PRIVACY POLICY
1. Legal Information
Garrick Law Limited is a Limited Company registered in England and Wales under number 10677244 and the registered office address of the business is Amadeus House, 27b Floral Street, London, WC2E 9DP.
A list of members is open to inspection at the registered office.
Garrick Law is registered for VAT under number 273545000.
2. Regulatory Information
The Law Society of England and Wales represents solicitors in England and Wales. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) is an independent regulatory arm of The Law Society. The Legal Ombudsman is an independent body which adjudicates upon complaints which a firm’s own complaints handling procedure cannot resolve.
Garrick Law Limited and those of our lawyers who are admitted as solicitors in England and Wales, are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) under number 638137. A copy of the professional Code of Conduct and Handbook can be found at www.sra.org.uk.
3. Financial Services
The provision of our legal services may involve regulated activities relating to investments within the meaning of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Garrick Law Limited is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. However, we are able, in certain circumstances, to offer a limited range of financial services to clients if they are an incidental part of a legal service we have been engaged to provide, as we are authorised and regulated by the SRA. (For further information, please see https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/handbook/finserscope/content.page). If you at any time require more substantive investment advice, we shall refer you to someone who is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority.
4. Client Engagement
No client-lawyer relation between you and Garrick Law Limited is created by your use of this website. The only means for a client-lawyer relation to be formed is through mutual agreement in writing, following our standard new client procedures. If you are interested in becoming a client, please contact us via the contact us page so that we can determine whether or not we can assist you on your matter.
Advice is given and services are supplied to clients on the basis of the firm’s terms of business. By instructing the firm, clients agree to the firm’s terms of business, subject to any amendments agreed by Garrick Law Limited in the relevant Client Care / Engagement Letter.
COSTS
Details of our estimated costs are set out in our retainer letter and updated in correspondence to you from time to time. Estimates given are for guidance only and will be subject to increase to reflect actual time spent and any unknown contingencies or complexity. You will be notified of the hourly rate (excluding VAT) charged for the Director or staff members carrying out your work. The hourly rates will be revised at intervals and you will be notified of any changes.
We do not undertake any publicly funded work.
Where fees are charged on an hourly basis, we reserve the right to vary the rates to reflect discretionary factors such as unusual urgency, complexity, the responsibility involved, transaction value and/or out of hours working. In other matters the fee may be based on an agreed percentage of the value of the transaction. In appropriate cases we may be able to agree a fixed or a maximum fee.
Unless otherwise stated, we do not allocate the everyday cost of telephone calls, stationery, printing, postage, archiving, computing and IT consumables (“Matter Expenses”) as individual charges. However, such costs are chargeable to each client matter. The charge is reflected by adding a composite charge of 3% to the time costs incurred. In the case of such charges being materially more than 3% of our fees we reserve the right to charge the actual cost incurred.
We will pass on to you other third party costs (referred to as “disbursements” in our invoices) such as search fees, photocopying, barristers’ and experts’ fees as well as other expenses such as travel and accommodation costs and transfer fees. A charge will be made for the cost of photocopying and scanning for all copying or scanning in excess of 10 A4 pages required to be undertaken on your matter and which are not properly recoverable from any other party as well as costs of retrieving an archived file from storage (in paper or in electronic form).
Insolvency/Central Index Searches made by telephone will be charged at cost or £3 per search result, whichever is the higher.
In contentious matters and any other matters where you may incur a liability for costs to a third party, you will be advised about that exposure. Our fees to you will not be limited by any applicable limit on recovery of costs from any other parties.
We will charge a fixed fee of £100 plus VAT per company for replying to enquiries raised by your auditors in relation to work we have carried out for you.
We shall invoice at least once per month, unless otherwise agreed with you. Our invoices are payable immediately upon delivery.
Payment of all invoices should be made to our Office account, details of which are provided on our invoices.
We do not accept cash from clients. If clients deposit cash direct with our bank, we reserve the right to charge for any additional checks we deem necessary regarding the source of the funds. Neither do we accept monies from clients pending instructions or for forwarding to third parties, unless pursuant to a transaction or matter on which we have been instructed.
We reserve the right to carry out a credit check against you or any party connected with or associated with you together which such other checks as we, in our sole discretion, consider are necessary from time to time to meet all our regulatory, legal or other obligations.
We shall always require payments on account to be made for all disbursements and expenses to be incurred on your behalf. We also require payments on account of our estimated fees to be made at the outset of any matter and from time to time.
In the event that you are unable to make these on-account payments then we may provide you with details of possible funders for the payment of these fees. These referrals are not, in any circumstances, recommendations by us and we shall not be advising you on any applications for credit which you may make, via us, to such funders. You remain solely responsible for considering the suitability and affordability of any credit offered to you.
In the event that payments on account are not made as requested, or our invoices are not paid upon presentation, we may (on the relevant matter and any other matters on which we are engaged for you):
– Immediately cease work;
– terminate our retainer and come off the record at Court in appropriate cases;
– charge interest on all invoices not paid in full within 30 days of presentation at the rate of 8% per annum until payment is made in full; and
– levy a fixed fee £100 plus VAT per invoice towards our internal costs incurred in collecting sums invoiced by us (in addition to any legal costs which we may incur in collecting debts due to us).
COMMISSIONS
If we earn a commission, the amount will be disclosed to you and we shall seek your approval to retain all such commission received by us.
INTEREST
Our priority is to keep client funds safe and available to our clients for the purpose for which they were provided. We maintain separate accounts for holding client monies and, subject to certain minimum amounts and periods and in appropriate circumstances, we shall account to you for notional interest (where such interest earned is in excess of £50 net of tax). The rate of interest may be less you could obtain if you had held and invested the money yourselves. Where more than one amount is held for a client relating to separate matters, the amounts will be treated as individual deposits for the purpose of calculating interest, if any.
When interest is payable, it will be calculated from the date we receive cleared funds to the client account, up until the date the funds are paid out to you. The relevant payment date is either the date it is entered into HSBCnet for electronic payment, or if by cheque the date on which the cheque is raised (not the date it is presented for payment.)
LIEN AND RETENTION OF PAPERS
There are circumstances where we may be entitled to exercise a ‘lien’ for unpaid costs, disbursements and expenses, meaning we may be able to withhold your original documents and other documents (whether held by us in paper or in electronic form) to which you are entitled, pending payment in full of all of our unpaid costs, VAT, expenses, disbursements, interest and collection costs.
Subject as above, at the conclusion of a matter, we will return on request all paper documents to you. We will retain and store: –
– Paper copies of wills and property deeds indefinitely (and for which we may levy an annual or one-off charge);
– Core documents and correspondence for matters involving minors for six years from their 18th birthday after which they will be destroyed; and
– Core documents and correspondence for all other matters for six years, after which they will be destroyed.
Storage of any paper files and related documents is outsourced to an offsite provider which operates to nationally recognised standards. We shall not accept any liability for loss or damage. If you require bank-vault safety standards for your documents, you should make separate arrangements.
All files may be kept by us fully or partially in electronic form.
Documents retained by us will be retrieved from storage at your request, subject to a charge. Where retrieval involves review of files, correspondence or other work, we shall charge for the time spent.
EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY
We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in all our dealings with clients, third parties and employees. Please contact us if you would like a copy of our equality and diversity policy
5. Website
This website contains general information based on English Law and, although we endeavour to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date, users should seek appropriate advice before taking or refraining from taking any action. The contents of this website should not be construed as advice and Garrick Law Limited disclaims any and all liability in relation to its use. Garrick Law Limited makes no warranties, representations or undertakings about:
– Any of the content of this website (including without limitation, any as to the quality, accuracy, completeness or fitness for any particular purpose of such content; or
– Any content of any other website referred to or accessed by way of hypertext link through this website (i.e. a “third party site”).
Garrick Law Limited does not endorse or approve the content of any third party site, nor will Garrick Law Limited have any liability in connection with any of them (including, but not limited to, liability arising out of any allegations that the content of any third party site infringes any law or the rights of any person or entity).
6. Money Laundering
The United Kingdom’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing legislation and related regulations are The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 (in force from 15th December 2007). These impose a number of obligations on law firms (issued by The Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority), to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism by conducting due diligence on new clients and on-going monitoring of existing clients.
The effect of this legislation is to provide a stringent and comprehensive system of client identification procedures, record keeping and mandatory reporting. Accordingly, we are required to verify and document the identity and address of every client of Garrick Law Limited (including the ultimate beneficial owner or effective controller of a company or trust). We will ask the client to provide us with the necessary information and documents. Periodically, or when a client’s circumstances change, we may ask a client to provide us with up to date evidence of identity. If we are unable to obtain satisfactory evidence of identity, we will not be able to act or continue acting.
We are under a duty to identify the source of any monies paid to or controlled by Garrick Law Limited. We cannot accept any funds from any source unless that source has previously been disclosed to us and identified to our satisfaction. If payment is made to us in breach of this provision, the funds may be frozen until their source and provenance has been established.
The legislation relating to money laundering and the financing of terrorism places professional advisers, including lawyers, under a legal duty in certain circumstances to disclose information to the National Crime Agency (“NCA”). In circumstances where a lawyer knows or suspects that a transaction involves money laundering or the financing of terrorism, they may be required to report their knowledge or suspicion to the NCA. We may not be able to inform you of the report we have made unless and until permitted to do so by the law enforcement authorities. We accept no liability for a loss, damage, costs or expenses that you might incur as a result of such disclosure.
7. Bribery and Corruption
Garrick Law Limited prides itself on the highest ethical standards. We will never knowingly commit, or advise or assist a client or someone acting on behalf of a client to commit, an illegal act, including but not limited to, bribery and corruption. We operate policies and procedures which comply with the United Kingdom’s anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws. These laws apply to all firm members and to anyone else who is working on behalf of the firm. We expect our supplies and the other professional advisers we work with to have similar policies and procedures in place.
Garrick Law Limited has a strict anti-bribery and anti-corruption policy which prohibits, either directly or via a third party, the offering, promising or giving of anything of value for an improper purpose or to gain a business advantage. The prohibition extends not only to financial rewards, but also to gifts, donations, services and entertainment of an unusual or excessive nature. Dealings with foreign governments and foreign government officials are subject to particular rules.
8. Frauds and Scams
Please be aware of the increase in cybercrime and fraud. The SRA website contains a “Scam Alert” database which provides members of the public with information about known scams in which the identity of a legitimate law firm or a legitimate lawyer has been used by persons unknown for what are assumed to be criminal purposes (https://www.sra.org.uk/alerts/).
You should be alive to the possibility that a fraudster might deliberately misrepresent themselves as a member of, or as someone acting on behalf of or working with, Garrick Law Limited, for criminal purposes. Such scams normally originate by email. Often the email will promise a large sum of money, request personal or financial information about the recipient or the recipient’s bank account details alleging that money is due to them. In an attempt to give legitimacy or respectability to the scam, sometimes the email will direct the recipient to a false website that intentionally replicates the look of a legitimate website i.e. a cloned website.
If you receive an email that appears to come from Garrick Law Limited which provides different bank details or indicates a change of bank details, it is unlikely to be genuine. Please do not reply to the email or act on any information contained in it but contact us immediately to check the account details. We will not accept any responsibility if you transfer money into an incorrect account.
If you receive an unsolicited and poorly worded email from someone you do not know who is using a free email service and an unusual email address and it contains information or an offer which appears too good to be true, it probably is not true.
9. Complaints Handling Procedure
We always aim to provide a quality service applying the highest standards of professionalism and ethics. All complaints are investigated fairly and as quickly as circumstances allow.
If you are unhappy with any aspect of the service we have provided to you, or if you wish to discuss an invoice we have delivered to you, please in the first instance contact the Director with responsibility over your matter and identified to you at the inception of the matter.
If after our complaints handling procedure has been exhausted and you remain unsatisfied with either our response or our handling of the complaint, you may ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the matter. The Legal Ombudsman’s role, remit and procedures are described on their website (www.legalombudsman.org.uk). Please note that the Ombudsman will only consider complaints made by individuals, micro-enterprises and small trusts, charities or associations. Normally, the Legal Ombudsman should be informed of a complaint within six months of the client receiving a final written response from the firm, or within six years of the date of the act or omission complained about (or if outside of this period, within three years of when the client should reasonably have been aware of it).
The Legal Ombudsman can be contact in the following ways: –
Writing: Address: PO Box 6806
Wolverhampton
WV1 9WJ
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
If a complaint relates to an invoice we have delivered, you may also be entitled to apply to the Court for an assessment of the invoice under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. If you wish for our charges to be reviewed by the Court, you must apply to the Court within one month of the date the invoice was delivered to you. If the invoice has been paid, more than twelve months has elapsed or a judgment has been obtained in respect of the costs covered by the invoice, the Court will not order the invoice to be assessed unless special circumstances apply. If the Court makes an order in such circumstances, it may attach conditions to the order in respect of the costs of the assessment. Garrick Law Limited are entitled to charge interest in respect of unpaid invoices. Our entitlement to charge interest may not be affected by any complaint you make to the Legal Ombudsman or by any application you make to the Court for assessment of the invoice.
You have a right to object to a bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman and/or by applying to the Court for an assessment of a bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. Contact details may be obtained by contacting the Risk and Compliance Manager at the Company. This right will also apply where our costs, about the amount of which we will inform you at the relevant time, are to be deducted from any settlement we agree on your behalf.
Any barrister or other professional we instruct on your behalf should have their own complaints procedure and process. If you are not happy with their service, you can complain to them directly however, we would be grateful if you could please let us know as we may be able to assist you.
10. Professional Indemnity Insurance
Garrick Law Limited maintains profession indemnity insurance in an amount which exceed the minimum cover required by the SRA. The insurance covers the firm’s professional services in the United Kingdom and covers acts and omissions arising out of our professional services wherever they occur. Clients are able to request details of the firm’s primary layer of compulsory professional indemnity insurance cover (including the name of the insurer).
11. Privacy and Cookies
When you access this website (www.garricklaw.com), your computer’s browser provides us with electronic information such as your IP Address, browser type and access time. The website collects this information to provide you with a good user experience. We may also use this information to help us improve the website and to compile statistical date on the use of the website. Please refer to our cookies policy for further information.
12. Data Protection
Garrick Law Limited is registered with the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner as a controller of personal data under the Data Protection Act 1998 under ICO registration number: ZA270140.
Garrick Law Limited is registered with the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner as a controller of personal data under the Data Protection Act 1998. Any personal data collected during your use of this website, will be processed in accordance with current United Kingdom data protection laws and for one or more of the following purposes: –
a. For the purpose specified in the relevant part of the website;
b. To enable us to supply you with the information or assistance (legal service) you have requested;
c. To enable us to provide you with information about us, our services and our events;
d. To update, enhance client records and provide analysis to help us manage our practice statutory returns;
e. For legal and regulatory compliance; and
f. For any other purpose for which you give your consent.
If at any time you wish to have your name removed from our database, please email Director, Nick Gova on ngova@garricklaw.com.
13. Electronic Communications
Electronic communications may carry risks. The communication may not be secure, might be intercepted, carry viruses, distort during transmission or arrive later or not at all. Unless in writing you expressly prohibit electronic communication, we may use email and/or fax to communicate with you and others involved in your matter. Unless in writing we inform you otherwise, email we send to you will not be encrypted. Anyone who communicates with us electronically or who does not expressly prohibit such communication will be assumed to accept the associated risks. We accept no liability for any inadvertent breach of confidence or privilege, or for any loss or damage that occurs, as a result communication by email or fax.
We accept no liability for viruses. You must rely on your own anti-virus software. We recommend that you scan all emails and any attachments for viruses before opening them. We also advise you to confirm any advice received by email before acting on it.
We monitor electronic communications to protect our business, firm members and clients to ensure that our legal and regulatory obligations and our internal policies and procedures are being complied with.