Terms of Engagement

1. Services
   • The services we are to provide for you are outlined in our engagement letter.
2. Confidentiality
   • We will hold in confidence all information concerning you or your affairs that we acquire during the course of acting for you. We will not disclose any of this information to any other person except:
     • to the extent necessary or desirable to enable us to carry out your instructions; or
     • to the extent required by law or by the Law Society’s Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
   • Confidential information concerning you will as far as practicable be made available only to those within our firm who are providing legal services for you.
   • We will of course, not disclose to you confidential information which we have in relation to any other client.
3. Conflicts of Interest
   • We have procedures in place to identify and respond to conflicts of interest. If a conflict of interest arises we will advise you of this and follow the requirements and procedures set out in the Law Society's Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
4. Duty of Care
   • Our duty of care is to you and not to any other person. Before any other person may rely on our advice, we must expressly agree to this.
5. Trust Account
   • We maintain a trust account for all funds which we receive from clients (except monies received for payment of our invoices). If we are holding significant funds on your behalf we will normally lodge those funds on interest bearing deposit with a bank.  In that case we will charge an administration fee of 5% of the interest derived.
6. Anti Money Laundering
   • New Zealand has passed a law called the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (the “AML/CFT Act”). The purpose of the AML/CFT Act is to counter the impact that criminal activity has on people and economies within the global community.
   • Recent changes to the AML/CFT Act mean that from 1 July 2018, all lawyers must comply with its requirements. This law requires lawyers to do a number of things to help combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and to help Police bring the criminals who do it to justice. The AML/CFT Act does this because the services law firms and other professionals offer may be attractive to those involved in criminal activity.
   • The AML/CFT Act says that law firms and other professionals must assess the risk they may face from the actions of money launderers and people who finance terrorism and to identify potentially suspicious activity.
   • To make that assessment we must obtain and verify information from prospective and existing clients about a range of things. This is part of what the AML/CFT Act calls “customer due diligence” (“CDD”).
   • CDD requires us to undertake certain background checks before providing services to clients. We have to take reasonable steps to make sure the information we receive from you is correct, and we have to ask for documents from you that show this.
   • We will need to obtain and verify certain information from you to meet these legal requirements. This information includes your name, date of birth and address.
   • To confirm these details, documents such as your driver’s licence or your birth certificate, and documents that show your address, such as a current bank statement will be required.
   • If you are seeing us about company or trust business, we will need information about the company or trust including the people associated with it (such as directors and shareholders, trustees and beneficiaries).
   • We may also need to ask you for further information about the nature and purpose of the proposed work you are asking us to do for you. Information confirming the source of funds for a transaction may also be necessary to meet AML/CFT requirements.
   • Galbraiths Lawyers uses TIC Company (“TIC”), an external service provider, to assist us with our CDD requirements. You may be contacted by a representative of TIC requesting information from you for this purpose.
   • You authorise us, and/or TIC, to collect information about you (including CDD) 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.
   • If we are not able to obtain the required information from you, it is likely we will not be able to act for you.
   • Before we start working for you, we or TIC will let you know what information we need, and what documents you need to show us and let us photocopy.
7. Termination
   • You may terminate our retainer at any time.
   • We may terminate our retainer in any of the circumstances set out in the Law Society's Rules of Conduct and Client Care for Lawyers.
   • If our retainer is terminated you must pay us all fees due up to the date of termination and all expenses incurred up to that date.
8. Retention of files and documents
   • You authorise us (without further reference to you) to destroy all files and documents for this matter (other than any documents that we hold in safe custody for you) 7 years after our engagement ends, or earlier if we have converted those files and documents to an electronic format.
9. Financial
   • Fees:
     • The fees we will charge or the manner in which they will be arrived at, are set out in our engagement letter.
     • If the engagement letter specifies a fixed fee, we will charge this for the agreed scope of our services. Work which falls outside that scope will be charged on an hourly rate basis.  We will advise you as soon as reasonably practicable if it becomes necessary for us to provide services outside the agreed scope and, if requested, give you an estimate of the likely amount of the further costs.
     • Where our fees are calculated on an hourly basis, the hourly rates are set out in our engagement letter. Time spent is recorded in 6 minute units, with time rounded up to the next unit of 6 minutes.
     • We charge a fee of $50 + GST to cover office expenses (such as photocopying, printing, postage, phone calls, faxes and file storage). This fee will be included separately in our account to you.
     • We charge a standard fee of $50 + GST for each NZ individual, $100 + GST for each NZ company (based on 2x directors/shareholders) and $200 + GST for each NZ Trust (based on 2x individual trustees and 1x corporate trustee) to cover our time and expenses incurred complying with the requirements of the AML/CFT Act and its required CDD. We may charge a fee for time spent, based on the author’s normal hourly rate, for additional attendances required to obtain CDD for additional directors, shareholders or trustees, for overseas clients, or where additional attendances are required for us to comply with the requirements of the AML/CFT Act.
     • We are required to and will report to the NZ Police Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in relation to all international wire transfers / electronic transfer of funds equal to or above NZ$1,000 paid into or paid out of our trust account to/from a bank or financial institution outside of New Zealand – Prescribed Transaction Report (PTR). If we are required to file a PTR we will charge you a $150 administration fee for each PTR we are required to file.

• • Disbursements and expenses: In providing services we may incur disbursements or have to make payments to third parties on your behalf.  These will be included in our invoice to you when the expense is incurred.  We may require an advance payment for the disbursements or expenses which we will be incurring on your behalf.
  • Searching of Titles and Land Title Registration Through Land Information New Zealand: There are certain additional costs and related obligations imposed on lawyers, and to deal with these the partners own an in-house service company called Legaltech Limited which we use to provide those services to Galbraiths. Legaltech charges $20 per document for obtaining title and related instrument searches and $140 for each and every title document registered in Landonline such as discharges of mortgage, transfers, mortgages, etc.  A copy of the invoice from Legaltech Limited will be provided upon request.
  • GST (if any): Is payable by you on our fees and charges.
  • Invoices: We may send interim invoices to you, and on completion of the matter, or termination of our engagement.  We may also send you an invoice when we incur a significant expense.
  • Payment: Invoices are payable within 14 days of the date of the invoice, unless alternative arrangements have been made with us.  We may require interest to be paid on any amount which is more than 7 days overdue.  Interest will be calculated at the rate of 5% above our firm's main trading bank’s 90-day bank bill buy rate as at the close of business on the date payment became due.  If you fail to pay our invoice when it is due you agree to pay all costs and expenses, including all debt collection and legal costs (on a solicitor/client basis) we may incur in recovering the overdue invoice from you.
  • Security: We may ask you to pre-pay amounts to us, or to provide security for our fees and expenses.  You authorise us:
  • to debit against amounts pre-paid by you; and
  • to deduct from any funds held on your behalf in our trust account

any fees, expenses or disbursements for which we have provided an invoice.

• • Third Parties: Although you may expect to be reimbursed by a third party for our fees and expenses, and although our invoices may at your request or with your approval be directed to a third party, nevertheless you remain responsible for payment to us if the third party fails to pay us.

• General
  • These Terms apply to any current engagement and also to any future engagement, whether or not we send you another copy of them.
  • We are entitled to change these Terms from time to time, in which case we will send you amended Terms.
  • Our relationship with you is governed by New Zealand law and New Zealand courts have non-exclusive jurisdiction.