TERMS OF BUSINESS

OUR BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

We believe that, while traditional values are to be cherished, the way in which legal and
property services are delivered should not be rooted in the past. At Corrigall Black (“CB”) our
philosophy is to deliver a friendly and efficient service that represents value for money. To
achieve this level of service we work as a team, pooling our talents to provide a solution
tailored to your needs.

The business of a solicitor is no different from any other. There is no one person who can do
everything. Just as it takes more than one craftsman to build a house, so it takes a team of
skilled people to provide a quality legal service. We each rely on the skills of the other team
members to achieve the client and professional satisfaction that comes from a job well done.

An essential part of teamwork at CB is for every member of the team to have multiple skills.

Every team member has the fundamentals:-

• a shared concern for the well being of the client’s affairs;
• an honest, friendly and efficient approach to people and the task in hand;
• a level of skill in the use of software tools and computer technology.
Over and above these fundamentals each team member has to have their own area of
expertise and be proficient in at least two others. This ensures that the quality of the advice
you receive is of the highest standard and that your instructions are carried out quickly and
efficiently.

If we cannot deal with a particular type of work, we will “know a man who can”. Please contact
us in the first instance and we will refer you to someone who will look after you. CB is a
member of the HM CONNECT group of legal firms – a UK wide group offering assistance across
the range of legal specialities.

OUR SERVICE

We aim to give you a high-quality legal service. To do this, we will:

work with you to understand what you want to achieve and help you to identify your options;

work quickly and efficiently, in a professional way;

tell you about our progress regularly and also tell you about any likely delays;

get back to you quickly when you have a question; and

give you first-class advice in clear English.

WHAT WE ADVISE ON

We give advice on the laws of Scotland.

If we need to get advice about the laws of any other country, we may get this advice from a
local lawyer. We will tell you if we need to do this and agree the costs with you beforehand.

COMMUNICATION

1. HOW WE WILL CONTACT YOU
We may contact you by letter, e-mail, phone or fax. If you do not want us to use one of
these methods, please let us know.
If your contact details change, you must tell us in writing as soon as possible.

2. SOCIAL MEDIA
We understand that in a small town you may be familiar, acquainted or friendly with our
staff however we do ask that all business be direct to us by email, letter or telephone.

3. CONFIDENTIALITY
We keep any information you give us confidential. We will not give this information to any
other people or organisations unless you give us permission or we must do so by law.

4. RESPONSE TIME
Our office operates on a flexible rota and as such staff may on certain days be working
remotely. As such we aim to respond to emails no later than 3 working days after receipt,
this may not always be possible and if there is an emergency, we advise the office
telephone number be called or any email or letter correspondence be marked urgent so
that a staff member can make urgent correspondence a priority.
If you do not receive acknowledgement of your correspondence, then we advise that you
re-contact us.

Please see our separate Privacy notice regarding your data.

HOLDING YOUR MONEY

We will hold any funds we receive from you in our client account which earns interest. We will
only pay interest to you if the interest is more than £50. If we pay you interest, it will be paid
gross which means that you may have to pay tax on this amount.

If we receive funds in a foreign currency, we will convert them into pounds sterling at the
bank’s current exchange rate, unless you tell us not to beforehand.

If we receive funds from an account other than the one you have told us about, your work
may be delayed.

We will not be responsible for any losses caused if a bank collapses. This does not affect any
rights you may have under a Government protection scheme.

IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY WITH OUR SERVICE

If you are not happy with the quality of the service we have given you, or the amount of our
fees, please discuss your concerns first with the partner responsible for your work. If you are
still not happy, or if you prefer to do so, please raise the matter with our Client Relations
Partner, Elspeth Black. She will make sure that any complaint you make is fully investigated
and that you get a detailed response, normally within 10 working days.

If you are still not satisfied, you have the right to take the matter up with the Scottish Legal
Complaints Commission (SLCC) at Capital Building, 12-13 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh,
EH2 2AF, by email to enquiries@scottishlegalcomplaints.org.uk or telephone 0131 201 2130.
You must make your complaint to the SLCC within six months of the date of our final decision
on your complaint.

WHAT WE ASK OF YOU

To help us deliver our best service to you, please:

give us all relevant details of the work you want us to do for you;

tell us about any developments when they happen; and

give us your instructions when we need them to move on with your work.
If you don’t do this, your work may be delayed or it could affect your position (for example, if
you miss a deadline you could lose your right to make a claim). We will not be responsible for
anything that happens as a result of these delays, and we may have to stop working for you if
we cannot get instructions from you.

FEES AND OTHER CHARGES

1. OUR APPROACH TO FEES
We want you to be clear about how we will charge you for the work we do for you.
When we begin working for you, we will discuss with you how you want to be charged.
For example, we may work for a fixed fee, or you may prefer that we charge you for the
actual time we spend doing the work. Sometimes it will not be clear at the beginning of a
matter what work we will need to carry out for you. This might be because certain
information is not yet known. In this case, we may not be able to work for a fixed fee and
may instead need to charge you for the time spent doing the work. If we are charging for
the actual time, we charge in units of six minutes and normally round up to the next unit.
Our present unit charge is £27.5 per unit.

We will agree with you beforehand how we will charge you for the work, and if we are
working to a fixed fee, what your fee will be. We will confirm these details in writing. We
guarantee that our fees will always be clear.

If any invoice that we send you is not the fee you expect, please tell us why.

2. OUTLAYS
Outlays are necessary expenses that we must pay to other people or organisations on your
behalf. These are charges for things such as searches, experts’ fees or registration charges.

Normally, we only pay outlays after we receive the funds from you. If we have to pay before
getting the funds from you, you must pay us back when we ask you to.
Any reference to paying our fees also includes paying any outlays which you may owe.

3. PAYMENT
You must pay our fees as soon as you get our bill. You can pay by cheque, debit or credit
card, or by paying funds into our bank account direct.

If you do not pay our fees, we have the right to stop or suspend further work on the matter
in question and any other work we are doing for you. In these cases, we will not be
responsible for any delays or losses which may result from this. If we hold money that
belongs to you, we will have the right to take our fees from that money before sending
you the balance.

We also have a legal right to hold deeds, documents or any other papers until you pay the
fees you owe.

If someone else agrees to pay our fees and then fails to do so, you will have to pay our fees
yourself.

If we carry out work for a company or a limited liability partnership (LLP) and it does not
pay our fees, we may require any of the principals to pay all or part of those fees
(‘principals’ means the directors of the company, or the members of the LLP, at the time
we issue our bill).

We have the right to charge interest on overdue amounts at the rate which is 3% over the
Royal Bank of Scotland base rate.

4. PAYMENT TO ACCOUNT
As indicated outlays are expenses payable to third parties, such outlays are normally
payable at the initial stages of a matter. Specifically, in litigation matters. Therefore,
before carrying out work we ask for payment to account for certain matters. These are as
follows:

a. Straight forward/undefended Simple Divorce - £500
b. Ordinary Divorce - £1500
c. Minute of Agreement - £1000
d. Residence and contact negotiation - £1000
e. Family Action – Raising an Action at court - £2000
f. Ordinary Court Action - £2000
g. Evictions - £1000

The payment to account will be reflected in our final fee as a deduction. In the event
we owe you funds, this will be refunded.

5. WILL AND POA FEE
Two documents you may consider having drawn up is a Will and/or Power of Attorney.

a. A Will lets you decide what happens to your money, property and possessions after
your death. Dying without a Will is called “dying intestate”. If you don't have a Will,
rules called the rights of succession dictate how your money, property or belongings
are distributed after your death. This may not be the way that you wanted your money
and belongings to be distributed.

b. A Power of Attorney lets you plan what you want another person to do for you in the
future, should you become incapable of making decisions about your own affairs.

We understand that in making the decision to have these documents drawn you will want
to be aware of the costs involved, these are as follows:

Basic Will:
One Will £200 plus VAT Total Cost £240
Mirror Wills £300 plus VAT Total Cost £360

Complex Will:
One Will £250 plus VAT Total Cost £300
Mirror Wills £350 plus VAT Total Cost £420

Power of Attorney:
One POA £250 plus VAT Total Cost £396
Mirror POA £450 plus VAT Total Cost £540

Combined Will and POA
One (Basic) £400 plus VAT Total Cost £480

Registration Dues at the current rate of £99 per application is payable to the Office of the
Public Guardian per application in addition to the outlined fees.

6. FEEABLE COMMUNICATION
We understand that having a legal matter carried out on your behalf can be stressful and
as such we will make it a priority to keep up to date on any major developments.

All communication is chargeable as per our unit charge whether this be by email,
telephone or letter and we ask you to bear this in mind when contacting us unnecessarily.

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

You have the right to ask for a copy of any personal information we hold about you if you apply
to us in writing. You may have to pay a fee for this.

OUR WORKING PRACTICES

1. MANAGING OUR FILES
We may scan files or papers and destroy the originals after 28 days unless we have to keep
them by law. If you want us to return any document rather than destroy it, please let us
know when you send that document to us. You should be aware that a copy of a document
may not be as good as the original if it is later needed in court as evidence.
We will store files relating to your work for as long as we think is reasonable or as long as
the law says is necessary. We cannot promise that files will always be held on our premises.

If you ask us for a paper copy of an electronic file, we may charge you for printing and
postage costs.

We will not destroy documents you ask us to keep (for example, title deeds, wills, and so
on), but we cannot promise they will always be held on our premises.

2. COPYRIGHT
We own the copyright in any materials we produce for you. The advice we give and the
documents we prepare are for your use only, and you must not allow anyone to copy or
use them without our written permission.

3. RELEVANT LAWS AND REGULATIONS
These Terms of Business apply to all work that we do for you. Any Schedule of Work also
applies to the work it was issued for. Together these documents make up our contract with
you.

Our contract is governed by Scots law, unless you live in England or have your place of
business there, in which case English law applies.

Any legal action relating to our contract may be brought in the country whose law applies,
or in any other country whose courts may have authority under general law.

4. ANTI-MONEY-LAUNDERING
Under UK anti-money-laundering law, we must:

a. gather information about your identity and check that information;
b. gather information about the identities of people who are related to you, if relevant,
and possibly check that information; and
c. continue to monitor the transaction and keep all the information up to date.

If we do not receive satisfactory evidence of your identity, we will not be able to work for
you.

We also have a duty to report to the National Crime Agency (NCA) if we know or suspect
that any funds or assets involved in a matter were made through criminal activity. This
duty may take priority over our duty to keep your information confidential.

It is an offence to tell someone that a report has been filed to NCA and that they may be
investigated. If we make a report to NCA, we cannot carry on with your work without NCA
approval and we will not be responsible for the effects of any delay which may occur as a
result.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

In most cases, we cannot act for you if your interests conflict with the interests of any of our
clients, or of the firm itself. If we become aware of a conflict of interest or think that one may
arise, we will discuss with you about how we will proceed.

OUR REGULATORS

We are regulated by The Law Society of Scotland.