Our standard terms when you work with us
1 General
1.1 These Terms of Engagement (Terms) apply to any current engagement and also to any future engagement, whether or not we send you another copy of them. We are entitled to change these Terms from time to time, in which case we will send you amended Terms. Our relationship with you is governed by New Zealand law.
1.2 We will obtain from you contact details, including email address, postal address and telephone numbers. We may provide documents and other communications to you by email (or other electronic means). You will advise us if any of your contact details change.
1.3 You agree that we may provide you from time to time with other information that may be relevant to you, such as newsletters and information bulletins. At any time, you may request that this not be sent to you.
2 Who we can accept instructions from
2.1 Unless you let us know otherwise:
a if you are a couple, we can accept instructions from either of you;
b if you are a trust, we can accept instructions from any of your trustees or officers;
c if you are a partnership, we can accept instructions from any of your partners or officers;
d if you are a company, we can accept instructions from any of your directors or employees or any other person you have authorised to instruct us; and
e if you are a body corporate or incorporated society, we can accept instructions from any person holding themselves out as being authorised by the officers to instruct me.
2.2 Our services will not include:
a investment/financial advice: you should get that advice from a qualified financial advisor;
b tax advice: you should get that advice from your accountant or tax advisor;
c insurance advice: you should get that advice from your insurance broker; or
d advice about foreign laws. We can help you to contact a lawyer in the other country.
e Any other limitation which may apply to your instruction will be notified to you by letter or email at the start of your instruction.
3 How our fees are calculated
3.1 Fees: The basis upon which we will charge our fees is set out in our engagement letter.
a If we specify a fixed fee, we will charge this for the agreed scope of the Services. Work which falls outside that scope will be charged on an hourly rate basis or on the basis we have agreed with you. We will advise you as soon as reasonably practicable if it becomes necessary for us to provide services outside of the agreed scope and, if requested, give you an estimate of the likely amount of the further costs.
b Where our fees are calculated on an hourly basis, the hourly rates of the people we expect to undertake the work are set out in our engagement letter.
3.2 Disbursements and Third-Party Expenses: In providing the Services we may incur disbursements and payments to third parties on your behalf. You authorise us to incur these disbursements (which may include such items such as search fees, court filing fees, registration fees and travel and courier charges) which are reasonably necessary to provide the Services. You also authorise us to make payments to third parties on your behalf which are reasonably required to undertake the Services (which may include items such as experts’ costs or counsel’s fees). These will be included in our invoice to you, shown as “disbursements” when the expenses are incurred (or in advance when we know we will be incurring them on your behalf).
3.3 GST: GST is payable by you on our fees and charges.
3.4 Invoices: We will send invoices to you usually on completion of the matter, or termination of our engagement. We may send you invoices when we incur a significant expense or undertake a significant amount of work where you work takes more than 3 months, usually when the agreement is signed or is unconditional.
3.5 Payment: Invoices are payable within 14 days of the date of the invoice unless alternative arrangements have been made with us.
a You authorise us to deduct our fees and other expenses from funds held in our trust account on your behalf on provision of an invoice to you unless those funds are held for a particular purpose.
b If you have difficulty in paying any of our accounts, please contact us promptly so that we may discuss payment arrangements.
c If your account is overdue, we may:
i require interest to be paid on any amount which is more than 30 days overdue, calculated at the rate of 15%
ii stop work on any matters for which we are providing services to you.
iii recover from you in full any costs we incur (including on a solicitor/client basis) in seeking to recover the amounts from you, including our own fees and the fees of any collection agency.
d Payment may be made by bank transfer to
Bank Name: ASB Bank, Northland Commercial; Banking, Whangarei
Account name: Savage Law – Trust Account
Account number: 12-3106-0021532-02
Where payments are made using a “pay now” function then a service cost will be added by the Service Provider to the Invoice.
3.6 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 remain responsible for payment to us in accordance with these Terms if the third party fails to pay us.
3.7 Trust Accounting: We operate a trust account. All money received from you or on your behalf will be held to your credit in our trust account.
a Payments out of the trust account will be made either to you or to others with your authority. Written authorisation from you (and if we are acting for more than one of you, from all of you) will be required when payment is to be made to a third party. Before making a payment to another account we may require verification of the account details by provision of (for example) a copy of a deposit slip, cheque or bank statement showing the account number, a signed authority from you including the bank account details, or a signed letter from the relevant financial institution providing bank account details.
b A full record of our trust account is kept at all times. A statement of trust account transactions detailing funds received, and payments made on your behalf will be provided to you periodically and at any time upon your request.
c We will not normally put your funds we hold on deposit unless the contact requires that, or the amount is significant. If requested we will place them on call deposit with a bank registered under section 69 of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989, subject to your having completed to the bank’s satisfaction any request for information relating to the deposit or certification required by the bank. Interest earned from call deposits, less withholding tax will be credited to you.
4 Confidentiality and Personal Information
4.1 Confidence: 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 as expressly or impliedly agreed by you; or
c as necessary to protect our interests in respect of any complaint or dispute; or
d to the extent required or permitted by law.
4.2 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.
4.3 Personal information and Privacy: In our dealings with you we will collect and hold personal information about you. We will use that information to carry out the Services and to make contact with you about issues we believe may be of interest to you. Provision of personal information is voluntary but if you do not provide full information this may impact on our ability to provide the Services. Please refer to the privacy statement on our website https://www.savagelaw.co.nz/privacy-policy.
4.4 Subject to clause 4.1, you authorise us to disclose, in the normal course of performing the Services, such personal information to third parties for the purpose of providing the Services and any other purposes set out in these Terms.
4.5 We may disclose your name and address to third parties such as credit agencies to perform a credit reference or to undertake credit management or collection processes if it is reasonable to do so.
4.6 The information we collect and hold about you will be kept at our office including electronic file storage site elsewhere. If you are an individual, you have the right to access and correct this information. If you require access, please contact Tony Savage.
4.7 Verification of identity: The Financial Transactions Reporting Act 1996 requires us to collect from you and to retain information required to verify your identity. We may therefore ask you to show us documents verifying your identity (such as a passport or driver’s licence). We may retain copies of these documents. We may perform such other customer verification checks as to your identity and checks as to the source of any funds associated with any transaction to which the Services relate as we consider to be required by law.
5 Documents, Records and Information
5.1 We will usually not keep hardcopy documents. We will store hardcopy wills, powers or attorney and deeds. 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 where the existence of an original is legally important such as in the case of wills and deeds). Electronic documents are stored using Amazon Web Services and so may be located overseas and subject to the law of that jurisdiction. You authorise us to use AWS.
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, although we are entitled to retain copies for our own records if we wish to do so.
5.2 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 1993 or any other law. We may charge you our reasonable costs for doing this.
5.3 Where we hold documents that belong to a third party you will need to provide us with that party’s written authority to uplift or obtain a copy of that document.
5.4 Unless you instruct us in writing otherwise, you authorise us and consent to us (without further reference to you) to destroy (or delete in the case of electronic records) all files and documents for the Services 7 years after our engagement ends (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
5.5 We may, at our option, return documents (either in hard or electronic form) to you rather than retain them. If we choose to do this, we will do so at our expense.
5.6 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 Compliance
6.1 We are obliged to comply with all laws applicable to us in all jurisdictions, including (but not limited to):
a Anti-money laundering (AML) and countering financing of terrorism (CFT) laws; and
b Laws relating to tax and client reporting and withholdings.
6.2 We may be required to undertake customer due diligence on you, persons acting on your behalf and other relevant persons such as beneficial owners and controlling persons. We may not be able to begin acting, or to continue acting, for you until that is completed.
6.3 To ensure our compliance and yours, we may be required to provide information about you, persons acting on your behalf or other relevant persons to third parties (such as government agencies). There may be circumstances where we are not able to tell you or such persons if we do provide information.
6.4 Please ensure that you and any of the persons described previously are aware of and consent to this. It is important to ensure that all information provided to us is accurate. If the information required is not provided, or considered by us to be potentially inaccurate, misleading, or in contravention of any law, we may terminate or refuse to enter into an engagement.
7 Conflicts of Interest
7.1 We will not act where there is a conflict of interest. We are obliged to protect and promote your interests to the exclusion of the interests of third parties and ourselves as set out in the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Lawyers: Conduct and Client Care) Rules 2008 (Rules). This may result in a situation arising where we have a conflict of interest.
7.2 We have procedures in place to identify and respond to conflicts of interest or potential 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 Rules. This may mean we cannot act for you further in a particular matter and we may terminate our engagement.
8 Duty of Care
8.1 Our duty of care is to you and not to any other person. We owe no liability to any other person, including for example any directors, shareholders, associated companies, employees or family members unless we expressly agree in writing. We do not accept any responsibility or liability whatsoever to any third parties who may be affected by our performance of the Services or who may rely on any advice we give, except as expressly agreed by us in writing.
8.2 Our advice is opinion only, based on the facts known to us and on our professional judgement, and is subject to any changes in the law after the date on which the advice is given. We are not liable for errors in, or omissions from, any information provided by third parties.
8.3 Our advice relates only to each particular matter for which you engage us. Once that matter is at an end, we will not owe you any duty or liability for any related or other matters unless you specifically engage us for those related or other matters.
8.4 Unless otherwise agreed, we may communicate with you and with others by electronic means. We cannot guarantee that these communications will not be lost or affected for some reason beyond our reasonable control, and we will not be liable for any damage or loss caused thereby.
9 Limitations on our Obligations or Liability
9.1 Unless we expressly agree with you in writing that the limitations in this clause will not apply to all or any matters on which you instruct us, then to the extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability to you (whether in contract, equity, tort or otherwise) arising out of your engagement of us on a matter (or any series of related matters) is limited to the value of our fee to you for the relevant matter of NZ$1,000,000 (including interest and costs) whichever is lesser.
9.2 If we provide services to any persons or entities related to or associated with you or to anyone else at your request (whether or not we also advise you) on a matter (or series of related matters) on which you engage us, then our aggregate liability to you and all those persons and entities in respect of that matter (or series of related matters) will be subject to this limitation (and you will ensure that those persons and entities agree to this).
10 Termination
10.1 You may terminate our retainer at any time.
10.2 We may terminate our retainer in any of the circumstances set out in the Rules including the existence of a conflict of interest, non-payment of fees, and failure to provide instructions.
10.3 If our retainer is terminated you must pay us all fees, disbursements and expenses incurred up to the date of termination.
11 Feedback and Complaints
11.1 Client satisfaction is one of our primary objectives and feedback from clients is helpful to us. If you would like to comment on any aspect of the service provided by us, including how we can improve our service, please contact Tony Savage.
11.2 If you have any concerns or complaints about our services, please raise them as soon as possible. We will inquire into your complaint and endeavour in good faith to resolve the matter with you in a way that is fair to all concerned.