Standard Terms of Engagement

1.1 The services we are to provide for you are outlined in our engagement letter.

• 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 specifies a fixed fee, we will charge 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 specialisation of our professional staff. Time spent is recorded in 6 minute units, with time rounded up to the next unit of 6 minutes.
• On request we will provide an estimate of our likely fee (if it is practicable to give an estimate). Estimates are not maximum or fixed-fee quotes.

In providing services we may incur disbursements or have to make payments to third parties on your behalf. These will be included in our invoice to you when the expense is incurred. We may require an advance payment for the disbursements or expenses which we will be incurring on your behalf.  Disbursements can include such items as form fees and Land Registry expenses we incur such as title search fees and registration fees. In addition, we also charge for office sundry fees for the various general costs of our practice (eg. file costs, photocopying, file scanning and file destruction costs, licence fees, etc).  These office sundry fees charged may be 5% of our fee (plus GST) but otherwise a minimum of $100 plus GST.

Is payable by you on our fees and charges.

We may send interim invoices to you (usually monthly) as well as on completion of the matter, or termination of our engagement. We may also send you an invoice when we incur a significant expense.

Unless alternative arrangements have been made with us in writing, our invoices are payable within 7 days of the date of the invoice (or immediately upon issue of the invoice if we so require). For conveyancing work, unless alternative arrangements have been made with us in writing, we require our fees and expenses to be paid in full on or before settlement of the transaction at the latest (subject to payments due on any earlier interim invoicing by 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 2% per month.

We may ask you to pre-pay amounts to us or to provide security for our fees and expenses. In any event, you irrevocably and unconditionally authorise us:

• To debit against amounts pre-paid by you; and/or
• To deduct from any and all funds in our trust account which we hold on your behalf (whether or not those funds were paid into our trust account for some other purpose) any fees, expenses or office sundry fees for which we have provided an invoice.

Although you may expect to be reimbursed by a third party for our fees and expenses and/or although our invoices may at your request or with your approval be directed to a third party, nevertheless you remain responsible for payment to us if the third party fails to pay us within 7 days of the date of our invoice (or immediately upon the issue of our invoice if we so require).

In the event of default in your payment to us of our fees, office sundry fees and disbursements when due, you will be responsible for, and we may recover from you, our full legal costs and expenses incurred (on a full indemnity basis) of and incidental to the enforcement or attempted enforcement of our rights and remedies against you, and also all debt collection commissions and costs which we may incur in recovering or attempting to recover from you any overdue amount.

In the event our firm chooses to perform the legal work associated with the recovery or attempted recovery of amounts you owe to us we shall be entitled to claim from you and recover full legal costs and expenses incurred in the same amount as we would otherwise have had to pay to another law firm to perform the same legal work.

3.1. 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 any of this information to any other person except:

• To the extent necessary or desirable to enable us to carry out your instructions or to enforce these Terms; or
• To the extent required by law or permitted by the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.

3.2. We will of course, not disclose to you confidential information which we have in relation to any other client.

3.3. You authorise us to collect from third parties and store such personal information concerning you as we may reasonably require to carry out your instructions, to carry out and enforce these Terms, to meet our statutory obligations and for our statistical and marketing purposes.

The Law Society client care and service information is set out below.

Whatever legal services your lawyer is providing, he or she 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.

▪ Give you 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 done 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

5.1. You may terminate our retainer at any time.

5.2. We may terminate our retainer in any of the circumstances set out in the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.

5.3. 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.

If you have a compliant about our services or charges, you may refer your complaint to the person in our firm who has overall responsibility for your work.

If you do not wish to refer your complaint to that person, or you are not satisfied with that person’s response to your complaint, you may refer your complaint to:

Andrew Smith

Principal 

andrew@atticuslegal.co.nz

(07) 839 4558

If you are not satisfied with the way we have dealt with your complaint the New Zealand Law Society has a complaints service to which you may refer the issue. You can call the 0800 number for guidance, lodge a concern or make a formal complaint. Matters may be directed to:

Lawyers Complaints Service

PO Box 5041

Wellington 6140

New Zealand

Phone: 0800 261 801

To lodge a concern or make a formal complaint:

https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/for-the-community/lawyers-complaints-service/how-to-make-a-complaint

Email:  complaints@lawsociety.org.nz

You authorise us (without further reference to you) to destroy all files and documents for any matter in respect of which you engage us (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.

We have procedures in place to identify and respond to conflicts of interest. If a conflict 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 Client Care for Lawyers.

Our duty of care is to you and not to any other person. Before any other person may rely on our advice, we must first expressly agree to this in writing.

We maintain a trust account for all funds which we receive from clients (except monies received for payment of our invoices). If we are holding significant funds on your behalf we will normally lodge those funds on interest bearing deposit with a bank. In that case we may charge an administration fee and if so we will advise that administration fee of 5% of the interest derived.

The Law Society maintains the Lawyers’ Fidelity Fund for the purpose of providing clients of lawyers with protection against loss arising from theft by lawyers.  The maximum amount to an individual claimant is limited to $100,000.  Except in certain circumstances specified in the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, the Fidelity Fund does not cover a client for any loss relating to money that a lawyer is instructed to invest on behalf of the client

We hold professional indemnity insurance that meets of exceeds the minimum standards set by the Law Society.

13.1 Where you retain us to provide legal services for you for the purposes of a business, the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 will not apply to your retainer with us.

13.2 These terms apply to any current engagement and also to any future engagement, whether or not we send you another copy of them.

13.3 We are entitled to change these Terms from time to time, in which case the amended Terms will apply from the date they are published on our website.

13.4 Our relationship with you is governed by New Zealand law and New Zealand courts have non-exclusive jurisdiction.

13.5 We are only qualified to advise on New Zealand law. If our services extend to assisting you in any matter involving foreign law we will do so strictly on the basis that we accept no responsibility regarding your legal position under any applicable foreign law.

13.6 We are not tax advisers, accountants, financial or investment advisers, valuers or business management advisers (called ‘matters outside our scope of practice’).  We do not, and will not undertake to, provide advice on such matters outside our scope of practice.  You are advised to arrange and obtain advice on such matters as are outside our scope of practice from an appropriately qualified third party professional.

You acknowledge your acceptance of the above Terms by instructing us to act for you, or by continuing to instruct us to act for you, after having received notice of these Terms.