Terms and Conditions
Standard Terms of Engagement
The Standard Terms of Engagement (“Terms”) apply in respect of all work carried out by us
for you, except to the extent that we otherwise aggress with you in writing.
- services
- the Services which we are to provide for you are outlined in our engagement letter.
- Financial
- Fees:
- The fees which we will charge or the manner in which they will be arrived at, are
set out in our engagement letter.
- If the engagement letter specified a fixed fee, we will change this for the agreed
scope of our services. Work which falls outside that scope will be charged on an
hourly rate basis. We will advise you as soon as reasonably practicable if it
becomes necessary for us to provide services outside the agreed scope and if
requested, give you an estimate of the likely amount of the further costs.
- Where our fees are calculated on an hourly basis, the hourly rates are set out in
our engagement letter. The differences in those rates reflect the experience and
specialization of our professional staff. Time spent is recorded in 6 minutes
units, with time rounded up to the next unit of 6 minutes.
- Disbursements and expenses: In providing services we may incur disbursements
or have to make payment to their parties on your behalf. These will be included in or
invoice to you when expense in incurred. We may require an advance payment for
the disbursement or expenses which we will be incurring on your behalf.
-
GST(if any): Is payable by you on our fees and charges
-
Invoices: We will send interim invoices to you, usually monthly and on completion
of the matter, or termination of our engagement. We may also send you an invoice
when we incur a significant expense.
-
Payment: Invoices are payable within 14 days of the date of the invoice, unless
alternative arrangements have been made with us. We may require interest to be
paid on any amount which is more than 7 days overdue. Interest will be calculated
at the rate of 14% from the date of the invoice to the date payment in cleared funds
are made.
-
Security: We may ask you to pre-pay amounts to us, or to provide security for our
fees and expenses. You authorise us:
-
to debit against amounts pre-paid by you; and
-
to deduct from any funds held on your behalf in our trust account any fees, expenses or disbursement for which we have provided an invoice.
-
Third Parties: Although you may expect to be reimbursed by a third party for our
fees and expenses, and although our invoices may at your request or with your
approval be directed to a third party, nevertheless you remain responsible for
payments to us if the third party fails to pay us.
-
Confidentiality
-
We will hold in confidence all information concerning you or your affairs that we
acquire during the course of acting for you.
We will not disclose information other than;
-
to the extent necessary or desirable to enable us to carry out your instructions;
or
-
to the extent required by law or by the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and
Clients Care for Lawyers.
-
Confidential information concerning you will as far as practicable be made available
only to those within our firm who are providing legal services for you.
-
We will of course, not disclose to you confidential information which we have in
relation to any other clients.
-
Termination
-
you may terminate our retainer at any time.
-
We may terminate our retainer in any of the circumstances set out in the Law
Society’s Rules of Conduct and Clients Care for Lawyers.
-
If our retainer is terminated you must pay us all fees due up to the date of
termination and all expenses incurred up to that date.
- Retention of files and documents
-
You authorize us (without further reference to you) to destroy all files and
documents for this matter (other than any documents that we hold in safe custody
for you) 7 years after our engagement ends, or earlier if we have converted those
files and documents to an electronic format.
- Conflicts of Interest
-
We have procedures in place to identify and respond to conflicts of interest. If a
conduct of interest arises we will advise you of this and follow the requirements and
procedures set out in the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Clients Care for
Lawyers.
- Duty of Care
-
Our duty of care is to you and not to any other persons. Before any other person
may rely on or advice, we must expressly agree to this.
- Trust Accounts
-
We maintain a trust account for all funds which we receive from clients (except
monies received for payments of our invoices). If we are holding significant funds
on your behalf we will normally lodge those funds on interest bearing deposits with
a bank. In that case we will charge an administration fee of 10% of the interest
derived.
- General
-
These Terms apply to any current engagement and also to any future engagement,
whether or not we send you another copy of them.
-
We are entitled to change these Terms from time to time, in which case we will
send you the amended Terms.
-
Our relationship with you is governed by New Zealand law and New Zealand courts
have non-exclusive jurisdiction.