Terms of Business

Introduction

Our Terms of Business, along with the official letter which we may send you confirming the applicable legal fees and outlining the scope of work ('Engagement Letter’) shall form the contract between you and our firm. In the event of any conflict between any Engagement Letter and our Terms of Business, the Engagement Letter shall prevail. 

Our service to you

  1. We shall provide our legal services to you with reasonable skill and care. The scope of work shall be indicated and detailed in the engagement letter signed as attached to these Terms of Business.
  2. We identify the partner who will have overall supervision of the legal services provided to you. Where appropriate your work may be dealt with by another partner, associate or paralegal, depending on the nature and complexity of the matter, so that your work is carried out efficiently and economically. The partner with day-to-day responsibility for the matter will explain to you the issues raised and keep you informed of progress.
  3. Our advice on any matter is confidential and is provided for your benefit alone and solely for the purpose of the matter set out by us in the Engagement Letter. Save with our prior written consent it may not be relied upon for any other purpose or by any other person. Our duty of care is to you as our client and does not extend to any third party.
  4. We are not responsible for advising (or not advising) on matters outside the scope of the Engagement Letter, or for advising on changes in the law after we have delivered our advice, or if you act or refrain from acting on the basis of any draft advice before it has been finalised.
  5. We act as your legal adviser and you should make any decisions, through other professional advisers or on your own, regarding the commercial or financial viability of the work. We will seek to provide clear advice, balancing the risk and benefits in working to achieve agreed objectives. Unless specifically agreed with you in writing, we will not provide you with tax advice.
  6. We update you on whether the likely outcomes still justify the cost and risks associated with your matter whenever there is a material change in circumstances. If we need to instruct external experts such as accountants, financial advisers or surveyors, we can only do so when you have paid those fees. We instruct the experts as your agent and the expert will be directly liable to you.
  7. We advise on the laws of jurisdiction in Turkey. In cross-border matters, we work with the partner law firms in the UK and EU. Our network also covers outside of the EU where required.

Our fees and disbursement

  1. Our fees will be calculated mainly by reference to the time actually spent by the member of our team. This may include meetings with you and perhaps others including but not limited to preparing and working on papers; making and receiving telephone calls, emails and text messages; attending court; and time necessarily spent travelling away from the office. From time to time we may arrange for some of this work to be carried out by persons not directly employed by us; such work will be charged to you at the hourly rate which would be charged if we had done the work ourselves.
  2. We have a mechanism of informing our clients in every 10 hours worked with a detailed timesheet and continue to work with the approval of the client to avoid any disagreement.
  3. Under certain circumstances we provide a lump sum fee options or enter into an arrangement of cap fee structures.
  4. Disbursements represent travel, accommodation and other expenses incurred in dealing with your affairs.
  5. All invoices are payable in full (including disbursements) in accordance with the terms set out on the invoice. Our invoices become due for payment immediately after you receive them.

Billing Policy

  1. We share a detailed timesheet is fully itemized, showing a detailed breakdown of all time spent and each disbursement.
  2. We charge conservatively for effective working time only, without any mark-up or similar approach. However, we usually charge for idle time spent traveling.
  3. We have no administrative or secretarial charges. We do not charge for time spent by paralegals or other support personnel.
  4. Our carefully managed and cost-conscious billing policy are based on the expectancy of prompt payment with a view to maintaining positive cash flow and continuing to provide efficient and high-quality legal services.

Outsourcing

Sometimes we ask external service providers to support our services. We always enter a confidentiality agreement with the service provider. We may also send work to a country outside the EU and we will ensure that your data is treated as required.

Professional Indemnity Insurance

We hold compulsory professional indemnity insurance related with our works.

Confidentiality

We keep your affairs confidential from any other clients and anyone externally unless you specifically ask us to disclose the information to them, or we need to do so in order to deal with your matter. You understand that we will not disclose any information to you about other clients.

Protecting your data

  1. For the purposes of applicable data protection legislation, Cosar & Akkaya will process any personal data you have provided to it in accordance with its Privacy Policy available on the our website or on request from us via info@cosarakkaya.law
  2. You agree that, if you have provided Cosar& Akkaya with personal data relating to a third party (1) you have in place all necessary appropriate consents and notices to enable lawful transfer such personal data to Cosar & Akkata and (2) that you have brought to the attention of any such third party the relevant policy and notices available on our website or otherwise provided a copy of it to the third party. You agree to indemnify Cosar & Akkaya in relation to all and any liabilities, penalties, fines, awards or costs arising from your non-compliance with these requirements.

Storage of documents

We will keep your documents and other papers for five years after we send you our final invoice on the understanding that we may destroy them after that period. We may store documents on our know-how system for use as a precedent for later work.

Conflicts of interest

We must not act for you where there is a conflict of interest between you and our firm, or another client of the firm. If a conflict arises, we will discuss the situation with you to agreeing how the situation can be resolved. In the event of a potential conflict of interest between you and another client that is obvious at the outset, we will seek consent from you and the other client to act and tell you what will happen if a conflict arises.

No Waiver

In the event that any party to these Terms of Business or the attached Engagement Letter fails to exercise any right or remedy contained herein, this shall not be construed as a waiver of that right or remedy.

Notices

All notices / communications shall be given to us by a registered mail or an email to info@cosarakkaya.law. Such notice will be deemed received when delivered and the day of sending if the email is received in full on a business day and on the next business day if the email is sent on a weekend or public holiday.

Termination

  1. Client has a right to terminate the engagement at any time throughout the running of the matter by giving us a written notice of 7 days.
  2. Cosar & Akkaya has a right to terminate the engagement at any time for whatever reason by giving the client a written notice of 7 days.
  3. When our engagement terminated, we will have no further or ongoing responsibilities in relation to the matter including but not limited to reminding any important dates and/or any deadlines after the engagement has come to an end.

Complaints

  1. We give our utmost effort to provide a first class tailored made service every time and want your experience with us to be a positive one. In case things do not go as planned we welcome any complaints as an opportunity to review and improve our service. If any part of our services goes wrong, we are committed to fairly and transparently look into it and resolve matters to your satisfaction.
  2. For any complaints; you can contact by email: info@cosarakkaya.law using a reference of “Complaint” in the subject of email.
  3. We are committed to respond within 4 business days. We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint, confirm who will be investigating it and when we will be responding to you. We aim to resolve any complaint within 4 weeks.

Equality and Diversity

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in all of our dealings with clients, third parties and employees.  Please contact us on info@cosarakkaya.law if you would like a copy of our equality and diversity policy.