Check My Settlement Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions set out the basis on which we provide the Check My Settlement service. Please read them carefully.

1. About us

Tend Legal Limited, trading as Tend Legal is a company incorporated in England and Wales with registered number 12697202. Its registered office is at Global House Business Centre, 1 Ashley Avenue, Epsom, Surrey KT18 5AD.
You can find details of our postal address, telephone number and email address on our website.

Tend Legal Limited is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).Tend Legal Limited and our solicitors are governed by Codes of Conduct and other professional rules, which you can access on the SRA’s website at www.sra.org.uk or by calling 0370 606 2555. Our SRA authorisation number is 807364. All services provided by Tend Legal Limited are regulated by the SRA.

We are registered for VAT purposes. Our VAT registration number is 371679268.

Where we say ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ in these Terms of Business, we mean Tend Legal Limited.

2 About you

Where we say ‘you’ or ‘your’ in these Terms of Business, we mean the person engaging us to provide services through our ‘Check My Settlement’ service.

3 Our contract with you

This document sets out the terms and conditions that apply to our Check My Settlement service (the Service).

By using the Service (whether by booking an appointment, submitting your Settlement Agreement or attending an online consultation), you agreed to comply with and be bound by these terms.

There may be some situations where we are unable to accept your instructions, such as if there is a conflict of interest. If we are unable to act for you for any reason, we will let you know as soon as we can and in any case before our scheduled meeting.

4 Scope of services

The Service is offered to employees who have been given a Settlement Agreement to terminate their employment by their employer and need to obtain legal advice on that agreement.

In providing the Service, we will:

• review the Settlement Agreement and your contract of employment;
• have an online meeting with you, in which we will:
  • discuss your situation and any claims you might have against your employer;
  • advise you on the terms of the Settlement Agreement and the severance package you have been offered.
  • advise on any amendments to the agreement that may be necessary or desirable.
• if you ask us to, ask your employer to amend the agreement.
• sign a certificate to confirm that we have advised you on the agreement and provide it to your employer.

It is important to understand that signing a settlement agreement means that you will be unable to pursue any claims against your employer (with some very limited exceptions).

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, we will advise only on English law and on European Union to the extent that it has any bearing on English law.

We do not provide tax advice, other than to advise on the taxable status of termination payments. We do not provide financial services or advice.

5 Introduction to a career coach

If you are interested in exploring coaching to figure out your next steps, we can introduce you to an accredited career coach, who has agreed to offer our clients a complimentary session, subject to availability.

We do not make any money from this introduction.

We will only introduce a coach who is known to us and whom we trust. However, you must make your own assessment of whether the coach’s services are right for your particular situation.

The coach is not part of our firm. Any services that the coach provides to you are not part of this agreement and are subject to the coach’s own terms and conditions. As such, we are not responsible for any acts or omissions of the coach.

6 Our responsibilities and your responsibilities

7 Service standards

Our normal hours of business are between 9.30 am and 5.30 pm from Monday to Friday. We are closed on all bank holidays.

We will update you by telephone or in writing (including by email) with progress on your matter regularly and explain to you the legal work required as your matter progresses.

We will update you at appropriate intervals on the likely timescale for each stage of your matter and any important changes in those estimates. Whenever there is a material change in circumstances associated with your matter, we will update you on whether the likely outcomes still justify the likely costs and risks.

We are committed to acting in a way that encourages equality, diversity and inclusion in all our dealings with clients, third parties and employees.

8 Our charges

Usually, your employer will have included a contribution towards legal fees as part of the agreement. This is conditional on you signing the agreement. We will cap our fees for the work outlined in section 4 above to the level of your employer’s contribution provided in the agreement (subject to a minimum of £350 plus vat).

This fee will not cover further negotiation, pursuing claims against your employer, or any other work. If you would like us to carry out any further work, we will give you a fee estimate before going ahead.

We will only ask you to cover the fee for the initial advice if:

• You terminate our engagement before the settlement agreement is signed;
• We terminate our engagement because you have failed to comply with these Terms and Conditions; or
• Your employer has not agreed to contribute at least £350 plus vat towards legal fees.

9 Funding and billing

We will send our invoice directly to your employer when we have provided the advice to you.

You will be responsible for our fees for any other work we agree to do for you outside the scope of the fixed fee outlined above. We will usually require payment upfront for any additional work. We will send you a final bill for any such charges at the end of your matter. You have the right to challenge our final bill by applying to the court to assess the bill under the Solicitors Act 1974. The usual time limit for applying to the court for an assessment is one month from the date of delivery of the bill.

10 Our liability to you

Your contract is solely with Tend Legal Limited, which has sole legal liability for the work done for you and for any act or omission in the course of that work. No representative, director, officer, employee, agent or consultant of Tend Legal Limited will have any personal legal liability for any loss or claim.

Unless explicitly agreed otherwise, in writing:

• we do not owe, nor do we accept, any duty to any person other than you; and
• we do not accept any liability or responsibility for any consequences arising from reliance upon our advice by any person other than you.
• We are not responsible for any failure to advise or comment on matters falling outside the scope of the Service.
• Our maximum liability to you (or any other party we have agreed may rely on our services) in relation to any single matter or any group of connected matters which may be aggregated by our insurers will be £3,000,000 including interest unless we expressly state a different figure in the engagement letter.
• We will not be liable for any of the following (whether direct or indirect):
  • losses not caused by any breach of contract or tort on the part of the firm;
  • loss of revenue;
  • loss of profit;
  • loss of or corruption to data;
  • loss of use;
  • loss of production;
  • loss of contract;
  • loss of opportunity;
  • loss of savings, discount or rebate (whether actual or anticipated); and
  • harm to reputation or loss of goodwill.

Nothing in these Terms of Business shall exclude or restrict our liability in respect of:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• any losses caused by wilful misconduct or dishonesty;
• any other losses which cannot be excluded or limited by applicable law.

Please ask if you would like us to explain any of the terms above.

11 Confidentiality

We will keep your information confidential, unless:

• you consent to the disclosure of that information;
• disclosure of the information is required or permitted by law or regulatory requirements that apply to us; or
• these Terms and Conditions state otherwise.

Unless we agree otherwise, email will be our default method of communication. We deploy a range of information security measures, but we cannot guarantee the security of information or documents sent by email. If you do not wish us to communicate information by email, please let us know.

Sometimes we ask other companies or people to provide administrative services on our files to help us deliver efficient, cost effective legal services. We ensure all outsourcing providers operate under service agreements that are consistent with our legal and professional obligations, including in relation to confidentiality. For information on outsourcing in relation to your personal data, see our privacy policy.

External organisations and the SRA may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice from time to time. They may wish to audit or quality check your file and related papers for this purpose. We will require that these external organisations maintain confidentiality in relation to any files and papers which are audited or quality checked.

Your files may also be reviewed in a due diligence exercise relating to the sale or transfer of all or part of our business, the acquisition of another business by us or the acquisition of new business. If you do not wish your file to be used in this way, please let us know as soon as possible.

12 Privacy and data protection

We use your personal data primarily to provide legal services to you, but also for related purposes such as administration, billing and record keeping and to inform you of our services and events that we think may be of interest to you.

We take your privacy very seriously. Please read our Privacy Policy carefully as it contains important information on how and why we collect, process and store your personal data. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data.

We may record telephone calls and video meetings and monitor emails for training, regulatory and compliance purposes.

We use third party service providers (including ‘cloud’ service providers) to help us deliver efficient, cost effective legal services. This may include document/information hosting, sharing, transfer, analysis, processing or storage. We ensure all third-party service providers operate under service agreements that are consistent with our legal and professional obligations, including in relation to confidentiality, privacy and data protection. If you instruct us to use an alternative provider for storing, sharing or exchanging documents/information, we are not responsible for the security of the data or the provider’s security standards.

We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text, telephone or post) about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new services or products. You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time, by:

• contacting us by emailing info@tend.legal and requesting to opt out; or
• using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails or ‘STOP’ number in texts.

13 Prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing

To comply with anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing requirements, we will ask you for proof of your identity and may conduct searches or enquiries for this purpose. If you do not provide us with the required information promptly, your matter may be delayed.

You agree that we may make checks using online electronic verification systems or other databases as we may decide.

Any personal data we receive from you for the purpose of preventing money laundering or terrorist financing will be used only for that purpose or:

• with your consent; or
• as permitted by or under another enactment.

14 Professional indemnity insurance

We have professional indemnity insurance giving cover for claims against us. Details of this insurance, including contact details of our insurer and the territorial coverage of the policy can be provided on request.

It is a condition of our professional indemnity insurance that we notify our insurer and/or broker of any circumstances which may give rise to a claim against us. In doing so, we may disclose documents and information to our insurer, broker and insurance advisers on a confidential basis. Our insurers and brokers are contractually obliged to keep all information we pass to them strictly confidential.

15 SRA Regulation

All services provided by Tend Legal Limited are regulated by the SRA and covered by:

• our professional indemnity insurance—see section 13 (Professional indemnity insurance); and
• the SRA Compensation Fund—this is a discretionary fund for making grants to people for loss caused by dishonesty, hardship caused by a failure to account for money, or an uninsured loss (which should have been covered by professional indemnity insurance).

16 Complaints

We want to give you the best possible service. However, if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about the service we have provided, please let us know immediately so we can do our best to resolve the problem.

In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues. If you would like to make a formal complaint, you can read our full complaints procedure here. Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your matter.

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

We have eight weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this time you may be able to complain to the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your matter.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint; and
• no more than six years from the date of act/omission; or
• no more than three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them using the following details:

What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.

Visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

17 Terminating your instructions

You may terminate our appointment at any time by giving us notice in writing.

We can keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for our charges or disbursements.

We will only decide to stop acting for you with good reason, eg where we feel that the relationship has broken down, if you do not pay a bill, if you provide us with misleading information, if you act in an abusive or offensive manner or if we become aware of a conflict of interest. We will give you reasonable notice before we stop acting for you.

If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, we will charge you for the work we have done and, where appropriate, for transferring the matter to another adviser if you so request. This will be calculated on the basis set out in the engagement letter.

We are not responsible for reminding you about important dates and/or any deadlines after our appointment has been terminated.

18 Storage and retrieval of files

We will hold your file electronically for at least six years after we send you our final bill, at no charge to you. After six years, we may destroy it.

19 Applicable Law

These Terms and Conditions and any dispute or claim arising out of, or in connection with them or their subject matter (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of England and Wales.