Client Care and Terms of Business

Client Care #

1.         Contact details #

You will be informed who in our Family team will be handling the day-to-day matters that arise in connection with the preparation case.  Balraj Singh Jagdev will be supervising this matter for the purposes of Legal Aid and will be assisted by members of staff from time to time.

2.         Business hours #

Our normal office hours are between 9:00am and 5.30pm Monday to Friday. You can contact us outside these hours by email or by leaving a telephone message.

3.         Fees #

3.1       Scope of work #

The work that we will undertake for you will include:

As per the Scope of work identified in the legal aid certificate which you will be notified of in due course.

3.2       Legal Assistance #

We confirm that we have made an application for Assistance through the Civil Legal or such an application will be made within a reasonable period of time subject to your eligibility.

3.3     Costs     #

Our charges will be claimed from the Civil Legal Aid Fund rather than from yourself, however if any money or property is recovered or preserved for you during these proceedings the Contractual Charge may apply, which means our charges may be deducted from any money or property recovered by you. You cannot however be worse off than had you not received Legal Funding

We enclose herewith our Civil Legal Aid Information, which provide further details and we would draw your attention to the paragraphs marked.

We would also remind you that you are under a duty to advise us of any changes in circumstances, which may affect your eligibility to receive Legal Funding, and any change in your address.

As for the total costs we would advise that under the terms of your certificate a limitation has been placed on the costs to be incurred in the sum of a sum to be advised this includes Disbursements but not VAT.  If we have applied for urgent funding we shall let you know of the out come of the application shortly.

We anticipate that Costs will be in the Region of £1,000 to £25,000 including Disbursements and VAT, subject to any variation by written communication with you.

We can however apply for extensions to this limit dependent upon the circumstances of the case and we will keep you fully advised and informed should this be necessary

It is difficult at the outset to estimate how long a matter of this nature may take to complete.  This is dependent upon several factors including the behaviour of the other party, the complexity of issues and the requirements of Mediation.  Given the information available to us now we do not anticipate that this matter should take more than 12 months to complete.

3.4       Quotations or estimates provided #

It is a Legal Aid Agency requirement that you are given details of your costs together with details of disbursements incurred at least every six months so that you may be aware of the costs of the work undertaken on your behalf, and to ensure that you are aware of the level of the contractual charge which may apply to your case.

4.         Complaints #

Jagdev Legal  is committed to high quality legal advice and client care. If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you receive, or about the bill, please contact Balraj Singh Jagdev on 0121 320 2053 (option 2), via email at balraj@jagdevlegal.co.uk or by post immediately so that we can do our best to resolve the problem for you. We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints, available at the office.

Legal Ombudsman

If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman.  The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers. Normally, 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.  If you would like more information about this service, including the time limits for taking a case to them, please contact the Legal Ombudsman directly.  You can find out more about their service by visiting www.legalobmudsman.org.uk or contacting them on 0300 555 0333.

Complaints about bill

You also have the right to challenge or complain about our bill and apply for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. The Legal Ombudsman may not deal with a complaint about the bill if you have applied to the court for an assessment of the bill. We reserve our rights to charge interest at 8 % on an unpaid bill.

5.         Regulatory status #

We are regulated and authorised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

We are not authorised by the Financial Services Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Services Authority so that we can carry on insurance mediation activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The register can be accessed via the Financial Services Authority website at http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register. 

Terms of Business #

7.         Service levels  #

We will update you in writing/by email/by telephone fortnightly/monthly/after agreed events with progress on your transaction. We will also update you on the likely timescales for each stage of this matter.

In acting for you in this matter, we will:

• review your matter regularly;
  • advise you of any changes in the law relevant to your matter; and
  • advise you of any circumstances and risks of which we are aware of consider to be reasonably foreseeable that could affect the outcome of your matter.

You are responsible for:

• providing us with clear, timely and accurate instructions;
  • providing us with all documentation required to complete the transaction in a timely matter; and
  • safeguard any documents that are likely to be required for disclosure.

8.         Limitation of liability #

Content Scotland’s liability is limited under a scheme provided by Amlin Trust Europe.

Our liability to you for a breach of your instructions shall be limited to £2 million. 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.

9.         Confidentiality and disclosure #

9.1       Outsourcing of work #

Sometimes we ask other companies or people to do typing/photocopying/other 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.

9.2       Auditing and vetting of files #

External firms or organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice from time to time. They may wish to audit/quality check your file and related papers for this purpose. It is a specific requirement imposed by us that these external firms or organisations fully maintain confidentiality in relation to any files and papers which are audited/quality checked by them. Your files may also be reviewed in a due diligence exercise relating to the sale or transfer of all or part of our business, the acquisition of another business by us or the acquisition of new business. If you do not wish your file to be used in this way, please let us know as soon as possible.

9.3       Cloud computing #

We use cloud storage for client files. Our cloud software provider is LEAP.  LEAP’s cloud infrastructure is provided and maintained by industry leading cloud-platform provider Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services demonstrates a commitment to information security at every level of the organisation and complies with internationally recognised standards, the EU Data Protection Directive, Regulation and the Data Protection Act 1998.  If you object to your files/other details being stored in this way, please let us know.

10.       Data protection #

We use the information you provide 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;
  • legal and regulatory compliance.

Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the Data Protection Act 1998, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), and our duty of confidentiality. Please note that our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as expert witnesses and other professional advisers. You have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you.

We may from time to time send you information that we think might be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive that information, please notify our office in writing.

11.       Storage of documents #

After completing the work, we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for fees and expenses.

We will keep our file of your papers for up to 6 years, except those papers that you ask to be returned to you. We keep files on the understanding that we can destroy them 6 years after the date of the final bill. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody.

If we take papers or documents out of storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act for you, we will not normally charge for such retrieval.

12.       Terminating the retainer #

You may end your instructions to us in writing at any time, but we can keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for fees and expenses.

We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.

If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, you will pay our charges up until that point. These are calculated on an hourly basis plus expenses/by proportion of the agreed fee as set out above.

13.       Anti-money laundering and terrorist financing #

The Money Laundering Regulations require solicitors to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identity of their clients and, where there is a beneficial owner who is not the client, the beneficial owner. This is because solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their client can be targeted by criminals attempting to launder money.

To comply with the law, we need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon as possible. Our practice is to obtain Photo ID (Driving licence and or passport) and proof of address (Utility bill or bank statement). 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.

Making a disclosure

We are professionally and legally obliged to keep your affairs confidential. However, solicitors may be required by statute to make a disclosure to the National Crime Agency where they know or suspect that a transaction may involve money laundering or terrorist financing. If we make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we may not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made. We may have to stop working on your matter for a period of time and may not be able to tell you why.

14.       Transfer of funds #

Our practice’s policy is not to accept cash from clients/to only accept cash up to £2,000.

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.

Acceptance of retainer #

To accept this retainer please email us with to confirm acceptance.