Getting started
Whether our work involves the protection of an IP asset, the management of an IP dispute or something else, our aim is to protect and ultimately add value to your business. However, we recognise that for the majority of clients, managing legal spend is paramount. In order to address this, we will give you an indication of the likely fees involved in an initial piece of work as quickly as possible. Often, we can do this as soon as we’ve received your enquiry, but sometimes we will need to ask you for more information or documentation.
We are required by law to get satisfactory documentation evidencing the identity of our clients and sometimes people related to them (e.g. company directors). This is because lawyers who deal with money and property on behalf of their clients can be used by criminals who want to launder money.
Our lawyers
You will usually work with one lawyer, who will be your day-to-day contact. Your lawyer may change from time to time, but a partner will always retain overall supervision and control of your matter.
Our lawyers will always aim to treat you fairly and with respect, communicate with you in plain English and provide advice and services with reasonable skill and care. However, the nature of many types of legal work means that it is often not possible to guarantee a particular outcome.
In return, we ask you to provide documents when we ask for them and respond promptly when we ask for instructions or information, tell us if your contact details change, inform us of any time limits or objectives that might not be obvious to us and tell us if your instructions or circumstances change or if you are not sure you understand what we have discussed.
Our costs
We want you to be able to budget for our services with certainty, so we will always charge a fixed fee where possible (e.g. for preparing and filing an application or for drafting a letter or a contract). Our fixed fees will be calculated based on the volume and complexity of the agreed work and will include taking instructions, undertaking the work and delivering the work to you. Our fixed fees will not include undertaking new work where something unexpected has arisen or where your instructions or circumstances have changed.
Where it is not possible to charge a fixed fee (e.g. for litigation, for ad hoc or ongoing advice or for more complex matters), we will charge on the basis of the following hourly rates: Partners: £400 + VAT; Senior Associates and Associates: £375-350 + VAT; Solicitors: £325 + VAT; and Trainee Solicitors and Paralegals: £150-250 + VAT. We may increase our hourly rates from time to time. If this happens, we will notify you in writing in advance.
Our invoices
We will invoice at the beginning of each month for any work undertaken or commenced in the previous month. We ask for payment within 14 days of receipt of our invoice. Our invoices will be payable even if the work commenced in the previous month has not been completed (e.g. where we have provided you with a draft document to review, but you have not yet had an opportunity to comment on that document or we have not yet had an opportunity to action your comments). However, rest assured that we will complete any agreed work covered by the fixed fee after the invoice has been paid.
Where our work involves disbursements (i.e. money to be paid by us to someone else on your behalf, such as trade mark filing fees or court filing fees), we will ask for money on account before we undertake the work. Any such sums will be held in our general client account from the date of receipt to the date of payment. You agree that we may retain any interest earned on such sums, provided that any interest we retain is reasonable and fair in the circumstances. If, in any particular case or for any particular matter, we determine that we are required to account to you for all or part of such interest, we will do so.
We ask you to inform us if you would like someone else to be responsible for paying our invoices or any part of them. We must approve this in advance and we will ask for that person’s name, contact details and verification documentation. You will remain responsible for paying our invoices even if someone else agrees to pay some or all of them and our invoices will still be addressed to you. If someone else does pay some of our invoices, you will remain responsible for paying the rest.
If any payment is not received by the due date, we may decline to undertake further work and we may charge interest. Prompt payment enables us to continue providing services to everyone we work with.
You have the right to challenge any of our invoices by applying to the court to assess the invoice under the Solicitors Act 1974. The usual time limit for applying to the court for an assessment is one month from the date of receipt of the invoice.
Your privacy
We take your privacy seriously. We will only use your personal data if we have a proper reason under data protection law. We will usually process your personal data to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, for the performance of our contractual obligations to you or for our legitimate business interests.
We may use your personal data to send you updates about legal developments that might be of interest to you (e.g. our monthly newsletter). You have the right to opt out of receiving such communications at any time by contacting info@briffa.com.
Our privacy policy is available on our website (www.briffa.com) and contains further information on how and why we process your personal data. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data. If you have any questions about our privacy policy, please contact us at info@briffa.com.
Problems
We want to give you the best possible service. However, we appreciate that misunderstandings arise from time to time so if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about our service, please inform us immediately and we will do our best to resolve the problem. In the first instance, it may be helpful to contact the lawyer working on your matter to discuss your concerns. However, if you would like to make a formal complaint, please contact info@briffa.com and we will provide you with a copy of our complaints procedure. In the unlikely event that we are unable to resolve the problem, you may have a right to have the complaint independently reviewed by the Legal Ombudsman (www.legalombudsman.org.uk) who is responsible for investigating service issues with lawyers. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to it within one year of the date of the act or omission you are concerned about or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer any remaining concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.
Whilst you may cancel your instructions at any time by giving us notice in writing, we will only decide to stop acting for you with good reason (e.g. where we are not insured to provide the advice or service you require, where we feel that the relationship has broken down, if you do not pay our invoices, if you provide us with misleading information or if you act in an abusive or offensive manner). If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, we will charge you for the work we have done. This will be calculated on the basis of our hourly rates set out above. We will not be responsible for reminding you about important dates or any deadlines after we have stopped acting for you.
General
Briffa is a trading name of Briffa Legal Limited, a company incorporated in England, and our company registration number is 07655999. We are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and our authorisation number is 561243. We are registered for VAT with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and our VAT registration number is GB609994684. We have professional indemnity insurance covering claims against us. Details, including the contact details of our insurer and the territorial coverage of the policy, are available upon request.
In an effort to reduce our carbon footprint, all communications and transactions will only be undertaken electronically where possible (including proposals, instructions, newsletters, invoices, filings and payments). Our normal office hours are 9.30 am to 5.30 pm from Monday to Friday. We are closed on all public holidays.
This document, together with any written proposal we send to you and any written instructions you send to us, form a contract between us. This contract is governed by English law and subject to the jurisdiction of the English courts.