upon receipt. If any of our invoices are not paid within 14 days of their delivery to you:
Where the covering letter is addressed to more than one person, or where we have agreed with the addressee of the covering letter to act for another person as well, each of you shall be jointly and severally liable for our Fees and Disbursements and other costs, so that each of you is jointly responsible for ensuring that our bill is paid, and we can pursue all or any one of you for the whole amount that is due to us. This shall be the case regardless of any agreement you may have entered into with anyone else regarding the payment of our Fees, Disbursements, and other costs.
Our policy is not to accept cash. If you try to avoid this policy by depositing cash directly with our bank, we may decide to charge you for any additional checks we decide are necessary to prove the source of the funds. Where we have to pay money to you, it will be paid by cheque or bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party.
You are responsible for paying our charges and the disbursements incurred on your behalf in all circumstances. We will discuss with you whether and when another party or person may be legally required to pay them.
If you succeed in court proceedings or through a form of settlement another party or person:
Although another party may be required to pay all or part of our charges or disbursements incurred they may refuse to pay or not have the funds to pay.
If another party is legally aided or has community legal funding it is unlikely that party will be required to pay our charges and disbursements incurred even if you succeed in a case against them.
In all these circumstances you will be responsible for paying any or all of our charges and expenses incurred which are not, in fact, paid by another party or person.
If a court requires another party or person to pay all or some of our charges and disbursements incurred, interest on these can also be claimed in addition from the date of the court order. We will account to you for such interest to the extent that you have paid our charges or disbursements on account. But we are entitled to the rest of that interest.
You will be responsible to pay the charges and disbursements of trying to recover any charges and disbursements that the court orders the other party or person to pay.
A court may also require you to pay the legal charges and disbursements incurred by another party, usually when you are not successful in legal action against them or they are successful in legal action against you. Such payments would be in addition to our charges and disbursements incurred.
We will discuss with you whether it is possible that our charges and disbursements incurred and any liability to pay another party’s charges and expenses incurred can be covered by insurance. Also we will discuss with you whether you should have insurance to meet any liability to pay another party’s charges and disbursements incurred.
You should immediately check whether you have insurance policies which provide cover for some or all of your legal costs concerning this matter. If you do, then you should immediately notify the insurer(s) about this matter. If you delay in informing them then they may refuse to accept the claim and this would mean you would be responsible to pay all the charges and expenses incurred.
We are 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 Sarah Astbury on 0121 7203011 or by email sarahastbury@seymourlegal.co.uk or by post to Seymour Legal Suite 10 Gemini House, Stourport Road, Kidderminster, Worcestershire DY11 7QL. We can provide you with a copy of our full complaints procedure if requested. We have eight weeks to consider your complaint.
Complaints may be made about the service provided or an invoice we have sent you. Our invoices contain a brief summary of the work that we have undertaken for you and the Disbursements and costs that have been paid out your behalf in relation to the matters on which you have asked us to act. A more detailed description of the work undertaken can be provided if needed. We do however retain the right to charge interest on any bill or part thereof (see Clause 13).
If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you may be eligible to have the complaint independently considered by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about poor service from lawyers. You will have to bring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final response from us about your complaint. The time limits for referring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman will be no later than:
The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are as follows:
Calls from both mobiles and landlines to 03 numbers cost no more than calls to national geographic numbers (starting 01 or 02). Calls are recorded and may be used for training and monitoring purposes.
Do not send original documents to the Legal Ombudsman. They will scan any documents you send to make computer copies and then destroy the originals.
As solicitors we are permitted to put a reasonable limit on our liability to our clients provided that:
Our liability to you shall therefore be limited as follows:
i. £3 million for all claims and losses resulting from one act error or omission, subject to aggregate limits of;
ii. £3 million for all claims and losses arising from a series of related acts errors or omissions;
iii. £3 million for all claims and losses resulting from a series of acts errors or omissions arising out of or attributable to the same originating cause, source or event; or
iv. £3 million for all claims arising from the same or similar act error or omission in a series of related matters or transactions.
The territorial scope of our professional indemnity insurance cover for offices in England & Wales is worldwide. A copy of our certificate of insurance is available upon request.
If you have a claim against us for any loss or damage for which someone else (including you) could also be liable, our liability to you in those circumstances shall be limited to a just and equitable proportion of the loss or damage in question after liability for it has been apportioned between everyone responsible and for the purposes of this clause:
We shall not be liable to you for any failure to provide our services caused by matters beyond our reasonable control.
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. If, while we are acting for you, you need advice on investments or other regulated activities within the meaning of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, we may have to refer you to someone who is authorised to provide the necessary advice. However, we may provide certain limited investment advice services where these are closely linked to your legal matter. This is because we are members of the Law Society of England and Wales, which is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
We are an ancillary insurance intermediary which means we can arrange insurance contracts for our clients. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Conduct Authority so that we can carry on insurance distribution activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, are subject to the jurisdiction of the Legal Ombudsman.
The register can be accessed via the Financial Conduct Authority website at www.fca.org.uk/firms/financial- services-register.”
If you are unhappy with any investment or insurance advice you receive from us, you should raise your concerns with the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority. Please also see Clause 14 of these terms of business.
The firm has effected professional indemnity insurance cover which meets or exceeds the requirements of the SRA. In the event of any failure by the Firm to meet its liabilities, apart from such insurance, the Solicitors’ Compensation Fund is in place, from which grants may be given to those who have suffered loss by reason of the dishonesty of a solicitor or an employee in connection with a solicitor’s firm or in connection with a trust of which the solicitor is a trustee.
All UK law firms are subject to reporting, disclosure and other requirements imposed by the UK regulators or laws, such as concerns HM Revenue and Customs, money-laundering, the proceeds of crime and terrorist financing. These requirements can override our usual duty of confidentiality to you. In addition, these requirements may oblige us to ask you to provide us with information that may be relevant for legal or regulatory purposes at any time. Any failure by you to provide any information of this sort shall entitle us to cancel this Contract on giving immediate written notice to you.
We are required by statute to make a disclosure to the National Crime Agency where we know or suspect that a transaction may involve money laundering or terrorist financing. If we make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we are not able to tell you that a disclosure has been made and we may have to stop working on your matter for a period of time and may not be able to tell you why.
Despite our best efforts to prevent our firm and our clients falling victim to fraudulent criminal activity, such incidents can occur. As soon as we become aware that client funds may have been misappropriated, it is essential that we act quickly and inform the bank, the police and our professional indemnity insurers immediately to start investigations and recover funds. Depending on the circumstances, it may be necessary to give the bank, the police and the insurers your details and certain details of your matter to aid their investigations. It may also be necessary to allow an assessor or another person unconnected with our firm access to your file. Although we would normally only disclose this information after obtaining your specific consent, our priority will be to recover your funds and prevent any further losses. We will therefore assume that happy for us to do this unless you inform us otherwise.
We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and comply with the SRA Standards and Regulations which can be accessed via the SRA website at www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/
We have the following rights to cancel this Contract on giving immediate written notice:
In some circumstances our rules of professional conduct may require that we cease to act.
You may immediately terminate the Contract in writing at any time if you wish us to stop acting for you. For contentious matters, if we are on the record at Court as acting for you in any proceedings, the consent of the Court may be required before we can be removed from the record and, to that extent, your right to terminate our retainer may be restricted.
We may also cancel the Contract:
Circumstances that might justify our ceasing to act for you under the first two bullet points above would include a non-payment of any of our invoices, your failure to make any payment on account or to settle any Disbursements or costs which we have requested, or your failure to give us the instructions that we might reasonably expect in relation to your matter(s).
We reserve the right to stop acting at any time in the event of rude or abusive conduct being directed against any member of staff.
In the event that we cancel the Contract and cease acting for you, we shall be entitled to charge you a fee for all the time spent by us up to cancellation, and all the Disbursements and costs we have incurred or may be liable for up to that point in time. If it is not possible to calculate our fee with reference to a Quotation that we have given, our fee shall be calculated on the basis of our hourly rates.
Unless otherwise terminated, our retainer will end when our work on the matter is completed and our final statement of account is rendered.
We are entitled to retain our files and any documents we are holding on your behalf until you have paid all our invoices. Unless you have already asked us to return any papers to you, we shall keep all files relating to your completed matters in storage, either in their original form or on some other retrievable medium, in accordance with our data retention and erasure policy, a copy of which is available on request. Any deeds shall be retained for not less than 12 years. After the end of the applicable period, those files will be destroyed, although this shall not apply to any original documents that you have specifically asked us in writing to keep in safe custody for you.
We do not normally make a charge for retrieving stored papers which relate to current matters, although we reserve the right to charge you for any time spent in retrieving papers relating to completed matters and for any time spent in reading the file, writing letters, or doing any other work at your request.
If you ask us to send any documents to anyone else, we shall not be liable for any loss or damage that occurs to those documents after they leave our possession. You should also note that, unless we believe it might be appropriate to do so we will not ordinarily make copies of any lengthy or bulky documentation which we send to anyone else, unless you specifically ask us to do so, and pay our copying charges.
Unless otherwise agreed, we may use conventional (unencrypted) email to communicate with you and anyone else that is involved in any matter on which you instruct us. You acknowledge that conventional email may present security risks in certain circumstances and you shall be taken to have accepted those risks unless you tell us not to use that means of communication. If you would like us to use encrypted email for communication purposes you should notify us in writing. We will endeavour to do so, but this shall also be subject to us making the necessary arrangements with you and any other recipients.
If you do not want us to fax you at any fax number where we might ordinarily think you may be contactable, you must inform us of this in writing and provide us with any fax number(s) you wish us to use.
Please note that in order to protect the integrity and security of our IT systems, we may prohibit the receipt and opening of certain types of electronic files by our staff and you should note our internal IT procedures may also impose a delay on our ability to open and deal with certain types of electronic files.
Please note that we may record and monitor telephone, fax and email communications that are made to or from our offices and staff for the purposes of the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interceptions of Communications) Regulations 2000.
If we should recommend the services of anyone to you such as accountants, surveyors, trade mark and patent agents, foreign lawyers or anyone else, we shall do so in good faith and this shall be the sole extent of our liability with regard to the recommendation in question. We express no opinion on the suitability of the recommendation. You must undertake your own investigate and rely upon your own assessment to satisfy yourself as to the suitability, qualification and ability of any professional, service or service provider.
If we receive requests for information of an auditing nature from you, your accountants or auditors, we may address our response to you and we may charge you for the time spent in addressing these enquiries at our normal hourly rates.
External firms or organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our firm to ensure compliance with mandatory requirements such as the regulatory standards and/or voluntary standards to which we are certificated or may apply for certification. Such external firms or organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your files. We operate our own in-house file review process to ensure our own strict quality standards are adhered to and personnel involved in the review process are bound by the firm’s confidentiality obligations.
Unless we specifically agree to the contrary in writing, we shall act only on your behalf in relation to the work that we do for you and the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 shall not apply.
Any legal advice that we give you is for your own use only and we shall not be liable to anyone else in relation to that advice (including anyone that you pass or transmit it to) unless we expressly agree to be liable to the recipient(s) in writing or the law imposes such liability on us. To the extent that the law imposes on us such responsibility to any third parties, our liability to them shall be limited in accordance with Clauses 15 and 16 and a single limit as set out in Clause 15 shall be shared between such third parties and you.
The information which you provide to us is confidential. We use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal services based on your instructions. Our confidentiality obligations are also subject to legislation requiring disclosure to certain regulators as outlined in Clause 18. Please also note the reference in Clause 18 to disclosure in the event of a cyber crime/fraud attack.
In order to provide you with legal services, for the administration of our files and records and, if you agree, to enable us to send you information about other services the firm offers, we will be processing (using and storing) your personal data, which includes information that identifies you, such as your name, address, job title and contact information. In some cases, we may also process special categories of personal data, such as your health records, racial or ethnic origins, political or religious beliefs and/or criminal conviction and offence records.
We may be required to process your personal data in order to comply with our obligations under legislation such as the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, the Criminal Finances Act 2017, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act 2010 (for clients with US ‘person’ status) and under common law. We may, on occasion, be required to share your personal data with the relevant authorities. This processing of your personal data is to comply with the law, and we would be unable to act for you without doing so.
In addition, we may process your personal data on the basis that we have a contract with you. Alternatively, in some instances we may have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data.
Whenever we are processing special categories of personal data, and/or criminal conviction and offence records, we will only use that data to deliver the services you have instructed us to provide.
All your personal data will be processed, and erased, in accordance with our Data Retention and Erasure Policy, a copy of which is available upon request from our Data Protection Officer Sarah Astbury, Email sarahastbury@seymourlegal.co.uk Seymour Legal, Suite 10 Gemini House, Stourport Road, Kidderminster Worcestershire DY11 7QL Telephone number 0121 7203351.
In addition to our firm we may, when required and necessary, share your personal data with other organisations. Depending on the work we are undertaking for you the other organisations may include:
All of the above are located in the UK.
We use cloud storage for client files. Our cloud software provider is LEAP. LEAP’s cloud infrastructure is provided and maintained by Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services complies with internationally recognised standards, the EU Data Protection Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
We should like to send you information about our services which we believe may be of interest to you. If you consent to being contacted on this basis, please tick the box on our Marketing Opt-In Request form, sign and date the document and send it to us. We may contact you by mail, telephone, email or text. If, at a later date, you change your mind you may opt-out of receiving marketing information from us. To opt-out please either write to our Data Protection Officer, whose name and address are above, or send an email to hello@seymourlegal.co.uk with “Stop Marketing” in the subject line.
You have the right of access to your personal data and to verify the lawfulness of the processing. If you would like a copy of your personal data that we are processing please contact our Data Protection Officer [if preferred, use an alternative title], whose name and address are above. Kindly note, we will need to verify your identity before responding to your request. Normally we make no charge for doing this and will endeavour to send it to you within 1 month of receipt of your request. If you notice that any of the information we send you is inaccurate or incomplete, please tell us and we will rectify it promptly.
If you are dissatisfied with our response you may complain to a supervisory authority which, in the UK, is the ICO, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. The ICO’s website is at https://ico.org.uk/ There may also be judicial remedies available to you.
We will not erase or restrict the processing of your personal data during the period in which we have a legal obligation to retain that data under the applicable Act, Regulations or in common law.
Where we obtained your personal data to fulfil our contractual obligations to you, or if we have a legitimate interest for processing your personal data for the exercise or defence of legal claims, we will erase that data as soon as it is no longer necessary to retain it in relation to the purpose for which it was originally collected. Please see our Data Retention and Erasure Policy for timescales.
If you consented to our using your personal data for marketing purposes, we will erase the data used for that purpose if and when you inform us that you wish to withdraw your consent.
We are committed to ensuring that all information we hold about you is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have implemented appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and protect that information.
Other data controller recipients of your personal data are each responsible for implementing appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and protect that information, and to keep it secure.
Data processor recipients of your personal data have provided sufficient guarantees that they have implemented measures to ensure compliance with the GDPR and to protect your rights.
We will not transfer your personal data overseas. We retain the copyright and all other intellectual property rights in all documents provided by us to you. We grant you a non-exclusive licence to use such documents for the matter for which they are provided.
In property matters when acting for you as a purchaser, we are also acting for your proposed lender (if any) and as such we have a duty to fully reveal to your lender all relevant facts about the purchase and mortgage. This includes:
Your lender will require us to submit on your behalf the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) return and the payment of any SDLT due from you to HMRC. Your lender will also require is us to submit the application to register the transfer of the property to you and to register the mortgage or charge against the title to the property. The payment of SDLT and the registration of the property following transfer and/or mortgage are statutory requirements.
If you have been referred to us by an introducer with whom we have a financial arrangement:
We are prevented by the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct from making secret profit from our relationship with you. If any occasion arises where there is potential for us to earn commission, for instance if we introduce you to another firm to undertake work for you which we cannot do ourselves, we will establish a separate written agreement to deal with the acceptance and allocation of any commission arising.
We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in all of our dealings with clients, third parties and employees. Please contact us if you would like a copy of our equality and diversity policy.
At Seymour Legal, we are committed to the prevention of bribery and corruption and take our compliance responsibilities very seriously. In accordance with legislation applicable to us, we have implemented appropriate policies, training and procedures across our offices to ensure compliance with the law.
This Contract incorporates and replaces all previous representations and agreements between us whether written or oral. We and you acknowledge that in entering into this Contract we and you do not rely on any statement, representation, assurance or warranty (whether made innocently or negligently) that is not set out in this Contract.
Unless otherwise agreed, and subject to the application of then current hourly rates, these Terms shall apply to any future instructions given by you to this firm.
Although your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to an acceptance of these Terms of Business, it may not be possible to start work on your behalf until you have signed either a copy of these terms or the accompanying covering letter.
Any dispute or legal issue arising from our Terms will be determined by the law of England and Wales and considered exclusively by the English and Welsh courts.
These Terms shall be deemed to be accepted upon the earlier of: