Client Charter

What can you expect from us?

You can expect a commitment to trust, value, and peace of mind. You can expect us to listen to you, understand your goals, establish a strong relationship and seek your feedback for improvement. You can also expect colleagues to deliver our Mission and uphold our Firm Values which are set out below. In return you can hold us to account if we fail to meet our own high expectations. Fortunately, our clients are more likely to tell us how much they appreciate our effective communication, transparent costs, high-quality people and approach to collaborative working.

Our Mission

To give peace of mind to our clients and colleagues.

Our Values

• We value each other and work together as one team
• Delivering an amazing client experience is everyone’s responsibility
• We add great value for the client
• We all aim to make every part of our business better every day
• We make it obvious we enjoy what we do

Our promises to you

Listening

• We will listen, understand and help you achieve your goals, reflecting what matters to you
• We will ask for your feedback on our service to help us improve

Communication

• We will use plain English and avoid jargon, making sure we explain any relevant legal terms effectively
• We will communicate with you in the way that you prefer
• We will keep you informed of how long we believe things will take and give you regular progress updates
• We will acknowledge any contact within one working day and provide a timeframe if we can’t respond within the day
• In more urgent or time sensitive matters, or if you ask for a response within a specified time, we will do our best to achieve that

You and your work

• We will tell you who will be working on your matter and their contact details
• Where necessary, we will make arrangements so that you can contact us out of hours
• We will establish a relationship with you and consider all your needs, not just the matter in hand
• We will be friendly, approachable and professional and demonstrate that you matter to us

The cost of your work

• We will give you pricing options for you to choose between
• We will always look at options which enable us to share the risk with you, such as fixed fees
• Where we cannot agree a fixed price, we will always give you the best estimate of cost that we can and keep you updated if that changes
• We will set out the scope of the work so that you know what we are (and are not) doing for you, and agree any scope changes with you
• We will be open and transparent about pricing
• Unless we have agreed a different arrangement with you, we will send bills at regular intervals so that you are not faced with one large bill at the end

Our people

• We will only employ people who are committed to delivering peace of mind in line with this Charter and who we believe you will enjoy working with
• We will give our people the resources and training they need to do a great job for you
• We will consider your needs, expectations and budget when allocating the person to look after you and your work
• We will commit to ensuring that we have having happy, engaged people working with us and with you

Quality

We are a member of LawNet, which is a group of over 70 independent law firms across the United Kingdom. All LawNet firms have a common belief in quality, growth and success in order to constantly improve the effective delivery of service. We hold the Lawnet Mark of Excellence which demonstrates our commitment for the highest standards of care and like all LawNet firms, we will be regularly audited and held accountable to a high quality standard.

• We will ensure we meet high standards based on client feedback from various sources and make necessary improvements
• We will welcome all constructive feedback that helps us to improve our service
• We will listen and act if things go wrong and you tell us that we are not delivering on the commitments in this Charter
• We will let you know who to contact and how to trigger our complaints process if you would like to make a formal complaint

Ways you can assist us in delivering our commitment to you

• You can tell us your objectives and expectations
• You can respond promptly to any requests for information (including ID we need for anti-money laundering purposes, essential for our work to begin)
• You can ensure you tell us all relevant information
• You can tell us straight away if anything changes
• You can work with us to set realistic timescales
• You can understand that follow various legal and compliance rules in addition to our commitment to you
• You can help us to keep making progress on your work without delay by paying all invoices and requests for money on account promptly
• You can hold us to the commitments in this Charter and tell us if we are not achieving them