Our Terms and Conditions
Responsibility for Your Matter
Your matter will be conducted by Mr. Tariq Maroof, Principal Solicitor, who will have overall responsibility for your case, assisted by other staff at this firm. We are available during normal business hours except weekends, bank holidays and religious festivals.
Hours of Business
Our hours of business are Monday to Friday between 09:30 am-05:30 pm; visits are by appointment only. Our office is also closed from 23 December to 4 January every year for Christmas and New Year holidays.
If Mr. Tariq Maroof is not available to attend to you by telephone, please speak to Mrs. Naveeda Nadeem who is an assistant/secretary, will be able to help you, or please do leave a message with the nature of enquiry and we will return your call as soon as we are able to do so. Alternatively, you can contact us directly via email.
Communications
You may contact us by post or by phone during our normal office hours. Should you need a meeting for any purpose with regard to your ongoing matter, please make an appointment after calling our office. In case of emergency, we will attend to you on a preferential basis. Any visits without appointments and unnecessary calls are not welcomed and may be charged because that wastes our time which could be spent on your files.
Out of office hours and out of office premises meetings can be arranged if necessary and appropriate in the circumstances. However, those meetings are normally charged. The charges will be agreed upon beforehand.
We don’t provide a guarantee of a successful outcome. However, we will explain to you the issues raised in your matter and keep you informed of progress. We will advise you as your case progresses and will explain the likely charges and expenses and risks involved from time to time as necessary.
Basis of agreed fees
You have agreed to pay the legal charges by agreeing to a fixed fee or hourly rate basis for work in accordance with your initial instructions. We don’t provide legal aids and therefore do not advise clients seeking legal aid.
Limitations on This Firm’s Willingness or Ability to Act
We cannot be held responsible for the advice given on your immigration matter if any of the information regarding your matter provided to us is false, inaccurate or incomplete. As a Solicitors’ firm that is regulated and authorised by the SRA, we cannot compromise our integrity by involvement in a dishonest or a dubious transaction. We therefore cannot take such instructions and will cease to act in your matter if we discover that our involvement is becoming compromised.
Costs & expenses
We will work on your matter on a fixed fee basis. In your case, an agreement has been arranged between yourself and this firm. We expect you to pay your fees as per the agreement made, on time in accordance with our Terms of Business. Your money will not be held on account as the money may be held and used as part of the firm’s own money in the business account.
The total cost for dealing with your matter is quoted in Annexe A (which is attached to our client care letter with the mode of payment). The fee in relation to the work done by the firm will be a fixed fee as agreed and is in accordance with our Terms of Business. No VAT has been charged on this fee.
It is your duty to pay your costs and our fees. If for any reason, we are not paid then we reserve the right not to carry out any further work.
This is a fixed fee agreement that covers legal work related to your matter only that quoted in Annex-A. Please note this fee does not include any additional work that we may have to carry out apart from which is set out in Annex-A (e.g. further applications, representation, reapply, review, appeals, hearings in any court or tribunal, any extra work which was not part of initial instructions or any other nature of work). If that is the case and the terms of your retainer have substantially altered, we will advise you of our fees at that stage.
Our charges are based on the time we spend dealing with a case. Time spent on your affairs will include meetings with you and perhaps others including any time spent travelling, considering, filing and working on papers, correspondence and making and receiving telephone calls.
In addition to the time spent, we may take into account a number of factors which include the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken, the expertise or specialist knowledge that the case requires and if appropriate, the value of the property or subject matter involved. On the basis of the information available, we expect these factors to be adequately covered by our agreed fixed fee set out above. We will inform you if any unforeseen additional work becomes necessary (for example if the circumstances significantly change during the course of the matter) and will also inform you of its estimated cost before any extra charges and expenses are incurred and will not continue without first obtaining your consent. If you have any queries about the level of any revised fees notified to you, please contact us immediately.
Other parties costs and disbursements
Where it is necessary to instruct third parties e.g. Barristers and others to act on your behalf, we will do so on your behalf and you will be responsible for the payment of their fees. We will let you have details of these as soon as it becomes apparent that we need to incur any expense. However, before we instruct them, we will discuss the matter with you for your consent.
If we instruct others to act for us, we will choose them carefully but we cannot be held responsible for their work. However, if you are unhappy with the service provided by a third party for any reason you should notify us immediately.
Financial Clean Break
The fees whatever you have paid will not be refunded once the work started on your matter is under the fixed fee agreement. No part of the fee will be refundable if your case/application is ultimately rejected by the Home Office/UKBA/British High Commission/Tribunal/Court although we will advise you with regard to any objection or queries raised by them, any endeavour to resolve them if possible. Our services will end when the Home Office/UKBA/British High Commission/Tribunal/Court reached its decision, and we have reported to you on the outcome of the case.
OUR OUTSTANDING FEES (IF ANY TILL THEN) WILL STILL HAVE TO BE PAID BY YOU.
Billing Arrangements
Our normal procedure is for an invoice to be sent out after the money has been received by us. Please note that payment is due immediately upon receiving instructions from you and/or as agreed in your initial meeting with us. If the invoice remains outstanding for more than 15 days after it has been rendered, we reserve the right to charge you interest on all amounts due to us from the date of issue until payment at the permissible legal rate. If you think you will be unable to pay promptly for any reason, either generally or on any specific occasion, we ask that you inform us fully in advance, or obtain our agreement to any required variation. We also reserve the right to cease to do any further work on your case until our invoice has been settled in full.
We reserve the right to exercise a lien on your file for unpaid costs without accepting any liability arising out of retaining your papers and any documents in the event that you fail to pay our bills in full. We may also take the necessary court action against you to recover any funds that are due to us.
Please note that present economic circumstances make it necessary for us to charge interest on bills that are not paid within that time at the rate of 15% of the outstanding amount from the date when payment became due. If you have any queries about your bill, contact us immediately.
Third Party Charges & Expenses
It is important that you understand that you will be responsible for paying our bill(s). Even if you are successful the other party may not be ordered to pay all your charges and expenses, or these may not be recovered from them in full. If the other party is legally aided, you may not get back any of your charges and expenses even if you win the case.
In some circumstances, the court may order you to pay the other party’s legal charges and expenses, for example, if you are unsuccessful in the case. The money would be payable in addition to our charges and expenses. We have/will discuss(ed) with you whether your liability for another party’s charges and expenses may be covered by insurance, and if not, whether it would be advisable for you to have insurance to meet the other party’s charges and expenses.
Progress of Your Matter
We will keep you informed regarding the progress of your case. We will discuss with you any different options that may arise. However, we are unable to speed up the queue system at the UK Border Agency or the Tribunals/Courts. Rest assured though, if and when we hear from them, we will contact you without delay.
You will provide us with clear, timely and accurate instructions. You will inform us in writing of any changes in your circumstances affecting your case. You will provide all documentation required to complete the matter in a timely manner. You will safeguard any documents which are likely to be required.
It is your responsibility to provide us with accurate contact details for you and to inform us immediately if these details change. It may delay your case if we are unable to contact you with urgent matters.
E-mails: Unless you instruct us not to, we may use the e-mail address(es) you have provided to us to contact you or anyone involved in the work we do for you.
Proof of Identification and Anti-Money Laundering Policy
The law requires Solicitors to get satisfactory evidence of the identity of their clients and sometimes people related to them. This is because Solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their clients can be used by criminals wanting to launder money. To comply with the law, we need to get evidence of your identity as soon as possible.
It is our practice to request a copy of your identification document and two proof of address documents. Your identity document should include your name and date of birth. Proof of address documents should include your name and address and should be the most recent documents. If you have difficulty providing the specific identification requested, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss other ways to verify your identity. Upon your failure to comply with this requirement we may refuse to act for you. Sometimes, some searches are required for this purpose. In that case, you will be responsible for costs.
Confidentiality
We are professionally and legally obliged to keep your affairs confidential. We will treat all the information provided to us as confidential unless you instruct otherwise. Please note that there is no confidentiality between joint clients.
However, Solicitors may be required by statute to make a disclosure to the Serious Organised 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.
Occasionally to comply with Bank of England sanctions and guidelines from the Financial Action Task Force on money laundering, there may be additional checks and documents required if you are a national or resident of certain countries. We may also check the details you provide with electronic databases.
Storage and Retrieval of Documents
As advised, after completing the work, we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents until you have settled all fees and expenses. Upon discharge of these fees your documents will be returned to you. We will keep your file of papers (except for any papers that you have requested to be returned to you) for a period of 6 years from the date of the last work done on your file and will be destroyed thereafter if your instructions are not otherwise. We will not destroy documents you have asked us to deposit in safe custody. There is an administrative cost for storage and retrieval of documents from the storage, copying or production of old record. We may charge you for time spent producing stored papers or documents to you or another person at your request. We may also charge for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with the instructions given by you or on your behalf. The normal costs for retrieval and storage of documents will be of £35.00 and if we are asked to post the papers to yourself or to your new representative the charges will be £45.00 payable in advance. Cost for additional copies of the documents or file will be £25.00 for each bundle. In case, you require us to provide you any copy of the documents, we would charge for producing such additional photocopies at 50p per copy A4 black and white and at 75p per copy A4 for colour copies.
Termination of Instructions
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 owing to us for our fees, charges and expenses. In some circumstances, you may consider we ought to stop acting for you, for example, if you cannot give clear or proper instructions on how we are to proceed, or if it is clear that you have lost confidence in how we are carrying out your work. We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reasons, for example, if you do not pay an interim bill or you fail to cooperate or there is a conflict of interest. In such circumstances, we shall 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 or any mutually agreed amount. These are calculated on an increased hourly basis at £300 per hour as explained below plus other costs and expenses/by payment of a proportion of the agreed fee whichever is the greater as set out in these terms and conditions.
Minimum Charges
If you have given your final instructions to carry out legal work and we have opened the file by allocating a reference number to your file, a minimum charge of £250.00 per file as consultation, attendance and file administration fee plus any disbursements would be payable by you even the matter does not proceed further.
Once we have commenced legal work on your instructions and instructions are withdrawn or retainer-ship is terminated before completion of this work for any reason, you will be responsible to pay the minimum charges and disbursements made or incurred on your behalf plus our charges which will be calculated at the rate explained in paragraph (Fees and Charges).
The Firm’s policy will be that you will pay for all the disbursements and work done on your file before the transfer, the charging basis is set out in the Fees paragraph below. In certain circumstances, the release of the file of papers and other documents may be possible to a subsequently instructed solicitor provided that an undertaking of payment of all charges has first been given in a form acceptable to the Firm and its sole and absolute discretion.
Fees and Charges
Our fee
Unless and until an alternative fee arrangement had been agreed and confirmed in writing, the basis for calculation of our fees is mainly by reference to the time spent by the fee earner dealing with the matter. The time charged for will be all the time necessarily spent, including attendance upon the client or other parties where necessary, consideration, preparation and work on the file papers, all correspondence, making/receiving telephone calls, attendance at court and all travelling/ waiting time.
Each fee earner’s time will be charged at an hourly rate which will reflect a number of factors including the Firm’s business running costs and expenses. The Firm’s hourly rates do not include VAT, which may be added up when an invoice is prepared for the appropriate amount:
- Consultation/Advice £150.00
- Principal Solicitor-per hour £190.00
- Solicitors, Associates and Legal Executives £120.00
- Costs Draftsman £97.00
- Routine Letters/emails, fax, phone calls — per item £17.50
Telephone calls made will be charged in units of 1/10th of an hour i.e. 6 minutes (£17.50) and for those, we received 1/20th of an hour i.e. 3 minutes (£8.75). Where clients’ instructions require that interview shall take place, or other work undertaken, necessarily outside normal office hours the firm reserves the right to increase the level of hourly rate or to charge for that specific work and charges will be calculated accordingly. You can control your legal costs by avoiding unnecessary attendance or telephone calls and keeping your calls to a reasonable length.
All of the above rates exclude any other charges and expenses which may be payable in addition to the above e.g. mileage, photocopying, expert reports and any similar external costs.
Applicable Law
These terms and any Client Care letter issued from time to time are governed by and shall be construed in accordance with English law and will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
Limiting our liability: We will only be liable to you for any loss arising out of or in connection with our work for you if the loss is caused by our negligence, breach of contract or misrepresentation. We will not be liable for any losses if they arise from our reasonably relying on any information or documents that are misleading, incomplete or not correct and it is not reasonable for us to have known that this was the case. If you have also instructed other advisors we will not be liable for any loss you suffer for any advice you received for which the other advisors alone responsible.
Conclusion
You will be deemed to have accepted these terms and conditions unless you raise any objections to the same immediately and in any event in writing within 7 days. Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business. Please note that our client care letter, if the need arises, will be required to be disclosed to a court to show the terms and conditions of our agreement with you in respect of your case.