Client Care and Service Information

We value your business and we believe it is important to clarify what you can expect from us and what we require from you when acting for you.

At all times we will comply with the Law Society Client Care and Information Standards. Whatever legal services we are providing, the professional you are dealing with must:

• Act competently, in a timely way, and in accordance with instructions received and arrangements made;
• Protect and promote your interests and act for you free from compromising influences or loyalties;
• Discuss with you your objectives and how they should best be achieved;
• Provide you with information about work to be done, who will do it and the way the services will be provided;
• Charge you a fee that is fair and reasonable and let you know how and when you will be billed;
• Give you clear information and advice;
• Protect your privacy and ensure appropriate confidentiality;
• Treat you fairly, respectfully and without discrimination;
• Keep you informed about the work being done and advise you when it is completed;
• Let you know how to make a complaint and deal with any complaint promptly and fairly; and
• The obligations lawyers owe to clients are described in the Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers. Those obligations are subject to other overriding duties, including duties to the courts and to the justice system.

If you have any questions, please visit www.lawsociety.org.nz or call 0800 261 801.

Professional indemnity insurance
We hold professional indemnity insurance that meets or exceeds the minimum standards specified by the Law Society. We will provide you with particulars of the minimum standards upon request.

Lawyers’ fidelity fund
The Law Society maintains the Lawyers’ Fidelity Fund for the purposes of providing clients with protection against pecuniary loss arising from theft by lawyers. The maximum amount payable by the Fidelity Fund by way of compensation to an individual claimant is limited to $100,000.  Except in certain circumstances specified in the Lawyers & Conveyancers Act 2006 the Fidelity Fund does not cover a client for any loss relating to money that a lawyer is instructed to invest on behalf of the client.

Complaints procedure
Should you have any complaint about our service please liaise with the Partner responsible for your matter or, if you prefer, any other Partner in our firm.  If it cannot be resolved immediately to your satisfaction we shall appoint a Partner who has not been involved in your matter to deal with it promptly and fairly. If you are still not satisfied with the outcome you have the right to take the matter up with the New Zealand Law Society which runs a complaint service.

To assist us we ask that you

• Provide us with clear instructions of what you require from us;
• Provide us promptly with any information we may reasonably require to carry out your instructions and ensure that the information is accurate;
• Discuss with us the matters that you will attend to;
• Respond to our enquiries; and
• Keep us up to date on any changes in your contact details.

What we cannot do

We are not qualified to give:

• investment advice – you should get that advice from a qualified financial advisor
• tax advice – you should get that advice from your accountant or tax advisor
• insurance advice- -you should get that advice from your insurance broker; or
• advice about foreign laws- -we can help you to contact a lawyer in the other country.

How we collect and use your information

For many types of legal work it is mandatory for us to obtain and verify information relating to our clients’ identity and address. Prior to acting for you we also need to understand the nature and purpose of a proposed transaction and may also be required establish and verify your source of wealth and the origin of funds involved.

If we are not able to obtain the required information from you, it is likely we will not be able to act for you. Because the law applies to everyone, we need to ask for the information even if you have been a client of ours for a long time.

You authorise us to collect information about you (including customer due diligence information and credit reports), to obtain, exchange, hold, and use such information, and to make any other enquiries we think appropriate to:

• confirm information provided to us about you is true;
• undertake initial and on-going customer due diligence and monitoring in accordance with the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act);
• enforce debt and legal obligations (including recovery of money owed to us); and
• comply with other legal obligations we may have.

You accept that we may use customer due diligence services (including electronic based services from a third party) to verify your identity and conduct other customer due diligence (CDD) or monitoring required under the AML/CFT Act, and that we may use credit reporting services to credit check you, and that when we use such services:

• the other third party or credit reporter (each a Service Provider) will exchange information about you for that purpose and the Service Provider may hold information on its system and use it to provide their customer due diligence service or credit reporting service (as the case may be) to their other customers;
• we may use the Service Provider’s services in the future for any authorised purpose (including in relation to ongoing customer due diligence or the provision of credit). This may include using the Service Provider’s monitoring services to receive updates if information held about you changes; and
• if you default in your payment obligations to us, information about that default may be given to credit reporters and given by credit reporters to their other customers.

Besides our staff, we share this information with other organisations required to collect identity information to comply with legislation which prevents money laundering and the financing of terrorism in order to minimise the cost and delay to you in interacting with these organisations – we also obtain reciprocal information from those organisations for that purpose. Should you not wish us to disclose this information to third parties please let us know when or prior to providing that information to us.

We keep your information safe by storing it in a secure digital location and only allowing staff to access this data for the purpose of completing your instructions. Any hard copies you provide us will be retained for the purpose of storing it electronically, following which it will be destroyed (unless the original document is necessary to keep – such as a Will).

You have the right to ask for a copy of any personal information we hold about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong. If you’d like to ask for a copy of your information, or to have it corrected, please contact us at [email protected], or 078720236, or PO Box 35, Te Awamutu.

Our Terms Of Business

These terms are subject to any specific terms as set out in our engagement letter to you.

The services which we are to provide for you are outlined in our engagement letter.

The fees which we will charge or the manner in which they will be arrived at are set out in our engagement letter. To read more about our charging policy click here

We may request a deposit of funds to our account on account of costs to be incurred. We may choose not to commence or continue any work on your behalf until such funds are received and/or an appropriate level of deposit is maintained as your matter progresses.

We will bill all work on completion. For some matters, we may send you interim bills at intervals of not less than twice a month.

Accounts (including interim accounts) are payable within the period set out in the engagement letter and if no date is set out then payment must be made by the 20th of the month following the account. (We accept Eftpos, Visa and Mastercard and Internet banking). You authorise us to pay any Edmonds Judd account from funds which we may hold on your behalf provided that we provide that account to you.

We may be required to outlay funds on your behalf – for example, court filing fees, land registration charges and fees for other professional advisers such as valuers (we call these “disbursements”). We may ask you to pay these in advance and may choose not to incur the expense until you provide us with the funds or meet those payments directly.

If you instruct us to act on behalf of someone else or on behalf of an organisation in which you are involved, you accept personal responsibility for the payment of our account. By instructing us you will remain personally liable for any debts to us in respect of any trusts or companies with which you are involved

If your account with us is overdue, we reserve the right –

• to not to carry out any further work for you until all overdue accounts are paid;
• to charge you interest on any overdue amount at 2% per month, compounding on the first day of each month after the date the account falls due; and
• to charge you the cost of recovery or any cost incurred in attempting to recover the overdue account, including our time at our usual charge-out rates

To read more about our credit policy click here

You may ask us to stop work on any matter at any time. If you do this, you will still have to pay us for any work which we have done for you. We will transfer your file to another lawyer on request, provided that you have paid everything you owe us

We will maintain records of the work we carry out on your behalf. We dispose of such records upon the expiration of the periods recommended by the New Zealand Law Society for their retention

All records belong to you and we are holding them on your behalf. We will charge a record maintenance fee for that storage. You are entitled to uplift those records at any time

Some disbursements may be paid to Redoubt Services Partnership, in which the partners of Edmonds Judd have a financial interest

We will charge a commission on all funds placed on deposit through our trust account

An account may be forwarded to you to cover disbursements as they are incurred

Unless we specifically agree with you in writing, we will not provide you with advice relating to the quality of any investment or the financial widsom of entering into an investment, purchase or sale of any asset or the commercial terms of financing. If you require such advice it is necessary for you to engage an investment advisor or other professional.

By instructing us to act for you, you agree to these terms. If you have any queries, do not hesitate to contact the lawyer that you normally deal with or our Firm’s Manager.

We look forward to working with you.

 

(23 November 2019)