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ARONA St JAMESSolicitors

Terms of Engagement

This document contains legally privileged advice based on your instructions. It must not be copied, shared, or processed by third parties or automated tools, including artificial intelligence systems. Unauthorised use may lead to misinterpretation and is strictly prohibited.

Introduction

Thank you for inviting Arona St James Solicitors (hereafter referred to as Arona St James) to act on your behalf. 

Please note that you will not have a retainer (formally become a client of) with Arona St James until: 

  1. You have signed our terms of business documentation;
  2. All the legal checks that we are obliged to undertake have been concluded satisfactorily; and 
  3. You have paid the requested money on account of costs, if required. 

Please note that we are unable to take any legal activity on your files on your behalf until a), b) and c) above have been complied with fully. However, you will still be legally responsible for any work we undertake on your behalf prior to a), b) and c) above have been complied with as that work represents a one-off piece of advice. 

We try hard to avoid changing the people who are handling your case, but if this cannot be avoided, for instance if someone leaves, we will notify you accordingly. There may also be some instances when another member of our team may provide assistance in relation to your case. 

Please make sure that you have received the following information documents:

 

  1. Terms of Business Letter (this letter)
  2. Department Letter
  3. Privacy Notice
  4. Client Care Procedure
  5. Request to Commence Work Form
  6. Request to terminate Instructions Specimen Letter

 

These are important documents and form the basis of your agreement with us, therefore, please ensure that you have received them and take time to read them fully.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority

Arona St James is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in relation to all the legal services that we provide to you and you can check our authorisation, the permitted areas of practice and our disciplinary record on the SRA website at https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/register/. Our law firm registration is 619031.

VAT

VAT is payable on all fees at the prevailing rate. Our VAT number is 241 292 723.

Payment Methods

Bank Transfer

The preferred method of payment of our fees is by bank transfer. The details of our bank account will be provided in another letter accompanying this one (“P2 Letter”). 

Under no circumstances should you disclose our bank details to any other person. 

Credit Card

You may opt to settle your outstanding invoices by credit card using a secure SumUp payment link. Please note that any bank or merchant service charges incurred as a result of this payment method will be your responsibility. In particular, if you choose to pay for our invoices or any disbursements using a credit card, a surcharge equivalent to the fees imposed on us by our payment provider or bank will also be applied to the transaction amount. 

Cash

In limited cases, we will accept cash up to £500 towards your fees due.

Payment Of Your Bills By Someone Else

Please do not under any circumstances make payment of our invoices or disbursements through a third party, including a family member or close friend. 

This is a very serious matter for us. By law, we are obliged to verify who and where the source of funds have originated from. If funds are paid into our account by a third party, they will be frozen until such time as we have done a full verification of that individual. Your invoices will be considered unpaid until such time as that individual has been verified. The fee for undertaking that verification is £50 plus VAT. If we do not verify the person paying the funds into our account we may commit a criminal offence and could be fined or imprisoned. If we have any concerns, we are required by law to refer that transaction to the National Crime Agency and the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation. 

Charges on Unpaid Bills

If a bill is not settled in advance or within the timescale agreed by us, we will charge interest at 10% per month from the date the bill is due to cover our reasonable credit controllers costs of recovery before any litigation commences. We are obliged to inform you that this rate is higher than that to which we would otherwise entitled by law. Interest will be charged on a daily basis. 

Any dishonoured payments such as bounced cheques will attract a charge equivalent to the charges imposed upon us by our bank.

CyberCrime

Due to increased levels of cybercrime today, there is a much higher risk that fraudsters use ‘phishing emails’ as a method to fraudulently obtain sensitive information as passwords and bank details. These emails are typically disguised as a trustworthy entity, such as a bank or accountancy firm. If you are unsure in anyway regarding the email received, please do telephone us to confirm with us before making any payments to us.

only way we will communicate a change of bank details is by giving them to you in person when you attend our offices or orally over the telephone personally by a member of Arona St James, who is known to you. 

If you have any queries about any bill that is sent to you, please do not hesitate to contact us straight away.

Financial Services Compensation Scheme “FSCS” 

We take the responsibility of looking after your money in our client account very seriously. We are also obliged by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) to have a qualified and SRA authorised accountant to audit our client account to ensure that it is always precisely accurate to the last penny, and also that the funds are properly protected. 

Any money that you pay to us is held with Barclays Bank in London. Despite all our best endeavours, what we cannot do is protect your money from a bank collapse. If Barclays or any other bank that we held your client account monies did collapse, then please be advised that:

  1. it is unlikely that Arona St James will be held liable for losses resulting from that banking failure
  2. the £85,000 FSCS compensation limit applies to each individual person and so if you hold other personal monies in the same bank your losses would be limited to £85,000 in total payment under FSCS Scheme. 
  3. your acceptance of these terms of business give us the right to notify the bank with whom we hold your client account monies of your personal details in the event of a banking failure to ensure that we do the best we can, as quickly as we can, to protect your money under the FSCS Scheme. 

File reviews

We take our responsibility to client care and looking after you and your file very seriously. We therefore have two forms of file review as follows:

  1. Personal File Review 

A Solicitor will undertake a regular review of your file. You will be charged for the file review.

  1. Peer File Review 

One of our colleagues will also review your file on an ad hoc basis chosen at random to ensure that the Solicitor with conduct of your case is conducting the file reviews on time and properly as well as ensuring that all legal requirements have been attended to in good time. This will be undertaken by a senior member of the Family Team. You will not be charged for the peer file reviews. 

Lien 

In law, a lien is a form of security interest granted over an item of property to secure the payment of a debt or performance of an obligation. We reserve the right to exercise a lien over your files and other documents or assets placed in our possession or custody (for whatever reason) if you have an outstanding debt with us in the form of an unpaid bill, until those debts are fully settled.

Legal Aid 

Arona St James does not undertake Legal Aid work and as such, if you require Legal Aid, you should contact a law firm that has a Legal Aid Contract. 

Alternative Funding

You may have a motor or household insurance policy or trade union or other membership etc which entitles you to free legal advice. You should check all your policies carefully to see if this is the case. If you are of the view that you can obtain legal advice through an existing policy please contact us immediately. However, matrimonial cases are mostly likely not covered in these policies.

There are insurance policies available on the market that allow you to cover certain areas of law after an event has occurred. This is called after the event (or ATE) insurance. After paying a fee (premium’) you would be covered for your opposing solicitor’s costs and expert’s fees if you lose your case. You can also in certain cases insure the premium payable. We write to advise you that Arona St James does not undertake after the event insurance work. Nothing in this paragraph constitutes financial advice. If you are in doubt about the affect of this please contact us. 

You may be able to undertake a conditional fee agreement which most people understand to be “no win, no fee”. We write to advise you that Arona St James does not undertake conditional fee arrangements. Nothing in this paragraph constitutes financial advice. If you are in doubt about the affect of this please contact us.

Dissatisfaction With Your Bill(s)

If you are unhappy at any time with the bills that we have rendered to you, please request a further narrative of the bill and highlight any items that you are unhappy with and we will be more than willing, at no additional cost to you, to review those items.

In any event, if you are still unhappy with our bills then you can raise a formal complaint. Please see the additional attached document which explains in detail how you can complain about our services, including our bills. 

If your case is contentious, in simple terms this means that it was a court based case, then you will always have the right to ask a Judge to check our bill and determine if it is reasonable. This is known as an assessment under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974

Regulation of Investment Business and Insurance Mediation

Sometimes family, probate or company work involves investments. Arona St James are NOT authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and so may refer you to an independent financial advisor or another company who is authorised to provide the necessary advice. We will never make a formal recommendation to choose any particular financial advisor. We can provide certain limited services in relation to investments, provided that they are closely linked to the legal services we are providing to you, as we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Sometimes litigation involves advising upon and or arranging defective title indemnity insurance in conveyancing matters or after the event insurance in litigation. This is known as insurance mediation. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority for insurance mediation. 

If you have any problem with the service we have provided in this respect please let us know. We will try to resolve any problem quickly and operate an internal complaints procedure to help us to resolve the problem between ourselves. If for any reason we are unable to resolve the problem between us, then we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and complaints and redress mechanisms are provided through the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Legal Complaints Service. 

The Law Society is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, but responsibility for regulation and complaints handling have been separated from the Law Society’s representative functions. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society and the Legal Complaints Service is the independent complaints handling body of the Law Society

Interest Provisions 

The Solicitors Regulation Authority Accounting Rules require us to pay interest on any sums that we hold on your behalf for prolonged periods in our client account. This includes, for example, payments on account of costs to be incurred and deposit monies for the purchase of a house. Interest will be calculated and paid to you at the rate set by the banking institution with whom we bank for our Client Account. This of course may change. The period for which interest will be paid normally runs from the date when cleared funds are received until the date of payment e.g. the date.

The payment of interest is subject to certain minimum amounts and periods of time as set out in the Solicitors Accounts Rules. However, to avoid the burden of accounting to you for what may be very small sums of interest we do not pay interest below a £20 threshold. Therefore, for example if you had accrued interest on your money in our client account of say £6, we would not pay that to you.

The sole purpose of setting the limit of £20 is not to profit from such sums but to avoid the need for complicated and time-consuming bureaucracy in managing how much interest is due to each client at any given time. 

We pledge to donate whatever we can to charity every year and we like to think that the modest sums we do make by way of “profit” from the client account below the £20 threshold goes a little way to assist us to pay towards our charity pledge.

Professional Indemnity Insurance 

Arona St James has professional indemnity cover in place in respect of the work carried out on your case in the sum of £2,000,000. It is believed that this cover is reasonable in respect of the work carried out on your matter and accordingly we do not accept any liability should you make a claim against this firm in excess of our insurance cover. Our professional indemnity insurer is Travelers Professional Risks Ltd, Exchequer Court, 33 St Mary Axe, London EC3A 8AG and our policy number is UCSOL 397 9961.

Your acceptance of these Terms of Business is an acceptance that the maximum aggregate claim howsoever arising, including, but not exclusively for negligence, that can be made against Arona St James is the equivalent to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (Law Society) prescribed minimum sum from time to time in force.

Limitation of Liability

Your rights in respect of any breach on our part of this engagement shall only be enforceable if notice in writing giving all relevant details of any claim shall have been given to us on or before the second anniversary of the date of this engagement. Arona St James will not be liable if such losses are due to the provision of false, misleading or incomplete information or documentation or due to the acts or omissions of any other person other than Arona St James.

Our liability, whether to you or to any third party, in contract, tort, under statute or otherwise shall exclude any indirect or consequential, economic loss or damage (including loss of profits), suffered by you, or by any third party. arising from, or in connection with, the matter upon which we are instructed however that loss is caused, including our negligence but not our wilful default.

If you are in any doubt as to the implication of this paragraph in your case then please contact us and we will explain it to you in greater detail.

Distance Selling Regulations

In accordance with the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 you have been given different rights in different circumstances when you decide to instruct us. Different rules apply depending on where and how you instructed us and where the contract between us was formed. We have decided to offer you the maximum consumer protection in all cases, whether you instruct us or by attending our offices otherwise. Therefore according to the new rules and our own “upgrade” of the same you can cancel your instructions to us at any time. 

However, in addition, in the first 14 days, you have additional rights to cancel your instructions to us. The 14 days start to run from the date upon which you were given (by post or e mail or by putting the information on our system) ALL of the documents as stated at the top of this letter.

Once you have received all the above documents during the 14 day period you can cancel your instructions to us without being liable for any costs that we may have incurred on your behalf during that period. After 14 days you can still cancel your instructions to us but you will be liable for the work that we have undertaken on your behalf from the start of your instructions to us until the date of the cancellation.

We have included a specimen document in the documents above for you to use if you wish to cancel your instructions to us but you are not obliged to use that document and can simply write to us email us as you wish.

In many cases clients ask us to commence work on their cases immediately or certainly as soon as possible. Under these 2013 Regulations, to protect us, we will not commence work on your file until we are sure that you have received all five documents above mentioned and a further 14 days have elapsed. If you want us to commence work on your file sooner than that, then you MUST complete the Request to Commence Work Form that we have enclosed with this letter. If we do not receive that document properly signed and dated, we will not commence work on your file for 14 days no matter how urgent your case may be even if you have given us oral instructions to commence work immediately.

Money Laundering 

Money Laundering is the process by which the proceeds of crime are dealt with in such a way that they appear to come from a legitimate source. If we become aware of or suspect the existence of the proceeds of crime in any case, we are now legally obliged to report the matter to the National Crime Agency (NCA). They may then give or withhold consent for us to continue with that case. The law states that the obligations which are placed upon us by the Proceeds of Crime Act override our duty of confidentiality which we owe to you. If we are obliged to report the matter to NCA, you will never be notified even if NCA gives us consent to continue working on your behalf as we may be committing a criminal offence.

As a result of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and Money Laundering Regulations 2003 we must obtain satisfactory evidence of identity from all new clients before we are able to act or do any work on your case. To that end we have obtained details of your status from a reputable supplier.

Please note that if we have to spend time addressing issues which have arisen under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, that time will be charged in the same manner as any other work undertaken in relation to your case. 

In compliance with anti-money laundering regulations, we are required to verify the identity of all clients. To carry out this verification, we use a third-party service provider, Veriphy (https://veriphy.com/).

A fee is charged for this identity verification service, which is recoverable from you. For details of the applicable charges, please refer to their website.

Sanctions

Sanctions are restrictive measures imposed by the UK government on individuals and assets which are managed by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) to achieve specific foreign policy or national security objectives. 

If you or any of your assets become subject to UK Sanctions, we will tell you as soon as possible. In such circumstances, we will be required by law to cease to act for you immediately. If we breach UK sanctions by continuing to act for you, we will be committing a criminal offence which is punishable by a fine and or imprisonment. We would also be subject to investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority

All costs incurred by us up to that point will still be payable but you should not under any circumstances pay our invoices or place any further funds into any of our accounts under any circumstances. If funds are in our account or further funds are added to our bank accounts, they will automatically be frozen in compliance with the rules imposed on us by the OFSI.

Electronic Communication 

We will generally communicate with you by electronic means. Please note that communication by electronic means such as email, WhatsApp, SMS etc between you and ourselves or between ourselves and a third party in connection with your case involves the following risks:- 

  1. The possible interception of the email en route to its destination and unauthorised reading or amending by a third party. 
  2. The unintentional passing on of a computer virus

We have a full virus protection software package to mitigate this risk but cannot guarantee that we may innocently contract and pass on such a virus. 

We will communicate with you by electronic means without any liability on our part to the fullest extent permissible by law for either of the above risks (or other similar tasks) occurring, including any claim that may arise from such communication on your request with third parties.

Our Responsibility To You

We will always review your case on a regular basis as stated earlier in this letter. We will also advise you of any changes in the law that affect your case and we will advise you of any circumstances and risks of which we are aware or consider being reasonably foreseeable that could affect the outcome of your case during the period that you are a client with us.

Our Objectives

We will endeavour at all times to deliver good outcomes for you. We will always act in good faith in all our dealings with you and do our utmost to avoid foreseeable harm to you. 

Overall we hope to assist you to reach your financial objectives.

Service Standards And Communication 

While assisting you in your case, we will contact you as and when we deem it necessary to do so for the efficient and timely conduct of your matter. Where there is a deadline we will contact you in a timely manner to ensure that any deadlines are not missed. 

Unless you tell us otherwise we will normally communicate with you by electronic means (usually be email or calling you on your telephone number). 

Our goal is to provide you with a high quality service. In particular, we aim to: 

  1. respond to your queries from you within three working days of receipt;
  2. keep you informed of progress regularly or when there is a development in your case;
  3. communicate clearly, promptly and without jargon. 

However please not that there may be circumstances where we are unable to meet these high standards. For example, when we are otherwise engaged in an urgent matter for another client or we are on annual leave.

Unless you advise us otherwise, we will communicate with you by face to face meetings, emails and by telephone.

Please note that all our communications and documents will be provided to you in English. 

Our Ethical Policy

We are committed to providing the highest standard of advice and service possible. The interest of our clients is paramount to us and to achieve this we have designed our systems and procedures to place you at the heart of our business. In doing so, we will:

  1. be open, honest and transparent in the way we deal with you
  2. not place our interests above yours, ever;
  3. seek your views and perception of our dealings with you to ensure it meets your expectations or to identify any improvements required

Equality Diversity and Inclusion 

We are totally committed to fairness in society and to you as our client. We have a written Equality Diversity and Inclusion Policy which we adhere to at all times. If you feel that we have not maintained exceptionally high standards in this respect then please let us know as soon as possible. You may also wish to make a complaint if you feel that you have been unfairly treated and we refer you to our complaints procedure with this letter which explains how you may complain. 

Artificial Intelligence

Our firm may, where appropriate, use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist in providing legal services. However, you, as our client, must not input any documents, information, or materials supplied to us into any AI tools, and we will not supply such materials for your use in AI, due to the risk of misinformation and data security concerns. You are, of course, free to seek independent professional advice if you wish to do so, but we strongly advise against relying on AI for interpreting or handling any confidential documents provided to or generated by this firm.

Your Responsibilities

You should at all times provide us with clear, timely and accurate instructions. You should also provide us with all the documentation that we request in a timely manner so that we can complete your transactions in good time. You should also keep us updated of any changes to your address or telephone numbers. 

Please note that any delay may require us to carry out additional work, such as resubmitting court documentation or missing a deadline. This may lead to you having to pay costs to the other side or other organisations that you will be responsible for. Further, in such circumstances, any delay on your part may lead to an increase in our fees charged to you to reflect that additional work carried out.

Termination Of Instructions

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time but you we would like to remind you that at the point of termination we will still render you a final account for the work that we have already undertaken on your behalf but which has not yet been billed (which is known as work in progress). Our fees will be computed on a time basis above mentioned together with VAT and any disbursements incurred.

Storage Of Papers

After completing all the work on your file, we will keep your file of papers (except for any which you have asked to be returned to you) for no more than 6 years. We keep the file on the understanding that we have the authority to destroy it 6 years after the date of the final bill we send to you for this matter including originals. We will not however destroy documents that you specifically ask us to deposit in safe custody such as deeds. 

If we store your deeds relating to a Will or such like, given the higher duty of care that attaches to such documents we will charge £50.00 plus VAT for the storage of those documents and associated papers per year. 

If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to your continuing or new instructions you will not be charged for the storage or retrieval of those papers. If however, you require us to retrieve your papers for any other purpose we will charge you £50 plus VAT for the retrieval of the file of papers. If we are required to read papers on your behalf or comply with your further instructions we will charge for this in the usual way as stated earlier in this letter. 

 

If you request your file of papers, the cost of sending your file to you or to a third party as any new Solicitors shall be borne by you and you may choose the method of delivery of the same as is convenient to you as long as it is safe and practicable.

Services Provided By Us

Should you require our services, please note that Arona St James undertakes the following work:

Family:

Divorce and dissolution

Children matters

Financial remedy following divorce or dissolution

Injunctions

Surrogacy

Private Client:

Wills

Trusts

Lasting Power of Attorney

Deputyship Applications

Probate (Non contentious)

Litigation:

Civil Disputes (between non-married couples) 

TOLATA claims

Immigration:

Nationality

Family & Private Life

Asylum

Humanitarian Protection

Corporate immigration

Applicable Law 

Any dispute or legal issue arising from our terms of business will be determined by the Law of England and Wales and considered exclusively by the English and Welsh courts. 

The Agreement Between You and Us

We hope that this letter has explained the basis on which we will carry out all the work necessary on your behalf. If there are any points in this letter that we have not had explained to you in your interview with us or which you would like explaining to you again, please do not hesitate to contact us immediately. If we need to change any of the terms of this letter, we will notify you in writing beforehand.

Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to your acceptance of these Terms and Conditions Business. These five documents are important, therefore, please keep them in a safe place for future reference. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns in relation to the contents of this letter indeed any other matter. 

We thank you for instructing Arona St James. 

Yours sincerely

Arona St James

 

CLIENT CARE PROCEDURE

We will always work hard to ensure that you receive the highest possible standards of service from us. However, we acknowledge that from time to time we may not get things right. In the unlikely event that you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our service including in relation to your bills rendered, we have an established procedure to resolve your concerns as swiftly as possible. 

We are committed to resolving any grievances that you may have in the spirit of compromise and with the utmost of best intentions. We will endeavour to act professionally, courteously and fairly.

Policy

The Head of Quality Assurance has determined the policy for dealing with client concerns. The policy is that we will endeavour at all times to be fair and reasonable to your concerns and we will place a particular emphasis on creating a compromise and suggesting solutions to avoid future issues, rather than apportioning blame.

Charges

Please be assured that you will never be charged a fee or suffer any reduction in the quality of the service that we offer you because you may wish to raise a client care issue.

Process 

Where the complaint is more about service or costs you should complain to us directly in the first instance. We have several stages of dealing with your complaint:

Internal Procedure – stage 1:

We firmly believe that resolving any issues that you may have as close as possible to the source of the concerns is the best way to achieve the most effective outcomes. Therefore if you have any concerns about the quality of service that you have received from us, then please raise your concerns with the Advisor acting for you in the first instance. All our advising staff are rigorously trained during our induction processes and beyond to handle quality assurance issues positively and fairly at all times. 

The Advisor will acknowledge your complaint within 3 days. 

The Advisor may also invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your concerns. We would hope to do this within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter. Following this meeting, the Advisor will then write to you within 14 days to set out their conclusions and proposals or suggestions they would wish to make. If no meeting takes place (for whatever reason) then the Advisor will write to you within 14 days of sending the acknowledgement letter setting out a full response to you setting out their conclusions and proposals or suggestions they would wish to make.

If we have to change any of the timescales mentioned above, we will let you know and explain why.

 

Internal Procedure – Stage 2:

If you feel that it would be completely inappropriate to raise your issues with the Advisor or you have raised your issues with the Advisor and you are dissatisfied with the proposed outcomes, then you should raise the matter with the Head of Quality Assurance in writing. In the circumstances that your complaint relates to the Head of Quality Assurance, your issue will be re-directed to the next most senior person within the company, who will consider your concerns impartially. 

We will acknowledge your request to take the matter to the Second Stage within 3 days.

Our Head of Quality Assurance may also invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your concerns. We would hope to do this within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter. Following this meeting, the Head of Quality Assurance will then write to you within 14 days to set out conclusions and proposals or suggestions they would wish to make. If no meeting takes place (for whatever reason) then the Head of Quality Assurance will write to you within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter setting out a full response to you setting out their conclusions and proposals or suggestions they would wish to make. This will be our “Final Response”.

If we have to change any of the timescales mentioned above, we will let you know and explain why.

 

External Procedure – Stage 3: 

In the very unlikely event that you are unable to resolve matters with the Head of Quality Assurance or the Final Response outcomes suggested by us do not meet with your satisfaction, you have a right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent complaints body, that deals with legal services complaints.

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, and are not satisfied with our Final Response, you can then take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, but this must be done:

  1. no more than one year from the date of act/omission; or 
  2. no more than one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

The Legal Ombudsman retains the right to extend this period if you make a complaint after that one-year period has elapsed.

Further, the Legal Ombudsman has a discretion allowing them to consider whether it is a proportionate use of their resources and time to investigate a complaint. This will enable the Legal Ombudsman to dismiss or discontinue a complaint if the loss, detriment or impact is deemed not to be significant.

If you are not happy with the Ombudsman’s first decision then you may apply for an Ombudsman’s Final Decision (i.e. like an appeal against the first decision of one of the Legal Ombudsman’s investigators) – but this does not apply in all cases as the Legal Ombudsman retains the right to conclude that a Final Decision is not needed in a case if no substantive issues have been raised in response to their investigator’s first decision findings or remedy.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them. Their details are:

Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk 

Telephone: 0300 555 0333 between 9am and 5pm.

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk 

Address: Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ.

Alternative Complaints Bodies

Alternative complaints bodies such as ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme. We prefer to use the Legal Ombudsman to deal with such complaints and not the alternative bodies stated.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority 

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can also help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other protected characteristic. 

If you would like more information about The Solicitors Regulation Authority, please contact them. Their details are: 

Website: www.sra.org.uk  

Telephone: 0370 606 2555 

Address: Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN.

Head of Quality Assurance Contact Details

Should you have any concerns about any aspect of the service that you have received from Arona St James you may contact the Head of Quality Assurance by the following means: 

  1. By telephone on 0208 175 5000
  2. By email on info@aronastjames.co.uk
  3. By writing to us at The Head of Quality Assurance, 63 St James Street, London, E17 7PJ

How Do We Keep This Procedure Up To Date?

We will occasionally make changes and corrections to this Client Care Procedure. If we believe that the changes are material, we’ll let you know by doing one (or more) of the following:

  1. Posting the changes on our website or 
  2. Sending an email to you informing you about the changes; or
  3. Writing a letter to you informing you about the changes.

REQUEST TO COMMENCE WORK FORM

You must return this page to us as soon as possible after you have fully read, understood and agree with the contents of the following documents:

  1. Terms of Business (this letter)
  2. Department Letter
  3. Privacy Notice 
  4. Client Care Procedure
  5. Request to Commence Work Form
  6. Request to terminate Instructions Specimen Letter

If there are any parts of the above documents that you do not understand then please do not sign and return this document until you have contacted your advisor, Arona Sarwar and had those points explained to you further. There is no charge whatsoever attached to you seeking clarification to these documents.

We are unable to undertake any work on your file until this Request to Commence Work Form is received by us.

If we do not receive the signed Request to Commence Work Form from you within 14 days of the date of this letter, we have the right to automatically close your file of papers.

Once you have fully read, understood and agree with the contents of the above documents please sign and return this page to us by either

  1. By writing to us at Arona St James, 63 St James Street, London, E17 7P

I/We acknowledge safe receipt of the letters and documents stated at the top of this letter. 

REQUEST TO TERMINATE INSTRUCTIONS

You may use this form to cancel your instructions to us at any time. You do not have to use this form. You can communicate that you wish to terminate your instructions to us by the following means:

  1. By telephone on 0208 175 5000
  2. By email on arona@aronastjames.co.uk
  3. By writing to us at Arona St James, 63 St James Street, London, E17 7PJ

 

Dear Sirs, 

 

Re: Termination of my instructions 

 

Please terminate my instructions to you with immediate effect. 

 

Thank you 

 

Signed ____________________________

 

Print Name ________________________

 

Dated______________________________