If you engage our firm to do any work you are bound by the following Terms and Conditions:

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1.    Your Obligations

 

These obligations are essential and important. You must:

• give us timely and full instructions when we ask you for instructions;

• keep us informed of any changes to your email, telephone or address;

• transfer funds promptly to our trust account when requested;

• pay our bills when they are due; and

• comply with your obligations about cyber-security, including telephoning us and third parties (i.e. real estate agents, insurers, medical providers etc.) to confirm both our and your bank details, and not acting on emailed or text message requests for payment.

 

2.    ​Joint Clients

 

By having you as joint clients, we confirm that:

• information or instructions given by one client may be shared with the other joint clients;

• if one of you insists that information or instructions be withheld from the other(s), we will have to cease acting for all of you;

• if a conflict arises, you may incur additional legal fees and you will all need to engage new solicitors.

 

If this is a conveyance, under the Lexon Protocol you authorise us to take instructions from any one of you on behalf of all of you unless you inform us that the authority of any person to provide instruction is withdrawn.

 

3.    How we will work with you

 

Our office hours are 8:30am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday. Your calls and emails will be returned as soon as possible. You are welcome to use email to schedule appointments, including telephone call-backs.

Please understand that all communication between yourself and the solicitor will incur charges.

However, if you have a matter where you urgently need assistance, please call rather than email, and indicate the urgency to the person taking your call. 

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Written instructions are best, and we will often communicate with you by email rather than by telephone (with the exception of bank details or payment instructions), as this allows you to consider our advice at your convenience. We are entitled to treat any instruction received from your email, electronic or phone accounts as being from you without further verification.

 

4.    Who will carry out the work

 

To ensure our services are provided to you in the most cost-effective, timely and efficient manner, we will nominate solicitors and support staff with the skills for your needs. Any delegation of work will be subject to the supervision of the responsible solicitor for your matter.

 

We may use precedents and other tools in providing our services to you. You have a right to use the documents we prepare for you only for the purposes for which they are supplied. Unless otherwise agreed, we retain copyright.

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5.    Trust Money

 

We may (at any time) request that you provide us with reasonable security for payment of our fees in advance of us undertaking work. Money paid in advance will be held in our trust account for payment of outlays or until payment of our bills is required. You authorise us to draw on all trust money held by us on your behalf to pay legal fees, outlays, GST and any other amount due from you to us including such costs incurred but which we have not already paid if the relevant procedures or requirements under the Legal Profession Regulation 2017 are complied with.

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6.    Bills

 

You consent to us delivering your bills either electronically or as agreed. Our bills are immediately due and payable. Interest on unpaid accounts will be charged at the rate prescribed under s59(3) Civil Proceedings Act 2011 for a money order debt.

 

​7.    Ending this retainer

 

You may end this retainer and withdraw instructions at any time before we complete the scope of work and for any reason.

We may end this retainer with your agreement or for a good reason and on reasonable notice. Good reasons may include but are not limited to:

• failing to pay our bills;

• being unable to properly verify your identity or your authority to give instructions;

• unreasonably refusing to follow our advice;

• requiring us to act unlawfully or unethically;

• demonstrating a lack of confidence in us; or

• failing to provide us with adequate instructions.

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If we cease to act for you:

• we will remove our name from the court record in any court proceedings;

• you will receive a final bill for all outstanding legal costs;

• you must pay our legal costs up until the date when we cease to act.

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8.    Termination or early conclusion

 

If our engagement ends we are not responsible for any loss you may incur through the expiry of any limitation period or the need to take any action required to protect your interests.

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9.    File Retention

 

At the conclusion of our retainer and if all outstanding fees and disbursements are paid, you may collect your documents without charge. Where your documents are held by us in electronic form, only electronic copies, in a ‘read-only’ format will be provided.

You consent to:

• your documents being held in electronic form;

• us destroying any paper duplicates at any time;

• us transferring your documents in electronic form;

• us destroying or deleting all of your documents (whether electronic or paper) after our retention period of seven (7) years without contacting you again.

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10.    Privacy Information

 

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and other privacy legislation applies when we collect personal information from you in order for us to carry out your work. Except for your name and address, this information is also confidential and may be protected by legal professional privilege.  Disclosure of this information may be compelled by law. You also authorise us to disclose this information where necessary in the process of carrying out your work (e.g. to our staff, Court or other parties involved in your matter).

 

You consent to your email address being added to our email service. We use this service to keep all our clients up-to-date with important information about the firm (e.g. office closure due to Christmas, public holidays), urgent arrangements required resulting from COVID lockdowns, extreme weather events or natural disasters and to provide you with information that we think may be of interest to you. You can unsubscribe from this service at any time.

                 

Our privacy policy can be viewed on our website at www.apels.com.au/privacy-policy

 

11.    Providing feedback

 

We welcome feedback – good and bad. We would rather have the opportunity to rectify a problem than have a dissatisfied client. So please let us know if there is an issue, and we will do our best to provide a solution

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Please read and note the Client Cyber Alert here.  We require strict compliance with the procedure set out in the notice for verifying Bank Account details BEFORE any electronic fund transferal.