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Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited Terms Of Engagement
These Standard Terms of Engagement (“Terms”) apply in respect of all work carried out by us for you, except to the extent that we otherwise agree with you in writing.
1. Services
1.1 The services which we are to provide for you are outlined in our letter of engagement.
2. Financial
2.1 Fees:
(a) The fees which we will charge or the manner in which they will be arrived at, are set out in our letter of engagement and will be in accordance with the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
(b) If the letter of engagement specifies a fixed fee, we will charge this for the agreed scope of our services. Work which falls outside that scope will be charged on an hourly rate basis. We will advise you as soon as reasonably practicable if it becomes necessary for us to provide services outside the agreed scope and if requested, give you an estimate of the likely amount of the further costs.
(c) Where our fees are calculated on an hourly basis, these rates are available on request. Differences in those rates reflect the experience and specialisation of our professional staff. Hourly rates are regularly reviewed and may be amended from time to time without reference to you. Time spent is recorded in 6 minute units, with time rounded up to the next unit of 6 minutes.
2.2 Disbursements and expenses:
(a) Payments may have to be made to other people for work to be done, for example, filing fees, search fees, agency fees, service fees and similar payments (called disbursements). We cannot pay these amounts on your behalf unless we first receive payment from you. We reserve the right to ask you either for the specific amount or for an approximate amount to cover these expenses. If you pay this amount into our trust account, you authorise us to make payment on your behalf to cover these disbursements. This will ensure that we are not out of pocket.
(b) If we instruct any other person (including counsel or another practitioner), we reserve the right to require payment of that person’s estimated fees into our trust account beforehand and you authorise us to make payment to that person from the money paid into our trust account. By instructing that person, we are obligated to pay that person’s fees and accordingly we require protection for payment. We may require you to enter into a payment arrangement directly with that person.
(c) We charge an additional office expense fee calculated at 5% of our fee to cover photocopying, phone calls, fax, postage and other incidental office expenses.
(d) Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) e-dealing office fees are charged on land transactions to cover our administration costs, together with search and/or registration fees incurred on your behalf.
(e) We use third party providers to help complete our customer due diligence (see 5 below). The costs of these services will be charged to you.
2.3 GST (if any): GST is payable by you on our fees and charges.
2.4 Invoicing: We will send interim invoices to you, usually monthly and on the completion of the matter or termination of our engagement. We may also send you an invoice when we incur a significant expense.
2.5 Payment: Invoices are payable within 14 days of the date of the invoice, unless alternative arrangements have been made with us. We may require interest to be paid on any amount which is overdue. Interest will be calculated at the rate of 16% p.a. All costs in relation to the collection of overdue accounts will be added to your account.
2.6 Payment by Credit Card: We accept payment by VISA and Mastercard. Credit card payments will incur a surcharge which, at the date of our engagement, is 1.85%. This rate is subject to change and we will notify you of any changes.
2.7 Security: We may ask you to pre-pay amounts to us, or to provide security for our fees and expenses. You authorise us:
(a) to debit against amounts pre-paid by you; and
(b) to deduct from any funds held on your behalf in our trust account any fees, expenses or disbursements for which we have provided an invoice.
2.8 Third parties: Although you may expect to be reimbursed by a third party for our fees and expenses, and although our invoices may at your request or with your approval be directed to a third party, you will nonetheless remain responsible for payment to us if the third party fails to pay us.
3. Confidentiality
3.1 We will hold in confidence all information concerning you or your affairs that we acquire during the course of acting for you. We will not disclose any of this information to any other person except:
(a) To the extent necessary or desirable to enable us to carry out your instructions; or
(b) To the extent required by law or by the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
3.2 Confidential information concerning you will as far as practicable be made available only to those within our firm who are providing legal services for you.
4. Termination
4.1 You may terminate our retainer at any time
4.2 We may terminate our retainer in any of the circumstances set out in the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
4.3 If our retainer is terminated you must pay us all fees due up to the date of the termination and all expenses incurred up to that date together with fees incurred resulting from the termination.
5. Anti-Money Laundering Requirements
5.1 We are required to comply with the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act). We will perform customer due diligence and account monitoring, keep records and report any unusual or suspicious transactions where required by the AML/CFT Act or any other law. We will periodically advise you what information and documents are required for these purposes, which may include information about you and others (e.g. beneficial owners), information relating to the source of funds/wealth, the transaction, ownership structure and any other relevant matter.
5.2 Please promptly provide the information and documents requested. We may have to refuse to act or cease acting if we cannot meet our AML/CFT Act obligations. We may retain the information and documents or provide them to a bank or other entity (where applicable) to deal with in accordance with their terms, and disclose them to any law enforcement, regulatory agency or court as required by law or to fulfil our obligations under the AML/CFT Act (e.g. to an auditor).
5.3 You accept we may use an agent (such as First AML) to verify your identity and conduct other due diligence required to meet our obligations, and you authorise us to exchange personal information about you and your affairs with the agent for that purpose. You agree to pay the agent’s cost of completing due diligence (which we will invoice to you as a disbursement) whether or not the matter proceeds. The agent may host your personal information for us for storage purposes and to meet our AML/CFT obligations only.
6. Retention of Files, Documents, Records and Information
6.1 We will keep a record of all important documents which we receive or create on your behalf on the following basis:
(a) We may keep a record electronically and destroy originals (except for Wills and Enduring Powers of Attorney where the existence of an original is legally important). Wherever possible we will return the originals of all other documents to you.
(b) At any time, we may dispose of documents which are duplicates, or which are trivial (such as emails which do not contain substantive information), or documents which belong to us.
(c) We are not obliged to retain documents or copies where you have requested that we provide them to you, or to another person, and we have done so. However, we are entitled to retain copies for our own records if we wish to do so.
6.2 We will provide to you on request copies or originals (at our option) of all documents to which you are entitled under the Privacy Act 2020 or any other law. We may charge you our reasonable costs for doing this.
6.3 Where we hold documents that belong to a third party, you will need to provide us with that party’s written authority to uplift to obtain a copy of that document.
6.4 Unless you instruct us in writing otherwise, you authorise and consent to us (without further reference to you) destroying (or deleting in the case of electronic records) all documents held by us seven (7) years after our engagement ends, or earlier if we have converted those documents to an electronic format (other than any documents that we hold in safe custody for you or are otherwise obliged by law to retain for longer). We may retain documents for longer at our option.
6.5 We own copyright in all documents or work we create in the course of performing the services, but grant you a non-exclusive licence to use and copy the documents as you see fit for your own personal or commercial use. However, you may not permit any third party to copy, adapt or use the documents without our written permission.
6.6 Our Privacy Policy (which can be found at https://haighlyon.co.nz/privacy-policy/) applies to your engagement of Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited and its provision of services to you. By accessing and using Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited’s services, you are deemed to have read, and agreed to be bound by, the Privacy Policy.
7. Conflicts of Interests
7.1 We have procedures in place to identify and respond to conflicts of interest. If a conflict of interest arises we will advise you of this and follow the requirements and procedures set out in the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
8. Duty of Care
8.1 Our duty of care is to you and not to any other person. Before any other person may rely on our advice, we must expressly agree to this.
9. The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT)
9.1 AML/CFT requires that we meet certain customer due diligence requirements. We will request provision of certain information in order for us to comply with these requirements, such as:
- Proof of identification
- Proof of address; and
- Sources of funds or wealth
We reserve the right to terminate your retainer and take no further steps if you fail to provide this information to us in a timely fashion.
10. Trust Account
10.1 We maintain a trust account for all funds which we receive from clients (except monies received for payment of our invoices). If we are holding significant funds on your behalf and you have returned your signed FATCA/CRS self certification form, we will normally lodge those funds on interest bearing deposit with a bank. In that case we will charge an administration fee of 7% of the interest derived.
11. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the OECD Common Reporting Standard (CRS)
11.1 Our bank (ASB) is required by law to obtain certain information about funds held in our trust account and advise the IRD, who may in turn forward the information to foreign tax authorities. The IRD has the power to compel any person, including our firm to supply such information to the IRD. The FATCA/CRS information required relates to funds held in our trust account on Interest Bearing Deposit (IBD) for an entity or individual that is a foreign tax resident. Entities are also required to disclose whether they conduct active or passive business, and whether they are financial institutions.
11.2 You agree and consent to us providing any information held by us in relation to your FATCA/CRS status or FATCA/CRS matters to the IRD and the ASB.
11.3 You acknowledge and agree that we are unable to place funds in our trust account on IBD unless we have received your signed FATCA/CRS selfcertification form. This means that interest will not be earned on your funds until we receive the signed form.
12. General
12.1 These Terms apply to any current engagement and also to any future engagement, whether or not we send you another copy of them.
12.2 We are entitled to change these Terms from time to time, in which case we will send you another amended Terms.
12.3 Our relationship with you is governed by New Zealand law.
13. Use of Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited’s Name and Advice
13.1 Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited’s name (either directly or by inference) must not be used by you without prior written consent of Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited.
13.2 The advice provided by Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited is provided solely for your benefit and use by you in connection with the matter we were engaged to provide advice on. It should not be used or relied upon by you for any other purpose, nor may it be disclosed by you to any other third party without prior written consent of Haigh Lyon Lawyers Limited.