Terms of Business

We will send you periodic bills for our services and expenses at appropriate intervals while the work is in progress (unless otherwise stated in our Engagement Letter, this will normally be every month). We will send a final bill after substantial completion of the engagement. We will also request payments in advance of completion of our work where invoiced as appropriate.

Our bills are payable by bank transfer within 7 days and we reserve the right to charge interest on the balance outstanding from the eighth day after delivery of the bill at an annual rate of 3% above HSBC Bank plc’s base lending rate from time to time (accrued on a daily basis). We also reserve the right to suspend work on any engagement where any bill is unpaid for more than 7 days.

Bank                            HSBC

Sort Code                    40 38 10

Account name             Boddy Matthews Ltd

Account Number         11464027

IBAN                            GB18HBUK40381011464027

SWIFT                         HBUKGB4108V

We are unable to accept or make payment in cash. We will make any payments to you by bank transfer. Please note we will not be held responsible for any liability arising out of funds being sent by any party to an incorrect account.

Even if someone else has agreed to pay or is responsible for paying all or part of your legal costs, we will normally address our bills to you and you will, in any event, be responsible for paying them.

We will account for any interest as appropriate.

We will not hold monies for you on account. We do not operate a client account.

You may at any time terminate our appointment in writing. You would have to pay for the work done and expenses incurred up to that time. We are entitled to keep all your property, including your papers and documents (stored on any media), while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses (see paragraph 8 above).

In addition, if any of the circumstances set out at 9.2(a) to (d) exist and you are an individual acting for purposes which are outside your business the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 will also apply. You have 14 days from signing the Engagement Contract to cancel your instructions without obligation to us. You may cancel the Engagement Contract by providing us with written notice stating you wish to cancel and confirming your name and full contact details, details of the date instructions were given and to whom at Boddy Matthews Solicitors. Such notice must arrive before the expiry of the 14-day cancellation period. You may wish to contract out of your cancellation rights if you require our services to start within 14 days of the Engagement Contract.

The circumstances referred to at 9.2 above are:

a)    We met with you somewhere other than at our offices and at that meeting we agreed to act in this matter.

b)    We met with you somewhere other than at our offices and at that meeting you asked whether we could act in this matter. At some point after that meeting we agreed to act.

c)     We personally and individually addressed you somewhere other than at our offices and immediately afterwards effected the Engagement Contract either at our offices or by telephone or email.

d)    We agreed to act for you in this matter during an event that we organised.

To exercise your statutory right to cancel where applicable please use the following form:

To: Boddy Matthews Solicitors c/o [Name of Partner] at [Partners’ email address] or Boddy Matthews Solicitors 7-11 High Street, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 9AA.

I/We* hereby give notice that I/We* cancel my/our* contract for the supply of the following service:

Ordered on*/ received on*  [Date]

Name of client(s):

Address of client(s)

Signature of client(s)

Date:

*delete as appropriate

We may decide to stop acting for you with good reason. For example, if you do not pay an interim bill, or a request for payment of disbursements is not complied with, or if you fail to give clear and proper instructions on how we are to proceed, or you give us instructions which conflict with our rules of professional conduct. We will notify you of any such decision.

If you or we decide that we will no longer act for you, you will pay our outstanding charges and expenses including those not yet billed.

Having regard to our legitimate interest in limiting the personal liability and exposure to litigation of individual employees, consultants and partners, you agree that you will not bring any claim, however arising, against any of our individual employees, consultants or partners personally in respect of losses which you suffer or incur, directly or indirectly, in connection with our services. The provisions of this paragraph 10.1 will not limit or exclude our liability for the acts or omissions of our employees, consultants or partners.

Where you have a number of advisers, including us, advising you in relation to an engagement, we may be prejudiced by any limitation or exclusion of liability that you agree with any of those other advisers. Accordingly, in order that our position is not so prejudiced, you agree that we will not be liable to you for any amount, however arising, which we would have been able to recover from any other person by way of indemnity, contribution or otherwise but are unable to recover because you agreed, or are treated as having agreed, with such other person any exclusion of or restriction on their liability.

We may, from time to time, agree with you that our aggregate liability in relation to an engagement is limited to an amount specified in the relevant Engagement Letter (a “Liability Cap”). Where a Liability Cap is agreed it will apply to our aggregate liability, however arising, to you for all losses (including costs and expenses) arising from or in connection with our services in relation to the relevant engagement.

For the purpose of paragraphs 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3, “however arising” covers all causes and actions giving rise to liability, whether arising by reason of negligence, misrepresentation (before and/or in the Engagement Contract), other tort, breach of contract, breach of statutory duty or otherwise.

We shall not be liable to you to the extent that we are unable to perform our services as a result of any cause beyond our reasonable control including without limitation industrial action (other than solely of our employees or consultants), act of God, war, riot, civil commotion, acts of terrorism, theft, malicious damage (other than of our employees), accident, failure or breakdown of plant, computers, machinery, systems or vehicles, fire, flood, extreme weather conditions, power failure or failure of telecommunications. In the event of any such occurrence affecting us, we shall notify you as soon as reasonably practicable.

Notwithstanding any other provisions of the Engagement Contract, the exclusions and limitations of liability referred to in the Engagement Contract will not affect our liability for fraud or otherwise to the extent prohibited by law.

We owe a duty of confidentiality to all our clients. You agree, however, that we may, when required by our insurers or other advisers (including our auditors), provide details to them of any engagement on which we have acted for you, and that we may also disclose confidential information relating to your affairs if required to do so by them or by law or the rules of any relevant professional body.

Sometimes we ask third parties to do typing or photocopying or other support services to ensure they are done promptly. We will always seek a confidentiality agreement with those suppliers but, if you do not want your documents or papers to be released to such suppliers, please let us know as soon as possible.

We comply with our anti-money laundering obligations including the Money Laundering Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 as amended by The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019 and 2022. We are regulated by the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS). Accordingly we are required to verify the identity of new clients and those instructing us on their behalf.  For this reason, we will check name, address and other personal information supplied by you and in some cases make checks against third party databases. This information may be disclosed to a credit reference or fraud prevention agency, which may keep a record of the information.

Although we owe a duty of confidentiality to all our clients, we may be required by law to make a disclosure to the National Crime Agency or other similar organisation where we know or suspect that a transaction may involve money laundering or terrorist financing. If we make a disclosure in relation to your engagements, we may be unable to tell you that a disclosure has been made and we may have to stop working on your engagement for a period of time and may not be able to tell you why.

Files and other papers relating to your engagements will be stored for such time as we judge reasonable (usually 6 years from the date our Engagement Contract ends) or for such time as we are required by law to do so, after which we may destroy them. Such files or papers will only be preserved in electronic format unless otherwise agreed. We will return original documents unless you consent to their destruction.

Unless we expressly agree otherwise the copyright in the original materials that we generate for you belong to us. However, subject to payment of our relevant charges you are permitted to make use of those materials only for the purposes for which they are created.

If you have the necessary facilities we will communicate with you by email, except to the extent that you instruct us not to do so. Documents sent to you by email (whether or not containing confidential information) will not be encrypted unless you request us, in writing, to encrypt outgoing mail and we are able to agree with you and implement mutually acceptable encryption standards and protocols. You acknowledge that we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of material included in non-encrypted email and that email may be susceptible to data corruption, transmission of computer viruses and other damaging items, interception or unauthorised amendment. We do not accept liability in connection with such matters and you agree to waive any claims in this regard.

We use an external hosted cloud based platform service. This means that our external cloud service provider will hold by your file and all confidential information arising from the work we do for you. Your details will be held on our electronic database and you have a right to access such personal information. We will use your details to provide legal services requested by you and for internal review purposes. Our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as expert witnesses, counsel and other professionals.

The protection and security of your personal data and your privacy is a matter of priority to us. We process your personal data lawfully under the grounds of contractual necessity, compliance with legal obligations and legitimate interests. We are committed to holding your data including personal data, in a secure and confidential manner in accordance with the data protection laws and regulations including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and as set out in our Privacy Policy.

We require your specific consent to send you marketing materials. If you wish to receive these communications, please complete the online form at www.boddymatthews.com. 

“Associate” means in respect of an engagement (unless the Engagement Letter expressly states otherwise) any of your group undertakings (as defined by Section 1161(5) of the Companies Act 2006) which is a recipient of our services in relation to that engagement and any other person or organisation which the Engagement Letter identifies as, or we and you agree in writing may be treated as, a recipient of our services in relation to that engagement;

“engagement” means a transaction, case or other matter upon which at any time you instruct us to advise you;

“our services” means the services provided by us to you as described in an Engagement Contract and any other legal services provided to you at any time in relation to an engagement;

“partner(s)” means director(s) of Boddy Matthews Limited;

“Boddy Matthews Limited” refers to the limited liability company trading as Boddy Matthews Solicitors and any other company wholly owned by or on behalf of such limited liability company or the partners of Boddy Matthews Limited and any person to which an Engagement Contract may have been assigned in accordance with paragraph 15.1 above;

“we”, “us” or “our” (and similar expressions) refers to Boddy Matthews Limited, and “you” or “your” (and similar expressions) refers to our client.

We will be doing all we can to ensure that you are delighted with our services. If you are unhappy at any time with any aspect of our services please tell your Client Partner immediately. If we are unable to resolve any concern through your Client Partner, you should contact our Complaints Handling Partner. The Complaints Handling Partner will follow our formal complaints procedure and will provide you with a copy.

If for any reason we are unable to resolve your concern through our formal complaints procedure, you can complain to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent complaints handling body. The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are: PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH; or enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk. The website is www.legalombudsman.org.uk.

The SRA rules aim to uphold high professional standards. We aim to adhere to these rules and maintain these standards.

You have the right to complain to the SRA if you have concerns about our behaviour or conduct. SRA | Problems with law firms and individuals | Solicitors Regulation Authority

Alternative complaints bodies (such as Ombudsman Services, ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should we both wish to use a scheme. Other Alternative Dispute Resolution methods may be available to seek to resolve any complaint should we both wish to use them.

If you are unhappy with an invoice we send you, you have the right to object to it. You may do this through our formal complaints procedure. You also have the right to apply to the Court for an assessment of the invoice under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.

21. General

22. Litigation Specific Terms

References to litigation and to the court are intended to cover arbitration and the tribunal respectively.

If litigation is commenced and you are ultimately successful, as a general rule you may expect that the court will order your opponent to pay a contribution to the costs that you are liable to pay us. The courts assess that contribution, if it cannot be agreed and has not been the subject of a Court Management Costs Order. Previously rates of recovery have been in the region of about 60 to 70% of your own costs. The current Court test requires that costs spent on a case bear a proportionate relationship to what is at stake not only in financial terms. The Court will not allow costs, which are disproportionate to the dispute as a whole even if they were reasonably or necessarily incurred.

However, even if you are successful, there are still exceptions to general rule that the loser will pay a contribution to your costs. Costs are always in the discretion of the Court, and the Court will not always order the losing party to pay the usual, or even any, contribution. The Court will be guided by the proportionality principle.

You will be liable to pay our costs in full as provided for in this engagement contract even where you cannot recover all or any of those costs from your opponent.

If you are unsuccessful in that case, you should expect that the Court will order you to pay to your opponent a contribution to its costs. The Court will assess that contribution, if it cannot be agreed, or has not been the subject of a Court Management Costs order. Whereas this has usually been in the region of about 60 to 70% off the winning party’s costs, the Court will consider the proportionality test over and above whether costs were reasonable or necessary.  You will also have to bear your own costs involved in full in that event.

Your liability for your own costs and the other parties’ costs may be covered in whole or in part under an existing insurance policy, which you have. Even if it is not, you may be able to take out insurance to cover the costs. There are new funding options available through Third Party Funders or by agreeing Damage Based Agreements. This allows us to share in the damages awarded as payment for our legal services although for most commercial matters the level will be capped at 50% of the damages. We will advise you further on this and consider if this is an appropriate way forward.

It is important that you maintain procedures to safeguard all documents that you have in your possession now, or which may be created in the future and which may be relevant to your issues. Any document destruction policy should be suspended immediately. This will ensure that you are able to comply fully with your disclosure obligations if litigation is commenced. I will be able to advise you with the benefit of all relevant information at that stage

If litigation is commenced, you may be required to disclose all documents which are or have been in your possession. This may also mean those documents which are helpful or adverse to your case. Standard disclosure in the past required this but the parties may now seek to agree from a menu of different options for disclosure of documents. However, the effect of this requires the parties to consider at an earlier stage what option it would prefer. The Judge will then decide as appropriate. The word “document” is still given a very wide meaning for this purpose. It will include all electronic files which may contain or be contained in or be created by email, Word application, and document files including Excel spreadsheets, presentations, calendar entries, sound recordings, photographs or web applications. Any meta data may also be disclosable, depending on the disclosure option required.

You will be required to certify that you have carried out a search for all relevant documents at all locations depending on the option agreed or ordered by the Court. This may include on servers, PCs, backup, laptops, mobile telephones and other data storage devices.  We would strongly recommend that you still seek to avoid accidental or deliberate deletion of documents and files and any inadvertent creation of unhelpful documents. Such documents may be disclosed in the litigation process.