About this firm

Orbit Legal Limited (we, us, or our) is a company incorporated in England and Wales with registered number 12575786.  Our registered office is at Unit 16, Bramley House, Bramley Road, Long Eaton, Derbyshire, NG10 3SX.

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Orbit Legal Limited is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).  The SRA is the independent regulatory arm of the Law Society of England and Wales, our professional body.  All services provided by Orbit Legal Limited are regulated by the SRA.

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We are registered for VAT purposes.

 

 

Our contract with you

These Terms of Business apply to all work we do on your behalf.

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On being instructed, we will send you a letter confirming:

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your instructions; and the scope of the work to be carried out on your behalf; and
our fees and other charges.

This letter is called the Engagement Letter.  These Terms of Business should be read together with the Engagement Letter – together they form the contract between us.

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If there is any inconsistency between these Terms of Business and the Engagement Letter, the Engagement Letter will take priority.

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Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to your acceptance of the Engagement Letter and these Terms of Business.

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These Terms of Business are subject to change from time to time.  If this happens, we will confirm in writing and reissue these Terms of Business to you.

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This contract and any dispute or claim arising out of, or in connection with, it, its subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) will be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of England and Wales.

 

 

Scope of works

The scope of the works to be provided is set out in the Engagement Letter.

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We will advise only on the law of England and Wales.

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If you ask us to obtain advice from another law firm, that firm will be responsible for the service and advice they provide.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, the advice, and any documents we prepare:

are for use only in connection with the specific matter on which we are instructed; and
can only be relied on by you; and reflect the law in force at the relevant time.
 

 

Service standards

We will update you in person, by telephone or in writing (including by email) with progress on your matter regularly and explain to you the legal work required as your matter progresses.

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We will update you at appropriate intervals on the likely timescale for each stage of your matter and any important changes in those timescale estimates.

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We will update you on the cost of your matter at regular intervals.

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We will provide legal advice and services to you with reasonable care and skill.  However, the nature of many types of legal work means that it is not possible to guarantee a particular outcome.

 

 

Our liability to you

Please carefully note this clause.

Your contract is with Orbit Legal Limited, which has sole legal liability for the work done for you and for any act or omission in the course of that work.  No representative, director, officer, employee, agent, or consultant of Orbit Legal Limited, will have any personal legal liability for any loss or claim.

Unless explicitly agreed otherwise, in writing:

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we do not owe, nor do we accept, any duty to any person other than you; and
we do not accept any liability or responsibility for any consequences arising from reliance upon our advice by any person other than you.

We are not responsible for any failure to advise or comment on matters falling outside the scope of our instructions, as set out in the Engagement Letter and these Terms of Business.

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We will not be liable for any of the following (whether direct or indirect):

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loss of revenue; and/or
loss of profit; and/or
loss of or corruption to data; and/or
loss of use; and/or
loss of production; and/or
loss of contract; and/or
loss of opportunity; and/or
loss of savings, discount, or rebate (whether actual or anticipated); and/or
harm to reputation or loss of goodwill.

Nothing in these Terms of Business will exclude or restrict our liability in respect of:

death or personal injury caused by our negligence; and/or fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; and/or
any losses caused by wilful misconduct or dishonesty; and/or any other losses which cannot be excluded or limited by applicable law.
 

 

Our charges and invoices

You are liable to pay the costs as set out in the Engagement Letter, which also states the arrangements for invoicing.

We may deliver our invoices to you electronically.  Please let us know if you have any requirements for the delivery of our invoices.

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Please inform us if a third party will be responsible for paying our invoices or any part of them.  We must approve this in advance, and we will need the third party’s name, contact details and any other information or identification documents we request.

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You remain responsible for payment of our fees and disbursements even if a third party has agreed to pay our fees and disbursements on your behalf and our invoices will still be addressed to you.  If a third party does pay part of our invoice, you are responsible for paying the balance.  If a third party has not paid our fees, disbursements, and expenses within twenty-eight days of the invoice being issued, you agree to immediately settle the balance of our invoice then outstanding on written notification.

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We may charge interest on overdue bills daily at Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.

We may cease acting for you if an interim bill remains unpaid after twenty-eight days or if our reasonable request of a payment on account of costs is not met.

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You have the right to challenge any interim or final invoice by applying to the court to assess the bill under the Solicitors Act 1974.  The usual time limit for applying to the court for an assessment is one month from the date of delivery of the invoice.  Please be aware that the time limit runs from the date of each individual invoice.

 

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Confidentiality

We will keep your information confidential, unless: you consent to the disclosure of that information; or
disclosure of the information is required or permitted by law; or these Terms of Business state otherwise.
Unless you instruct us otherwise, email will be our default method of communication.  We cannot guarantee the security of information or documents sent by email.

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External organisations, such as the SRA may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice from time to time.  They may wish to audit or quality check your file and related papers for this purpose.  You hereby consent to such audit or quality checks.

 

 

Privacy and data protection

We use your personal data primarily to provide legal services to you, but also for related purposes such as administration, billing and record keeping, and to inform you of services and events that we think may be of interest to you.

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Our use of your personal data is subject to your instructions, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), other relevant UK and EU legislation and our professional duty of confidentiality.

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We take your privacy very seriously.  Please read our Privacy Policy carefully as it contains important information on how and why we collect, process, and store your personal data.  It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data.

We use third party service providers (including ‘cloud’ service providers) to help deliver efficient, cost effective legal services.  This may include document/information hosting, sharing, transfer, analysis, processing, or storage.  If you instruct us to use an alternative provider for storing, sharing, or exchanging documents/information, we are not responsible for the security of the data or the provider’s security standards.

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We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text, messaging service, telephone, or post) about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services.  You have the right to opt out of receiving these communications at any time by contacting us.

 

 

Banking and related matters

Unless agreed otherwise, we hold client money in various accounts with UK banks which are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

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We will never tell you of changes to important business information, such as bank account details, by email.  Please notify us immediately if you receive any email or other communication purporting to be from the firm stating that we have changed our bank details or payment arrangements.

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We will pay a fair sum of interest (at not more than the interest rate received) to clients or third parties on client money we hold on their behalf.

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We will not pay interest:

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on money we are instructed to hold outside a client account in a manner that does not attract interest; or
where the amount of interest is less than £100; or

where we agree otherwise, in writing, with the client or third party for whom the money is held.
We are not liable for any losses you suffer because of any bank in which we hold client money being unable to repay depositors in full.  You may, however, be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

The FSCS is the UK’s statutory fund of last resort for customers of banking institutions.  

 

The FSCS can pay compensation up to £85,000 if a banking institution is unable, or likely to be unable, to pay claims against it.

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The limit is £85,000 per banking institution.  If you hold other personal money in the same banking institution as our client account, the limit remains £85,000 in total.  Some banking institutions have several brands.  The compensation limit is £85,000 per institution, not per brand.

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The FSCS also provides up to £1,000,000 of short-term protection for certain high balances.  This is called the temporary high balance scheme and, if it applies, protection lasts for a maximum of six months.

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The FSCS (including the temporary high balance scheme) will apply to qualifying balances held in our client account.  In the unlikely event of a deposit-taking institution failure, we will presume (unless we hear from you in writing to the contrary) we have your consent to disclose necessary client details to the FSCS.

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Our policy is not to accept cash from clients.  If you try to avoid this policy by depositing cash directly with our bank, we may decide to charge you for any additional checks we decide are necessary to prove the source of the funds and this could also cause delays.

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If we receive money in relation to your matter from an unexpected source, there may be a delay in your matter, and we may decide to charge you for any additional checks we decide are necessary.

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Where we must pay money to you, it will be paid by bank transfer to the account in your name nominated by you in writing.  It will not be paid in cash, by cheque, or to a third party.

 

 

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Electronic verification of identity and anti-money laundering regulations

To comply with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements, we may be required to verify your identity and may conduct searches or enquiries for this purpose.  We may also be required to identify and verify the identity of other persons such as directors or beneficial owners.  If you or they do not provide me with the required information promptly, your matter may be delayed.

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You agree that we may make checks using online electronic verification systems or other databases as we may decide.

We use the services of Veriphy Limited to comply with these requirements.  Veriphy Limited checks the UK electoral register and credit reference agencies to provide data.  These credit reference agencies will place a ‘soft footprint’ search on the electronic file of the person and their personal details may be accessed by third parties for the specific purpose of anti-money laundering, credit assessment, identity verification, debt collection, asset reunification, tracing and fraud prevention.

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Any personal data we receive from you for the purpose of preventing money laundering or terrorist financing will be used only for that purpose or:

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with your consent, or as permitted by or under any other UK legislation.

We will not usually charge you for undertaking identification and verification checks, but we reserve the right to do so where the checks are likely to be significantly more time-consuming than we would normally expect.

We are professionally and legally obliged to keep your affairs confidential.  

 

However, we may be required by law to make a disclosure to the National Crime Agency where we know or suspect that a transaction may involve money laundering or terrorist financing.  If we make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we may not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made.  We may have to stop working on your matter for a period and may not be able to tell you why.

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Subject to clause 5.5, we will not be liable for any loss arising from or connected with our compliance with any statutory obligation which we may have, or reasonable belief we may have, to report matters to the relevant authorities under the provisions of the money laundering and/or terrorist financing legislation.

 

 

 

Professional indemnity insurance

We have professional indemnity insurance giving cover for claims against us.  Details of this insurance, including contact details of our insurer and the territorial coverage of the policy, can be provided on request.

It is a condition of our professional indemnity insurance that we notify our insurer and/or broker of any circumstances which may give rise to a claim against us.  In doing so, we may disclose documents and information to our insurer, broker, and insurance advisers on a confidential basis.  Our insurers and brokers are contractually obliged to keep all information we pass to them strictly confidential.

 

 

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Complaints

The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint.  They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your matter.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first.  If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, normally within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint from us.

The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are as follows:

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Visit:  www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Call:  0300 555 0333 between 9.00 to 17.00
Email:  enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

 

 

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Terminating instructions

You may terminate our appointment at any time by giving us notice in writing.  We can keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for our charges or disbursements.

We will only decide to stop acting for you with good reason, for example:

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if a conflict of interest has arisen; or
if there are ethical or regulatory reasons to do so; or
if you provide us with misleading information; or
where we feel that the relationship has broken down; or
if you do not pay a bill; or
if you act in an abusive or offensive manner.
We will give you reasonable notice before we stop acting for you.

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If either we or you decide that we should stop acting for you, we will charge you for the work we have done and, where appropriate, for transferring the matter to another adviser if you so request.  This will be calculated on our then-current hourly rate basis.

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We are not responsible for reminding you about important dates and/or any deadlines after our appointment has been terminated.

 

 

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Storage and retrieval of files

We may create and hold client files in hard copy (paper), electronically, or a combination of both.  On completion of your matter we will return all hard copy (paper) documents to you and (on request) can also provide you with an electronic copy of the file unless it is inappropriate to do so.