CORPORATE STRUCTURE
Baker Chase Solicitors is a Limited Liability Partnership (Company No. OC383129). It is Authorised and Regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA No. 198955).
OUR OPERATIONAL HOURS
Our opening hours are between 9.00am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday.
COMPLIANCE WITH MONEY LAUNDERING REGULATIONS, THE PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT AND ANTI-TERRORISM LEGISLATION
In compliance with Money Laundering Regulations we advise that you note the following:
We do not accept cheques or payments by CHAPS from anybody else except you, and we do not accept more than £1,000.00 cash at any one time without proof of funds (ie. a bank statement showing a withdrawal for the same amount)
It is clearly unlawful to launder or attempt to lauder any money obtained from the proceeds of crime. We are legally obliged under Money Laundering Regulations to report any suspicions of Money Laundering to our designated in-house Money Laundering Officer who will carry out an investigation on any suspicions and, where appropriate, report the matter to the relevant authorities. We are obliged to reveal any information if and when we are asked to do so.
We are also under a statutory duty to disclose any information relating to state security or intelligence
matters to which the Official Secrets Act 1989 applies.
Proof of Identity
The following documents are acceptable as proof of identity:
- Current Passport
- Current Driving Licence Card
- Current National Identity Card
- Current Travel Document
Proof of Address
The following documents are acceptable as proof of address:
- Utility Bill dated within 3 months
- Bank Statement dated within 3 months
- Council Tax Bill dated within 3 months
- Letter from HMRC dated within 3 months
RESPONISBILITY FOR YOUR CASE
Baker Chase Solicitors employs lawyers of varying experience and qualifications – some lawyers are qualified solicitors and some are not. We will notify you from the outset of our retainer of the experience and qualifications of the lawyer who will have principal responsibility for the day to day conduct of your case. We will endeavour to ensure that s/he deals with your case from beginning to end. Unfortunately, due to the dynamics of legal practice, this may not always be possible. In the event that your case is transferred to someone else at our firm, we will notify you in writing and arrange for a telephone introduction of the lawyer who takes over the conduct of your case.
The person in our firm with ultimate responsibility for your case is Mr Mohammed Javid Shafi. He is a Solicitor and the Supervising partner at our firm.
OUR DUTY TO YOU
We are under a duty to provide you with information you need to make an informed decision about the service you need, how it will be delivered and how much it will cost. Our overriding duty is to act in your best interests and to provide you with a professional, effective and efficient service.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO US
It is your responsibility to ensure that you:
- Inform us immediately if you change your address or contact number
- Inform us of any important change in your circumstances
- Fully disclose all information that relates to your case
- Provide us will any documentary evidence we may require to support the representations we are instructed to make on your behalf
- Do not factually misdirect us in any way and if you have unintentionally done so to inform us immediately so we can rectify any representations we may have made on your behalf (failure to do so may result in us withdrawing our representation)
- Make payments towards your professional fees and/or disbursements when requested to do so
- Respond to our letters and/or letters from the Home Office within the stipulated time period
Intentionally providing misleading or false information and/or documentation
If we become privy to any information that suggests that you have intentionally misled us and/or provided information or documentation which is false, we will cease acting for you with immediate effect. We will send you a letter to confirm the same.
OUR REGULATORY BODY
As a firm of solicitors, we are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (‘the SRA’). They are responsible for authoring the regulations that all law firms in the UK must adhere to and for ensuring compliance with such regulations.
We are required to comply with the latest edition of the SRA Handbook which can be found on the SRA website (www.sra.org.uk). The regulations incorporate fundamental ethical and professional standards for the provision of legal services to the public.
DATA PROTECTION & OUR DUTY OF CONFIDENTIALITY
We are under a strict duty of confidentiality in respect of the instructions you provide to us. We are not permitted to disclose any information regarding your case to anyone unless you have permitted us to do so. In the course of providing legal services to you, we may acquire either direct from yourself or from third parties, personal data about you. We may also acquire sensitive personal data which means information regarding your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or other beliefs, membership of a trade union, your physical or mental health, sexual preference, the commission or alleged commission by you of an offence or any criminal proceedings against you. Please rest assured that all such data will only be used to provide the service which you have instructed us to provide to you. By instructing us to act on your behalf you give your explicit consent to the storage, processing and use of this personal data.
On the basis of the instructions you have provided, it is likely that we may have to disclose certain information to third parties in order to progress your claim, for example, to the Home Office. If there is any particular information that you do not want us to disclose to the Home Office please confirm the same to us in writing. We will not disclose anything you have expressly requested for us not to disclose unless we receive revised instructions to the contrary from you in the future.
Please refer to our ‘Privacy Notice’ for your Data Protection rights and entitlements.
PROSPECTS OF SUCCESS
We will advise you at the outset of our retainer as to our professional opinion on achieving a positive outcome to your instructions. We will provide you with a detailed breakdown of your prospects of success in our letter of engagement.
COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE
Although we will make every effort to ensure that we progress your case to your expectations, if you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you receive, simply let us know. We will look into your concerns with a view of resolving them as quickly as possible. We will detail our complaints procedure to you from the outset in our client care letter. This will include details of who you can make a complaint to and the procedure that they will adopt in resolving your complaint.
For a copy of our complaint’s procedure, please email us at complaints@bakerchase.com.
LIMITATION ON WHAT WE CAN DO
It is important for you to note that the representations we make on your behalf are restricted by the instructions you provide to us and the documentary evidence you provide, or are able to provide, in support of your case. The more detailed your instructions and the more documentary evidence you provide to support your case, the more thorough our representations are likely to be.
Our representations may also be restricted by your failure to respond to correspondence from us. In such circumstances it is incumbent upon you to respond to our correspondence in a timely manner, particularly if we have sent you time-sensitive correspondence which will require a response within a stipulated time period. Failure to respond within the stipulated time-period can prove detrimental to your case.
As you are a private-paying client, the representations we make on your behalf may be restricted by the funds you have paid on account of costs. It is therefore very important that you make payments towards your professional fees and/or disbursements when requested to do so. Persistent failure to respond to our correspondence requesting payment of our fees and/or disbursements will result in us withdrawing our representations and subsequently closing your file.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST & WELFARE BENEFIT ADVICE
We may not be permitted to act for you in the event of there being a conflict of interest. We will advise you if we deem there to be a conflict of interest or significant risk of such arising during the course of our retainer.
In certain circumstances it may be appropriate for us to provide you with welfare benefit advice. This will be particularly important if you are to receive a sum of money that will take you over the threshold that makes you eligible to receive particular welfare benefits. If you have not been receiving welfare benefits and now become eligible due to a change in your immigration status, we will offer you basic advice and thereafter refer you to a specialist welfare benefit advisor at your local job centre. We will of course advise you if and when we deem you to require welfare benefit advice.
TERMINATING OUR RETAINER
We may terminate our retainer in writing in the following circumstances:
- If we discover that you have intentionally factually misdirected us
- If you fail to respond to our correspondence repeatedly for a prolonged period of time as will be assessed on a case to case basis
- If you do not pay our fees despite at least two separate written requests to do so over a minimum period of 3 months
In the event that we decide to terminate our retainer we will provide you with reasonable notice so you can make alternative representation arrangements.
You may terminate your instructions to us at any time in writing.
Please note that we are entitled to keep all paperwork and documentation while money is still owed to us for work that has been carried out.
If you or we decide to terminate our retainer, we shall forward an abortive bill for the work that we have carried out to date. Should you not pay our bill within 28 days of the termination of our retainer, we shall charge interest that shall accrue from the date of the bill. We will advise you of the interest rate in writing if that situation arises.
STORAGE, ACCESS & RETRIEVAL OF YOUR FILE
We are obliged to store your file for a minimum period of 6 years from the date of the last bill, after which it will be destroyed.
After completing the work on your case, the firm is entitled to keep all papers and documents while there is money owing for charges and expenses.
If it becomes necessary to retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act on your behalf, we would normally charge for such retrieval. The current retrieval charge is £40.00. The amount charged is based upon the amount of time we incur on producing the stored papers or documents. This charge may however be waived at the discretion of a partner at our firm.
INDEMINITY INSURANCE
We are required by the SRA Indemnity Insurance Rules to have a minimum level of insurance cover in the event of a claim against our firm. If you require details of our indemnity insurance policy please confirm the same to us in writing.
COSTS TRANSPARENCY
We actively promote a costs transparency policy on all our instructions. This means that you will be given a clear breakdown of costs right from the outset so you know exactly what the costs of your application will be. The breakdown of costs will be detailed, in an easy to understand format, in our client care letter, which defines the terms of our retainer. The costs section will detail our professional costs, the costs of any disbursements and any VAT that is payable. You will be required to read and sign a copy of our client care letter to confirm that you are agreeable to our costs. Our client care letter will also fully detail any scenarios in which our fees could increase, for example, if your instructions change. It will also detail the procedure we will follow to notify you of any change in our fees.
CONFIDENTIALITY
All communication you have with us is in complete confidentiality. We are not permitted to disclose any information about you or your case to any third party without your express consent. In fact, if you want us to discuss your case with a friend or relative, we will need express authority from you authorising us to do so. We are also obliged, under Data Protection legislation, to protect any data we hold on you and to ensure that it does not get into the wrong hands. As such, your any data we hold on you will, after a period of 6 years from the date of closure, be destroyed pursuant to our stringent confidential material disposal methods.
COMMUNICATION
We will provide you with regular updates on the progression of your case. The frequency of our updates will depend on numerous factors including the nature of your case. We will also regularly review your file to ensure that it is being properly progressed in a professional and timely manner. If we anticipate any delays in settling your case, we will notify you in writing. In addition, you will be allocated a dedicated file handler who you can email at any time on any matter regarding your case. Your file handler will endeavour to get back to you as soon as they can.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
We invest heavily in training our staff to they are fully updated with all relevant changes. We also regularly update our resource materials to ensure that we have the most comprehensive legal resources at hand at all times. In the highly unlikely event that you sustain a loss as a result of negligent advice, we are indemnified up to £3m by our professional indemnity insurers