Standard Terms of Engagement

These Standard Terms of Engagement (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 amended Terms. Our relationship with you is governed by New Zealand law and New Zealand courts have exclusive jurisdiction.

1. Services

1.1 The services we are to provide for you (the Services) are outlined in our letter of engagement along with any further instructions that you provide to us in writing (or that we record in writing).

1.2 In order to provide you with efficient advice and services and to provide the most cost-effective service, it may be that part or all of your instructions will be delegated to other professionals in our firm.

2. Communication

2.1 We will obtain from you contact details, including email address, postal address and telephone numbers. We may provide documents and other communications to you by email (or other electronic means). You will advise us if any of your contact details change.

2.2 We will report to you periodically on the progress of any engagement and will inform you of any material and unexpected delays, significant changes or complications in the work being undertaken. You may request a progress report at any time.

3. Financial

3.1  Fees:

Fees are charged in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Rules of Conduct and Client Care of the New Zealand Law Society.  In fixing fees we are entitled to take into consideration factors such as:

    • the time and labour spent;
    • the skill, specialised knowledge and responsibility required;
    • the importance of the matter to you and the results achieved for you;
    • the urgency and circumstances in which the work is undertaken and any time limits, including time limits imposed by you;
    • the degree of risk assumed by us in undertaking the services including the amount or value of any property involved;
    • the complexity of the matter and the difficulty or novelty of the questions involved;
    • the experience, reputation and ability of the personnel carrying out the work;
    • the possibility that the acceptance of the instructions will preclude other clients from retaining us;
    • the reasonable costs of running a law practice.

3.2  Estimate of Costs:

If the Letter of Engagement provides a cost estimate this will be our “best guess” as to what the fees and other costs are likely to be.  If the work does not proceed as we had expected, or the work proves more complicated than originally anticipated, we will charge for all additional work undertaken.  If it appears that the estimate will be exceeded, we will advise you of the reasons why and obtain further instructions from you.

3.3  Hourly Rates:

Where our fees are calculated on an hourly basis, the hourly rates are set out in our engagement letter.  Time spent is recorded in 6 minute units, with time rounded up to the next unit of 6 minutes.  We may review our hourly rate from time to time and you will be advised of any change in rate that may affect you.

3.4  Disbursements and expenses:

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. These may include expenses such as:

    • court filing fees;
    • barrister fees;
    • expert fees;
    • courier fees;
    • service fees;
    • investigation fees;
    • search and registration fees;
    • travelling expenses;
    • mobile and toll calls, postage, faxes, photocopying and scanning.

3.5 Office Service Charge Fee (Administrative expenses):

In addition to disbursements, we may charge a fee of $75.00 or 6% of our invoice whichever is the greater, subject to our discretion.

3.6 GST (if any):

Is payable by you on our fees, disbursements and expenses.

3.7 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 or undertake a significant amount of work over a shorter period of time.

3.8 Payment: 

Invoices are payable within 14 days of the date of the invoice, unless alternative arrangements have been made with us.

a. You authorise us to deduct our fees and other expenses from funds held in our trust account on your behalf on provision of an invoice to you, unless those funds are held for a particular purpose.

b. If you have difficulty in paying any of our accounts, please contact us promptly so that we may discuss payment arrangements.

c. If your account is overdue we may:

i. require interest to be paid on any amount which is more than 14 days overdue, calculated at the rate of 5 % above the overdraft rate that our firm’s main trading bank charges us for the period that the invoice is outstanding;

ii. stop work on any matters in respect of which we are providing services to you;

iii. require an additional payment of fees in advance or other security before recommencing work;

iv. recover from you in full any costs we incur (including on a solicitor/client basis) in seeking to recover the amounts from you, including our own fees and the fees of any collection agency.

d. Payment by electronic transfer to our nominated bank account is preferred.

3.9 Security:

We may ask you to provide security for our fees and expenses. 

3.10 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 payment to us if the third party fails to pay us.

3.11 Joint and Several Liability:

If there is more than one person comprising our client, each person is jointly and severally liable for payment in due time of all our accounts and other charges.

4. Confidentiality and Personal Information

4.1 Confidence:

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:

 

a. to the extent necessary or desirable to enable us to carry out your instructions; or

b. as expressly or impliedly agreed by you; or

c. as necessary to protect our interests in respect of any complaint or dispute; or

d. to the extent required or permitted by law.

4.2 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.

4.3 Personal information and Privacy:

In our dealings with you we will collect and hold personal information about you. We will use that information to carry out the Services and to make contact with you about issues we believe may be of interest to you. Provision of personal information is voluntary but if you do not provide full information this may impact on our ability to provide the Services.

4.4 Subject to clause 4.1, you authorise us to disclose, in the normal course of performing the Services, such personal information to third parties for the purpose of providing the Services and any other purposes set out in these Terms.

4.5 We may disclose your name and address to third parties such as credit agencies to perform a credit reference or to undertake credit management or collection processes if it is reasonable to do so.

4.6 Subject to clause 7.4 below the information we collect and hold about you will be kept at our offices and/or at secure file storage sites (including electronic file storage sites) elsewhere. If you are an individual, you have the right to access and correct this information. If you require access, please contact our  Privacy Officer, Elise McCabe.

4.7 Verification of identity:

The Financial Transactions Reporting Act 1996 requires us to collect from you and to retain information required to verify your identity. We may therefore ask you to show us documents verifying your identity (such as a passport or driver’s licence). We may retain copies of these documents. We may perform such other customer verification checks as to your identity and checks as to the source of any funds associated with any transaction to which the Services relate as we consider to be required by law.

4.8 Compliance:

Please refer to section 8 ‘Compliance’ regarding information that may be required to be provided to third parties.

5. Termination

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. In the event that we cease work because payment is not received by us within 14 days of the issue of our invoice we will have no liability for any loss suffered by you when work ceases for this reason.

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.

6. Lien

6.1 Where work has been done by us and we have not been paid by you, then we have the right to retain the original documents and the correspondence on your files until such time as all outstanding fees, disbursements and expenses have been paid. This is known as a lien.  In the event that you decide for whatever reason to instruct another law firm all outstanding fees, disbursements and expenses must be paid by you before we release your file(s) to your new solicitors.  In the alternate your new solicitors may be required to give us an undertaking to pay all outstanding fees, disbursement and expenses before your file is released.

7. Documents, Records and Information

7.1 We will keep a record of all important documents which we receive or create on your behalf on the following basis:

a.We may keep a record electronically and destroy originals (except where the existence of an original is legally important such as in the case of wills and deeds).

b. At any time, we may dispose of documents which are duplicates, or which are trivial (such as emails which do not contain substantive information), or documents which belong to us.

c. We are not obliged to retain documents or copies where you have requested that we provide them to you or to another person and we have done so, although we are entitled to retain copies for our own records if we wish to do so.

7.2 We will provide to you on request copies or originals (at our option) of all documents to which you are entitled under the Privacy Act 1993 or any other law. We may charge you our reasonable costs for doing this.

7.3 Where we hold documents that belong to a third party you will need to provide us with that party’s written authority to uplift or obtain a copy of that document.

7.4 Unless you instruct us in writing otherwise, you authorise us and consent to us (without further reference to you) to destroy (or delete in the case of electronic records) all files and documents in respect of the Services 7 years after our engagement ends (other than any documents that we hold in safe custody for you or are otherwise obliged by law to retain for longer). We may retain documents for longer at our option. We may charge a nominal file storage fee of between $15 and $45 upon completion of the Services depending on the volume of your file.

7.5 We own copyright in all documents or work we create in the course of performing the Services but grant you a non-exclusive licence to use and copy the documents as you see fit for your own personal or commercial use. However, you may not permit any third party to copy, adapt or use the documents without our written.

7.6 We own copyright in all documents or work we create in the course of performing the Services but grant you a non-exclusive licence to use and copy the documents as you see fit for your own personal or commercial use. However, you may not permit any third party to copy, adapt or use the documents without our written.

7.7 You authorise 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.

7.8 Subject to the lien in paragraph 6 above if you wish to inspect these files and documents or require us to make copies then we may, at our discretion, charge for this.

7.9 Subject to the lien in paragraph 6 above if you wish to inspect these files and documents or require us to make copies then we may, at our discretion, charge for this.

8.  Compliance

8.1 We are obliged to comply with all laws applicable to us in all jurisdictions, including (but not limited to):

a. Anti-money laundering (AML) and countering financing of terrorism (CFT) laws; and

b. Laws relating to tax and client reporting and withholdings.

8.2 We may be required to undertake customer due diligence on you, persons acting on your behalf and other relevant persons such as beneficial owners and controlling persons. We may not be able to begin acting, or to continue acting, for you until that is completed.

8.4 Please ensure that you and/or any of the persons described previously are aware of and consent to this. It is important to ensure that all information provided to us is accurate. If the information required is not provided, or considered by us to be potentially inaccurate, misleading, or in contravention of any law, we may terminate or refuse to enter into an engagement.

9. Conflicts of Interest

9.1 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.

10. Duty of Care

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

11. Trust Account

11.1 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 will charge an administration fee of 5% of the interest derived.

12. General

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

12.2 We are entitled to change these Terms from time to time, in which case we will send you amended Terms.

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