Client Legal Solutions – Terms & Conditions

Whatever legal services we are providing, we must:

• Act competently, in a timely way, and in accordance with instructions received and arrangements made
• Protect and promote your interests and act for you free from compromising influences or loyalties
• Discuss with you your objectives and how they should best be achieved
• Provide you with information about the work to be done, who will do it and the way the services will be provided
• Charge you a fee that is fair and reasonable and let you know how and when you will be billed
• Provide you with clear information and advice
• Protect your privacy and ensure appropriate confidentiality
• Treat you fairly, respectfully and without discrimination
• Keep you informed about the work being performed and advise you when it is completed
• Let you know how to make a complaint and deal with any complaint promptly and fairly.

The obligations lawyers owe to clients are described in the Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers. Those obligations are subject to other overriding duties, including duties to the courts and to the justice system. If you have any questions, please visit www.lawsociety.org.nz or call 0800 261 801.

Our directors have overall responsibility for the services we provide for you, but the general conduct of the matter may be undertaken by others within our firm.

To the extent permitted by law, our total and combined liability to you (and any other person) in connection with any matter on which you engage us is limited to:

• If such liability is covered by our insurance, the amount paid to us and/or available to be paid out by our insurer for that liability under the relevant insurance held by us; and
• In any other case, the lesser of $200,000 and an amount equal to five times the fees paid to us (excluding disbursements and GST) for the matter.

The limit applies to all kinds of liability whether in contract, tort (including negligence), statutory, equity or otherwise, and accrues to the benefit of any partner, director, employee, or agent of ours who may have acted in connection with the matter.

Our scope of work will be set out in our engagement letter or email. Our involvement is limited to advice about legal matters under New Zealand law. Accounting, tax, and financial advice fall outside the scope of our engagement and expertise. The advice we give you is solely for your purposes and may not be relied on by any other person unless we agree to that in writing.

Our firm holds a policy of professional indemnity insurance with a liability limit for any one event of no less than $2,000,000.

We will hold in strict confidence all information that we acquire through our work for you, and which concerns your business or personal information. The only exceptions are where you authorise us to disclose such information or where we must do so by law.

The fees we expect to charge, or how they will be calculated, will be set out in our engagement letter or email. Our fees will be fair and reasonable, having regard to the circumstances of the matter and the nature of our work for you. While the time and resources involved will be important factors, we will also consider the results achieved and the urgency, level of skill, complexity, value of transaction, responsibility, and specialist knowledge involved, as outlined in Rule 9.1 of the Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.

We will provide a fee estimate or fixed fee for your work if you ask us to and we are able to do so. Our estimates are based on the following standard assumptions:

• The information you give us about your matter is complete and accurate
• Your matter will proceed in the manner, and within the timeframes, contemplated in your instructions
• You give us all other information we require and respond to our questions in a timely manner
• There are no prolonged negotiations, and all other parties involved in the matter co-operate and respond in a timely manner
• No unforeseen issues arise.

Our estimates are given in good faith and are based on our experience with similar matters. We may charge fees above our estimate if additional work is required, or if any of our assumptions prove to be incorrect.

Work which falls outside the agreed scope will be charged on an hourly rate basis. We will advise you as soon as reasonably practicable if this becomes necessary, and, if requested and possible, give you an estimate of the amount of the further costs.

Where work is to be charged on an hourly basis, we will endeavour to invoice you on a regular basis to keep you up to date with costs. Our hourly charge out rates may change over time to reflect changes in skill and experience, and the costs of running our firm. We reserve the right to update our charge out rates as appropriate.

GST is payable on our fees and on expenses and disbursements. All estimates and figures given by us are plus GST, unless specified otherwise.

In addition to our fees as above, we also charge an administration fee per file to contribute towards the costs of setting up your files, forms, postage, printing, and other general office expenses. The amount of this charge will be $60 including GST per file, unless otherwise agreed.

At times, we will need to incur expenses or make payments to others on your behalf to complete our work for you. These expenses also include costs completing any checks or enquiries to comply with our legal obligations (see AML below).

Our policy is to require money in advance to cover disbursements. Otherwise, they will be itemised on your account for payment with our fee.

We will send interim invoices to you, usually monthly, and on completion of the work or termination of our relationship. Our invoices are due for payment 14 days after the date of the invoice unless prior arrangements are made with us in writing. If an invoice is not paid within 30 days, we may charge interest calculated at the rate of 10% per annum.

If you pay an invoice by credit card, a surcharge of may be added to offset the commission charged by the credit card provider.

You are responsible for any debt collection costs we incur in recovering outstanding amounts. If your invoice remains outstanding after 60 days, we reserve the right to suspend all further work until your account is paid.

If we hold funds on your behalf, you authorise us to deduct our fees, expenses, and disbursements from those funds (unless they have been provided for a particular purpose) and send you an invoice as required by the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Trust Account) Regulations 2008.

There may be times where you have instructed us to send an invoice to a third party for payment (for example, your tenant). Where this occurs, you remain responsible for payment should that third party fail to pay.

You have the right to have our invoiced fee reviewed by the New Zealand Law Society. However, we invite you to raise any concerns with us first.

If we are holding significant funds on your behalf, at your request, we will place those funds in an interest-bearing deposit (IBD) with our bank. We cannot do this unless we have received the required completed bank forms from you. We may charge an administration fee of 5% of the gross interest earned for this service, together with our time in placing and uplifting these interest-bearing deposits on your behalf. It will generally be a question of judgment whether the costs of placing funds on IBD will be worth the net return from interest expected to be earned in that period.

We are required to retain a copy of your file for at least seven years. After that time, we may destroy or delete those files without contacting you.

You authorise us to hold all your information electronically. We may destroy physical files and documents earlier if we keep an electronic copy of them. However, we will not destroy any documents we hold in safe custody for you – for example, original wills, trust deeds, enduring powers of attorney, relationship property separation agreements, contracting out agreements, and other important documents held in secure storage on your behalf. There is no additional cost for this service and no charge for retrieving those documents from our office at your request.

You have the right to terminate our services at any time on any matter. Provided that you have paid all our invoices on all matters, we will (on request) provide you with all the documents and files we hold on your behalf. We may, on reasonable notice to you, end our engagement at any time should the client/lawyer relationship break down for any reason.

We have a procedure for complaints to ensure any problem is dealt with promptly and fairly. If you feel comfortable, please direct your complaint to the person in our firm who you have been dealing with. If you prefer, you can contact our Practice Manager Geoff Snowsill on 03 548 2269 or by email: g.snowsill@clientlegal.co.nz. Alternatively, you may like to contact Director Gerard Praat by email: g.praat@clientlegal.co.nz.

The NZ Law Society also operates a Lawyers Complaints Service, and you can receive assistance or make a complaint by using the following:

• 0800 261 801
• https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/for-the-public/complaining-about-a-lawyer
• complaints@lawsociety.org.nz

The NZ Law Society maintains the Lawyers Fidelity Fund to provide clients of lawyers with protection against losses arising from theft by lawyers.

The most the Fidelity Fund can compensate you is $100,000. The Fidelity Fund will not usually cover losses relating to money a lawyer is instructed to invest on behalf of a client.