Terms of service at Gaffney Zoppi

1. These terms and how we can change them

1.1. Our agreement with you. These terms, together with our engagement letter to you, form our agreement with you to provide legal services. These terms apply to each matter we work on with you. If there is a conflict between these terms and our engagement letter, these terms will prevail, unless the engagement letter expressly overrides them.

1.2. Changes to these terms. We can change these terms in response to legal, regulatory and technological changes, and commercial needs, and we may increase our hourly rates as explained in 7. If we do so, we'll notify you and you can contact us to terminate our instructions before the changes take effect. However, the terms which apply to your agreement with us will be those in force at the time you signed the engagement letter.

Any reference to ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ in these terms is to Gaffney Zoppi, and any reference to ‘you’ or ‘your’ is to the person placing an order on our site

2. Limitations on our services

2.1. All of our services are based on the law of England & Wales or Scotland and are only suitable for parties that are based in England & Wales or Scotland and operate exclusively under the law of England & Wales or Scotland. 

2.2. For the purposes of these terms, you are a ‘consumer’ if you are buying services from our site as an individual for purposes wholly or mainly outside of your trade, business, craft or profession. You are a ‘business customer’ if you are buying services from our site for purposes relating to your trade, business, craft or profession. Some terms only apply to your instructions if you are a consumer and other terms only apply to your instructions if you are a business customer, so please make sure you read these terms carefully

2.3. If you are a business customer, you are responsible for ensuring that you have all the necessary permits and licences to conduct your business activity lawfully and compliantly.

2.4. Our services are delivered according to industry practice and standard business terms. You warrant that the services are suitable for you as they are and will expressly and in writing notify us of otherwise. We will give you a chance to review the services once delivered to determine if any amendments need to be made. If no amendments are requested, you warrant that you are fully satisfied with the services.

3. About us

3.1. Our legal status. We are GZ Legal Ltd, trading as Gaffney Zoppi, a private limited company registered in Scotland with company number SC658895. Our registered office is at 272 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR. We may from time to time use the word "partner" to refer to a senior staff member but this does not mean that they are necessarily a partner or director of the company. Please check our website for a full list of our partners or directors.

3.2. You can contact us by sending an email to info@gaffneyzoppi.com or calling us on 0330 133 3815.

3.3. Although some members of GZ Legal Ltd are solicitors and therefore regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (‘SRA’) (for more details, please see www.sra.org.uk), GZ Legal Ltd is not a firm regulated by the SRA. Details of regulated solicitors within our firm can be found https://www.gaffneyzoppi.com/our-team. 

3.4. As a result of not being a firm regulated by the SRA, we cannot provide reserved legal activities. We will inform you in advance if this affects the services we can provide to you. Reserved legal activities are defined under the Legal Services Act 2007 and include:

• The right to appear before and address a court; 
• The issuing of proceedings before any court; 
• Conveyancing; 
• Wills and probate;
• Administration of oaths; and 
• Notarial services. 

3.5. Due to GZ Legal Ltd not being a regulated firm, you will not have any entitlement to the SRA’s Compensation Fund. This is a discretionary fund in which solicitors contribute to. It provides compensation to people who are owed money by a regulated law firm as a result of dishonesty, lack of professional indemnity insurance and/ or failure to account for funds. More information can be found via the Law Society website and the SRA’s website. 

3.6. GZ Legal Ltd does not have to obtain professional indemnity insurance that satisfies the SRA’s minimum terms and conditions (more information is available at https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/indemnity-insurance-rules/). However, we have obtained insurance cover in respect of our own legal liability for individual claims not exceeding £1,000,000. Please see 9 for more details. 

4. Our services

4.1. Matters outside the scope of our instructions. We only advise on matters within the scope of our instructions, as set out in our engagement letter. Unless your engagement letter clearly says otherwise, we will not advise you on the financial or tax aspects of this matter, or on your wider tax or financial interests, advice on the law of jurisdictions outside of England and Wales or Scotland, conveyancing, litigation or accounting and commercial advice (including on the viability and prudence of this matter), even if a relevant issue arises during the course of our work together. You may wish to seek separate specialist advice on these matters.

4.2. Only you can rely on our advice. Our advice is intended solely for you. We do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the clients identified in our engagement letter. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, you must not share our advice with anyone else.

4.3. Third party service providers. We may instruct third parties (such as barristers, expert witnesses, enquiry agents and financial advisers) to provide services to you. Where appropriate we may instruct these third parties as your agent, so that you contract with them directly. However the third parties are instructed, you are responsible for the sums charged by third parties and their services are provided to you on their terms. We use reasonable skill and care in selecting and appointing third parties and we are not responsible for the services the third parties provide.

4.4. We're not responsible for delays outside our control. If our services to you are delayed by an event outside our control, such as other parties not swiftly collaborating with us, we will contact you as soon as possible to let you know and do what we can to reduce the delay. As long as we do this, we won't compensate you for the delay, but you always have rights to terminate your instructions, see 11.

5. What you agree to do

5.1. You agree to:

1. Provide us with clear, timely and consistent instructions, and respond fully, frankly and quickly to our requests for information and co-operate with us and those we instruct on your behalf. The information you give us must be full and accurate, to the best of your knowledge and belief. We don't verify the information you give us, unless we have expressly agreed to do so.
2. Tell us straight away if your contact details change.
3. Take reasonable steps to properly secure your communications with us. This includes protecting the email and computer systems used for your matter. This is important to protect your rights and funds. You can learn more about staying safe and secure online including good password practice at: www.cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk.
4. Pay our fees. This will be as detailed in the engagement letter.
5. Verify any change of our payment details received by email. If you are told about any change of our bank details by email, then even if it appears to come from our firm, you must call us on 0330 133 3815 or a number you have used with us previously immediately to check if the email is genuine.

6. Our communications with you

6.1. Risks of email correspondence. For convenience and speed, we will correspond with you by email and rely on communications coming from your email account, as well as Clio’s client portal. However, email is inherently insecure. We are not responsible for loss or damage caused by email use, provided we have taken reasonable security measures, including against viruses or similar harmful items.

6.2. Blocked emails. Our filtering software may prevent us receiving emails from you or in relation to your matter and we are not responsible to you for losses resulting from this.

6.3. Opening hours. We are normally open between 9.00 am and 5.00 pm Monday to Thursday and 9.00 am and 12.00 pm on Friday, except for bank holidays. Our staff may sometimes respond to communications and work outside of our normal office hours, but this is at our discretion and we ask you to respect that there will be times when we are not available.

6.4. Who we can give advice to and whose instructions we can act on. We may give advice and information to, and act on instructions from, any of the individuals to whom our engagement letter is addressed without the need to copy such advice to, or to confirm such instructions with, the other(s). You can let us know in writing that we are authorised to deal with someone else on your behalf in this way. For organisations, rather than individuals, we can ask for a formal resolution confirming who can instruct us.

6.5. We can adjust to your communications needs. As a firm, we wish to support and promote equality and diversity. If it would assist you for our services to be delivered in a different way, please let us know and we will investigate how we can assist.

7. Our fees, disbursements, and expenses

7.1. How we calculate our fees is set out in our engagement letter. Our fees for our services are calculated either on the basis of time spent or on a fixed basis and may be staged, as set out in our engagement letter.

7.2. Fees on a time spent basis. If our fees are calculated on a time spent basis:

1. Six-minute units. We calculate the time spent by us in six-minute units (an hour is broken down into ten units, each of six minutes) and charge it at the hourly rate for the person doing the work. Where a task (such as writing a short or standard letter or email or making a phone call) takes less than six minutes of a person's time, the time spent is rounded up to six minutes.
2. Increases in hourly rates. We may increase our hourly rates, for example at the start of a new year. We may also increase our rates if your instructions change, for example if the matter we are working on for you becomes more urgent. We give you advance notice of any increases.
3. Estimates are not binding. Any estimate of the total charges (fees, disbursements and expenses) for dealing with your matter or reaching a certain stage in it, as well as estimates or automated quotes provided on our website, are not binding. We may update estimates as a matter progresses and you must pay all our charges even if they exceed any estimate.

7.3. Fixed fees. If we have agreed a fixed fee with you:

1. Changes in assumptions. If the assumptions on which the fixed fee are based (as set out in our engagement letter) prove incorrect we may increase our fixed fee or switch to charging you on a time-spent basis. If we switch to charging on a time-spent basis, we will provide you with an estimate of our fees to complete the matter.
2. What we can charge if you terminate our instructions (or we stop acting for you). If you terminate our instructions (other than because we are at fault) we can charge you the full fixed fee unless you are a consumer, in which case we will charge you on a time spent basis for the work we have done prior to termination, if this is less. The same rules apply if we stop acting for you for a reason set out in 16.

7.4. Disbursements, expenses and VAT. All hourly rates, estimates, fixed, capped or staged fees we quote to you are exclusive of the following, which you must pay in addition:

1. Disbursements. We may instruct third parties (such as barristers, expert witnesses, enquiry agents and financial advisers) to provide services to you or we may pay official fees or carry out searches for you. You will be responsible for associated charges and costs (disbursements). Your engagement letter will include an estimate of disbursements.
2. Expenses. In addition to our fees, we charge you our expenses which may include the costs of travel, document production (scanning, photocopying, binding), payment transfers, support staff overtime and data rooms.
3. VAT. VAT is chargeable on our fees and, where applicable, on disbursements and expenses, unless expressly stated otherwise.

7.5. Deposits. We request a non-refundable deposit from you before we commence work.

8. Our invoices

8.1. When we invoice you. We invoice you regularly and on completion of your matter or at the intervals indicated in your engagement letter. We may raise an interim statute invoice. Statute invoices are final for the period they cover and your rights to challenge them are time limited. All statute invoices (whether interim or final) will be marked accordingly.

8.2. We can invoice disbursements and expenses at any time. We can invoice you for disbursements and expenses for any period at any time, even after we have invoiced our fees for that period.

8.3. If you believe you have been charged too much, under the Solicitors’ (Non-Contentious Business) Remuneration Order 2009 and the Solicitors Act 1974 (specifically sections 70- 72), you have the right to have your invoice formally assessed by the courts. You must apply within one month of receiving the invoice or within one year, but you may have to pay first before the court will assess it. In special circumstances you can apply after one year. Given the strict time limits, it is best to seek independent legal advice as soon as possible after receipt of your invoice. 

8.4. Payment is due on receipt and we charge interest on late payments. Our bills are payable when you receive them. Our invoices remain payable on receipt regardless of the investigation of any complaint. 

8.5. We charge interest on unpaid bills at a rate of 8% above the Bank of England's base rate. Interest will begin to run before securing judgement. Additionally, if you are a business customer, we will charge £400 in late payment fees when the invoice becomes overdue and additional late payment fees of £400 will accrue for every fifteen (15) days of late payment.

8.6. You are responsible for our charges, even if you have third party funding. Even if someone else has agreed or been ordered to pay our charges (fees, disbursements and expenses), or you expect this to happen, you are still responsible for paying us. This includes where you are claiming back part or all of our charges from an opponent in litigation.

8.7. Multiple clients are jointly and severally liable for our bills. If we are instructed by more than one person, then we can require any of those persons to pay our bills in full (joint and several liability).

9. Consumer cancellation rights

This clause 9 only applies to you if you are a consumer.

9.1. You have 14 days from the date of the signed engagement letter to change your mind and cancel the services with us.

9.2. We will not provide any services during the 14-day cancellation period unless you request for us to do so. We are under no obligation to accept your request.

9.3. If you request for us to start providing services during the 14-day cancellation period and we agree to do so, this will impact your cancellation rights as follows:

9.3.1. you lose your right to cancel once the services are fully performed and will not be entitled to a refund even if the cancellation period has not expired;

9.3.2. if the services have not been fully performed, you will be required to pay for the services we provided up to the time that you told us that you want to cancel.

9.4. To cancel your instructions, please email us at info@gaffneyzoppi.com or call us on 0330 133 3815.

9.5. We will provide you with a refund, save for any deposit, as soon as possible and no later than 14 days after the day on which you told us that you want to cancel. If services have been provided during the cancellation period at your request, we will make deductions from any refund due to you as explained in 9.3 above.

9.6. We will issue your refund to the same payment method you used when you placed your order.

10. Faulty services - consumers

This clause 10 only applies to you if you are a consumer.

10.1. We must provide the services to you with reasonable care and skill.

10.2. If a service is not carried out with reasonable care and skill, you can ask us to repeat the service or to fix it, or get some money back if we cannot fix it.

10.3. This is a summary of some of your key rights. They are in addition to your cancellation rights set out in clause 9 above. For more detailed information on your rights, you can visit the Citizens Advice website at www.citizensadvice.org.uk or call 0808 223 1133.

10.4. If there is a problem with a service we have provided to you, please contact us as soon as reasonably possible.

11. Faulty services - business customers

This clause 11 only applies to you if you are a business customer.

11.1. We warrant that the services will be:

11.1.1. performed with reasonable care and skill within the meaning of section 13 of the Sale of Goods and Services Act 1982; and

11.1.2. free from material defects at the time the services are completed.

11.2. As your sole and exclusive remedy, we will (at our option) remedy or re-perform any services that do not comply with clause 11.1, provided that:

11.2.1. you notify us by email to info@gaffneyzoppi.com within 7 calendar days from the date that the services are completed; and

11.2.2. you provide us with sufficient information as to the nature and extent of the defects.

11.3. Except as set out in this clause 11, we give no warranties and make no representations in relation to the services, and all warranties and conditions (including the conditions implied by sections 12–16 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 and any implied terms relating to the ability to achieve a particular result), whether express or implied by statute, common law or otherwise are excluded to the extent permitted by law.

12. Our liability to consumers

This clause 12 only applies to you if you are a consumer.

12.1. If we breach these terms or are negligent, we are liable to you for foreseeable loss or damage that you suffer as a result. By ‘foreseeable’ we mean that, at the time the contract was made, it was either clear that such loss or damage would occur or you and we both knew that it might reasonably occur, as a result of something we did (or failed to do).

12.2. We are not liable to you for any loss or damage that was not foreseeable, any loss or damage not caused by our breach or negligence, or any business loss or damage.

12.3. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for any death or personal injury caused by our negligence, liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that the law does not allow us to exclude or limit.

12.4 Subject to 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3, our total liability to you arising under or in connection with these terms, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, will be limited to 100% of the total fees paid by you under the relevant engagement letter.

13. Our liability to business customers

This clause 13 only applies to you if you are a business customer.

13.1. We have obtained insurance cover in respect of our own legal liability for individual claims not exceeding £1,000,000. The limits and exclusions in this clause reflect the insurance cover we have been able to arrange and you are responsible for making your own arrangements for the insurance of any excess loss.

13.2. Nothing in these terms limits any liability which cannot legally be limited, including liability for:

1. death or personal injury caused by negligence;
2. fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; and
3. breach of the terms implied by section 2 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (title and quiet possession).

13.3. Subject to 13.2, we will not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, arising under or in connection with these terms for:

1. loss of profits;
2. loss of sales or business;
3. loss of agreements or contracts;
4. loss of anticipated savings;
5. loss of use or corruption of software, data or information;
6. loss of or damage to goodwill; and
7. any indirect or consequential loss.

13.4. Subject to 13.2 and 13.3, our total liability to you arising under or in connection with these terms, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, will be limited to 100% of the total fees paid by you under the relevant engagement letter.

13.5. The terms implied by sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 are, to the fullest extent permitted by law, excluded from these terms.

13.6. Unless you notify us that you intend to make a claim in respect of an event within the notice period, we shall have no liability for that event. The notice period for an event shall start on the day on which you became, or ought reasonably to have become, aware of the event having occurred and shall expire three months from that date. The notice must be in writing and must identify the event and the grounds for the claim in reasonable detail.

13.7. We will not be liable for any loss that you could have avoided. We will not be liable for any loss due to your lack of providing us with sufficient information or any loss caused by your delays or delays within your control.

13.8. This 13 will survive termination of the engagement letter or these terms.

14. No claims against our staff

14.1. Services are provided by our staff for and on behalf of our law firm. Our staff do not assume any personal responsibility to our clients in relation to work carried out under these terms and any personal liability of any member of staff is therefore excluded. Any claims against our firm should be brought against the firm as a limited company. You agree not to bring any claim (including in negligence) against any employee or member of our staff including principals (that is partners, members or directors) as individuals in their personal capacity in connection with any loss or damage suffered in connection with our services. If you do bring a claim against any of our staff, they can rely on our agreement, including its limitations of liability.

15. Events beyond our control

We are not liable to you if we fail to comply with these terms because of circumstances beyond our reasonable control.

16. How you and we can terminate our agreement

16.1. You and we can terminate this agreement. You may terminate your instructions to us at any time by telling us in writing. We can also stop acting for you, if we have reasonable grounds to do so, for example because you have broken our agreement by not giving us timely instructions or paying our invoices on time. We can also stop acting for you if the lawyer-client relationship of trust and confidence has broken down, if we discover a conflict of interest, if to proceed would otherwise be contrary to legal or regulatory duties, if the risk profile for your case has significantly changed or if you experience an insolvency event. We will write to you explaining our decision, giving you as much notice as possible.

16.2. Payments on termination. If you terminate your instructions or we stop acting for you, you must pay our charges (fees, disbursements and expenses) incurred up to the point of termination, as well as any charges we incur after termination, for example in transferring your file to another adviser or removing ourselves from the court record.

16.3. We can retain your documents until you pay. If you do not pay our invoices on time, we can retain documents, deeds and other items relating to any matter we are working on for you until you have done so (subject to such information that may be available to you under data protection laws).

17. How you can use our advice and how we handle your documents

17.1. Intellectual property rights. We retain all intellectual property rights in the advice which we provide and the documents which we prepare, but permit you to make use of such work for the purposes of your particular matter only.

17.2. Treatment of your documents on completion. When your matter completes or we stop acting for you, unless you request the return of any documents you have supplied to us, we will retain them for as long as we deem necessary for legal and regulatory reasons and then destroy them.

18. Complaints and other concerns

18.1. Our complaints process. GZ Legal Ltd is not a regulated firm, however, some of our team members are SRA regulated solicitors and therefore have strict code of conduct in which they must comply with. We hope that you are happy with the service we provide. If at any stage you have concerns or wish to make a complaint, inform the person handling your matter straight away about the nature of your concern. 

18.2. If you do not feel comfortable speaking with the individual handling your matter, then you can contact our complaints partner directly (see our website for details). If the person handling your matter cannot promptly resolve your concerns, then it will be dealt with as a formal complaint under our complaints policy (see our website for a copy of this policy). This process involves an investigation of the concerns by a senior member of our firm. We will then write to you within eight weeks setting out our final response to the complaint and how you can pursue you concerns further if you do not agree with our proposed resolution or outcome.

18.3. If we are not able to handle your complaint internally, you can complain to the Legal Ombudsman at https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/make-a-complaint/. The general rule is that you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint and either:

• Within one year of the date of the act or omission, or
• Within one year of you realising that you had concerns.

You can contact the Legal Ombudsman at:  

• by email at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
• by telephone at 0300 555 0333
• by post at PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ. 

18.4. You can also complain about the professional conduct of an SRA regulated solicitor working for us to the SRA. However, given that GZ Legal Ltd is not a regulated firm, you cannot complain about the professional conduct of the firm or any unauthorised person working at the firm to the SRA, unless such person is under the supervision of the regulated solicitor. 

18.5. Alternative dispute resolution. Alternative dispute resolution bodies such as ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation can deal with complaints about legal services. If we agree to use such a scheme, we will inform you when notifying you of our final response to your complaint.

19. Confidentiality

19.1. Legal advice privilege, which protects confidential communications between a lawyer and their client, can be easily lost for example if you communicate with us through third parties or share our advice with third parties. We are not advising you on whether, and to what extent, legal privilege applies to your communications with us, however, you should be very careful when discussing your matter with anyone outside of our relationship.  

19.2. To properly deliver our services to you, we may have to disclose confidential information to our staff and sub-contractors, who may not be SRA regulated solicitors. We ensure to have confidentiality provisions and/ or agreements in place with these third parties. When engaging us to provide the services to you, you agree for us to disclose such confidential information to any relevant third-party. 

19.3. We, and any of our sub-contractors, will keep confidential information we obtain through our services confidential. However, we reserve the right to use and disclose it to:

1. deliver those services, which may include disclosing confidential information to our staff and sub-contractors and storing confidential information our computers, in our email and in the cloud;
2. comply with the law, including by performing conflicts of interest checks for new cases against a list of current and former clients, reporting suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency if we suspect money laundering and responding to freedom of information requests; and
3. comply with requests by regulators and other competent authorities.

20. Data protection

20.1. Our privacy policy. For information about how we deal with your personal information, see our privacy policy as published on our website.

20.2. In some cases, we may hold more sensitive information about an individual such as about health. This may be necessary to pursue your legal matter. We are permitted to use such information to provide legal advice to you or in connection with equality legislation.

20.3. You can withdraw consent to your information being used in a particular way, but this may limit what more we can do for you (if anything).

20.4. As a client we may in the future send you a newsletter or similar. We find that most clients find this helpful. We rely on the legitimate interest we have in maintaining contact with former clients to do this in compliance with data protection law and your agreement for the purposes of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (which can be implied under these regulations). However, we will never share your information with third parties to market to you and will not contact you about non-legal services. We will make it quick and easy for you to opt out of future communications in every communication we send. If you already know that you do not want to receive these messages then you can opt out now by emailing us at info@gaffneyzoppi.com.

20.5. Your information may be kept on computer servers within the UK or the European Union. If at any point information is stored on computer servers outside of the UK or the EU, we will have selected countries which are either approved for this purpose under relevant data protection legislation or are located where we are happy that the safeguards in place in that country to protect your information are appropriate under such legislation.

20.6. We do not use your personal information to make automated decisions which affect you.

20.7. Generally speaking we will not share your information with third parties unless this is part of the work on your legal matter. For example, lawyers frequently may need to send certain information about clients to other lawyers working on the matter, to court or to government bodies. In rare circumstances we sometimes need to make reports of suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency. We also work with some trusted contractors or consultants who may have access to your information, such as service providers or copiers. All contractors have a contract with us which requires that your information be accessed appropriately and kept confidential (among other data protection requirements). Similarly, we may occasionally need to share client matter information with our professional indemnity insurers and their advisers. If you instruct us jointly with another client then it will be necessary to share certain information relevant to you with the corresponding joint client in order to fulfil your instructions to us.

20.8. While we reserve the right to destroy non-original material at any time after the conclusion of your matter, we generally retain files for a period of six years after payment of the final bill and destroy them thereafter. At the end of a case, original documents will be returned to you but, if we both agree, we may retain certain originals for a longer time period. We will also always keep a small amount of information after file closure to do conflicts of interest searches in the future to comply with our professional duties.

20.9. We do normally have a right to payment of any outstanding costs before releasing a whole file to you but individuals may arguably have a separate right under the UK data protection legislation to access certain personal data without charge. This may include having it in a particular electronic format (portable format).

20.10. Our general contact details are set out in our covering letter and the contact details for our information officer can be found on our website. Contact this individual if you want to exercise one of your data protection rights and in particular if you:

1. wish to complain about how your personal data is being used; or
2. wish to request that our records about your personal information be corrected or deleted.

20.11. If you have a complaint about how your personal information is being used which we have not been able to address you may also be able to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) directly. You can learn more about the ICO and personal data rights from the ICO's website www.ico.org.uk.

21. Anti-Money Laundering 

21.1. To ensure compliance with the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2003, we are required to take steps to ensure that you are not involved in any form of money laundering. 

21.2. To do so, we must verify your identity. We will do this by using verification providers to search relevant databases as well as asking for documents which confirm your identity and address, as well as relevant details of your company. We must retain a copy of the documentation provided, as required by the relevant anti-money laundering legislation. 

21.3. You must provide such requested documentation as soon as possible, as we will be unable to begin working on your matter until we have conducted our anti money laundering checks. Therefore, we will not be liable for any delays in completing your matter, when such delays were a result of delays in the requested documentation being provided to us by you. 

21.4. If we have any suspicion that there is any form of money laundering being conducted by you, we have a duty to report this to the National Crime Agency. We will not inform you before we make such report, and such report will override any duty of confidentiality. As a result, we may cease, or be instructed to cease, acting for you and we will not be obligated to provide any reason as to why. 

22. Conflicts of Interest

22.1. We do not act where there is a conflict of interest. Although we are not a regulated firm, we have regulated solicitors who must not act where there is a conflict. Therefore, we have systems and procedures in place to ensure we do not act for a client where there is a conflict, or potential conflict, with an existing client. 

23. Other important terms

23.1. Nobody else has any rights under this contract, except our staff. This contract is between you and us. Other than our staff (see paragraph 14), nobody else has rights under it or can enforce it. Neither of us will need to ask anybody else to sign-off on ending or changing it.

23.2. If a court invalidates some of this contract, the rest of it will still apply. If a court or other authority decides that some of these terms are unlawful, the rest will continue to apply.

23.3. These terms are governed by English law and you can bring claims against us in the English courts. These terms are governed by English law and you can bring claims against us in the English courts.