Client Engagement Letter

Your Settlement Agreement

Thank you for instructing Settlement-Advice.com a trading name of RGF Lawyers Limited in relation to your settlement agreement.

RGF Lawyers Limited is a law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with SRA Number 8004856. Its registered office is at 71-75 Shelton Street, London, WC2H 9JQ

This letter, any schedules to it and our standard terms of business form our agreement with you to provide legal services. Particular points, including about your legal rights and protections, are highlighted in this letter, but you should read the schedules and terms of business as well.

1. Scope of work

1.1 What we will do

Based on the information received from you, we anticipate carrying out the following work:

• Review the settlement agreement and advise you as to its terms and effect.
• Negotiate minor, non-financial amendments to the settlement agreement, if you instruct us to.
• Complete the Advisor's Certificate and send it to your employer.

1.2 What we will not do

Other than as expressly set out above, we will not undertake any other work for you, including but not limited to:

• Negotiating the financial terms of the settlement agreement. We are very happy to do this under a separate fee arrangement charged at £300 / hr + VAT. If this is of interest, please let us know.
• Advise you as to the specifics of any claims you may have regarding your employment and / or its termination, the merits of those claims, the value of those claims and the limitation (deadlines) in which to bring those claims, including any requirement to make an early conciliation notification to ACAS or the time frame for such complaint.
• Advising you on the financial or tax aspects of this matter or on your wider tax or financial interests.
• Advising you on the law of jurisdictions outside of England and Wales.
• Giving you accounting or commercial advice.
• Reminding you of any dates or deadlines, or advising you on any legal developments, occurring after the end of our engagement including the date by which you may be required to sign any reaffirmation letter required by your employer.

1.3 Additional work means additional charges

If you instruct us to carry out additional work, you may incur additional charges. Where possible, we will provide you with an estimate before carrying it out.

2. How long will it take?

We anticipate that this matter will take approximately 24-48 hours to complete once we receive the settlement agreement, whereupon we shall review it and advise you about its terms. On occasion we will need additional time to negotiate the terms of the settlement agreement with your employer.

3. Your lawyer

The identity of the solicitor working on your matter will be confirmed shortly after instruction.

4. Our fees and our Fee Cap Promise

4.1 When your employer pays our fees

As our client, you are liable to pay our fees in advising you on your settlement agreement.

However, it is common practice in settlement agreements for employers to contribute to employees' legal costs in obtaining advice on the terms and effect of the settlement agreement.

Our Standard Fee for advising you on the terms and effect of the settlement agreement and negotiating any minor, non-financial amendments is £650 + VAT.

Your settlement agreement should include a contribution from your employer towards your legal costs.

Whatever your employer agrees to contribute to your legal costs is what we charge. If the employer's legal fee contribution is £500 + VAT, our fee is £500 + VAT.

Where your employer's contribution is more than our Standard Fee, our fee is the amount of that contribution. This reflects the additional work that those matters usually involve. You will never pay more than your employer contributes.

Where your employer's contribution is below our Standard Fee, you instruct us to ask your employer to increase it to at least £650 + VAT. In some instances, we may ask your employer to contribute more depending on the complexity of your matter or the work required. Employers usually agree. If they do not, our fee cap promise still applies and any shortfall is our problem, not yours.

4.2 When you may have to pay our fees

Subject to section 5.3, if, in rare circumstances, your employer may not contribute to your legal costs or if, following our advice, you choose not to sign the settlement agreement, or if your employer withdraws the settlement agreement for whatever reason, our standard fee of £650 + VAT will need to be paid by you.

Where you are asked to sign a reaffirmation agreement, our fees for advising you and completing the adviser's certificate are an additional £250 + VAT. We will ask that your employer contributes to that but if they do not cover your legal costs for the reaffirmation agreement, then this fee is payable by you in advance of us undertaking the work.

5. Who we act for and your right to terminate

5.1 Who we are acting for

You are our client; our agreement is with you and our advice is intended solely for you. We do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than you.

5.2 Your rights to terminate your instructions

You may terminate your instructions at any time by telling us in writing. You must pay all charges incurred up to the point of termination, and any charges reasonably incurred in connection with the termination. We can retain your documents until you pay.

5.3 Your right to cancel (14-day cooling-off period)

Because you instruct us online, our agreement is a distance contract and the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you the right to cancel it, without giving any reason, within 14 days of the day on which you accept these terms. To cancel, you need only tell us by a clear statement (for example, an email to your assigned solicitor or to [email protected]) before the 14-day period ends. You may use the cancellation form at Schedule 2, but you do not have to.

Most clients need our advice well within that 14-day period and we normally start work within 24 hours of instruction. By accepting these terms you expressly request that we begin work immediately, during the cancellation period, and you acknowledge that:

• if you cancel after we have started work, you must pay us for the work done up to the point of cancellation (unless your employer pays it). Because we work for a fixed fee, we calculate this by reference to the stage your matter has reached: 25% of our Standard Fee once we have received your settlement agreement and begun our review; 75% once we have completed our review and prepared our advice; and 100% once we have given you our advice; and
• once we have fully performed the service, that is, once we have advised you on the terms and effect of the settlement agreement and completed the adviser's certificate, you will no longer have the right to cancel.

If you would prefer us not to start work until the cancellation period has ended, please tell us when you instruct us. We will wait, but you should be aware that this is likely to mean we cannot advise you within the timeframe set by your employer. This section does not affect your right to terminate under section 5.2 at any time.

6. Communicating with us

6.1 How to contact us

You can contact us via email. Your assigned solicitor's contact details will be provided upon instruction.

6.2 Communication methods

Unless there are documents that we need to send in hard copy, we will communicate with you by email, telephone, or video call. You agree that there are inherent risks with email communication and that we are not responsible for loss or damage caused by email use, provided we have taken reasonable security measures.

7. Use of technology and artificial intelligence

We use technology, including artificial intelligence tools, to support the delivery of our services. This may include tools that assist with document review, analysis of your settlement agreement, checking of financial calculations, drafting, case management and the automation of parts of our client sign-up process. We use these tools to work more efficiently and accurately, which helps us keep our fees down and turn your matter around quickly. We do not use artificial intelligence or automated systems to make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects without human involvement.

All work produced with the assistance of these tools is reviewed and approved by a qualified solicitor before it is relied upon or sent to you or any third party. Responsibility for the advice you receive rests with us at all times, and our professional obligations to you, including our duties of confidentiality and competence, apply in full regardless of the tools we use.

Where we use third party technology providers, we do so under contractual terms that protect the confidentiality and security of your information. We do not use your information to train publicly available AI models. Some of our providers process information outside the United Kingdom. Where they do, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, as described in our Privacy Notice. Further detail on how we process your personal data, including the lawful bases on which we rely, is set out in our Privacy Notice, a copy of which is available on request.

8. Call recording

We may record telephone and video calls with you. Our call recording technology produces an audio record and a written transcript of each call. We do this to maintain an accurate record of our discussions and the instructions you give us, to support the quality and accuracy of our advice, for training and supervision purposes, and to assist in the event of any query or complaint about your matter. We will remind you that calls are recorded at the outset of the call or in our communications with you.

Recordings and transcripts form part of your matter file and are held confidentially, in accordance with our Privacy Notice and our file retention policy. You may request a copy of a recording or transcript of a call to which you were a party at any time.

If you do not wish a particular call to be recorded, please tell us at the start of the call and we will discuss alternative ways of communicating with you, such as email. Please note that we may be unable to provide advice by telephone where a call cannot be recorded, as the recording forms part of our record of the advice given.

9. Our relationship with Formulaic Group Limited

The Settlement Advice website and platform through which you contacted us are operated by Formulaic Group Limited, a technology company incorporated in Malta ("Formulaic"). Formulaic provides marketing, administrative and operational support on our behalf. Formulaic is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. Your contract is with RGF Lawyers Limited alone, and all legal advice is given by our solicitors.

We pay Formulaic for its services, including a payment calculated by reference to the fees we receive from clients it introduces. A director and shareholder of RGF Lawyers Limited is also a shareholder in Formulaic and therefore has a financial interest in that arrangement. These payments are made by us and do not increase the fees you pay. Our duty to act in your best interests and to advise you independently is unaffected.

Formulaic processes your personal data on our behalf and on our instructions as our data processor, as described in our Privacy Notice.

10. Referrals to other law firms and professional advisers

Some matters need advice that we do not provide. If your settlement agreement is governed by Scots law, we may refer you to a firm of Scottish solicitors. If you need immigration advice connected with your employment, we may refer you to a law firm that specialises in immigration. You are free to choose any other adviser instead.

If you instruct a firm we refer you to, your contract will be with that firm. It is separately regulated and is responsible for its own advice and fees. We may receive a referral fee from that firm of up to 25% of the fees it bills you. The arrangement is recorded in writing between us and that firm and is not added to what you pay. By instructing us you agree that we may keep any such fee; we will tell you the specific amount at any time if you ask.

11. Confidentiality

11.1 When we may use and disclose your information

We will keep confidential information confidential, but we reserve the right to use and disclose it to provide you with our services, comply with law and regulation, or otherwise with your consent.

11.2 Protecting the confidentiality of our communications

We are not advising you on whether legal privilege applies to your communications with us. If you communicate through third parties or share our advice, any privilege may be lost and communications may become admissible in court.

12. Concerns and complaints

12.1 How to complain

If you have concerns or wish to make a complaint, please contact us in the first instance. Formal complaints will be dealt with under our complaints policy. We will write to you within eight weeks setting out our final response.

12.2 The Legal Ombudsman

If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or you are unhappy with our final response, you may be able to refer it to the Legal Ombudsman, the independent body that deals with complaints about the service provided by lawyers. The Legal Ombudsman will normally expect you to have raised your complaint with us first and to have allowed us eight weeks to respond. You must refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response and no later than one year from the act or omission you are complaining about, or one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint. The Legal Ombudsman can extend these time limits in exceptional circumstances.

Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH. Telephone: 0300 555 0333. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk.

12.3 The Solicitors Regulation Authority

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour, for example dishonesty, taking or losing your money, or treating you unfairly because of a protected characteristic. You can raise concerns with the SRA at www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.

12.4 Court assessment of charges

If your complaint is about our costs, you can ask the court to assess our bill of costs under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974, subject to certain time limits and conditions.

13. How we limit our liability to you

13.1 Liabilities not excluded

Nothing in our agreement limits any liability which cannot legally be limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

13.2 Exclusions and limitations

Subject to section 13.1: if you are a business, we exclude liability for indirect or consequential loss; we are not liable for losses arising from regulatory compliance, third-party errors, circumstances beyond our control, email risks, or bank failures; and our liability may be reduced where other advisers share responsibility.

13.3 Caps on our liability

Our aggregate liability in this matter is limited to £3 million.

13.4 No claims against our staff

Services are provided by our staff on behalf of our law firm. You agree not to bring any claim against any individual member of staff in their personal capacity. Any claims should be brought against the firm.

14. Next steps

14.1 For you to do

We are required by law to confirm the identity of all our clients via formal, reliable documents and sources. We do this by conducting an ID check using Valid8 and Experian. You authorise us to conduct these checks. You also agree to send us the settlement agreement, your employment contract and to complete any questionnaire or other information we provide to you before advising you.

14.2 What we will do

Unless you provide it to us, we will make contact with your employer to obtain a copy of the settlement agreement. Following that we will contact you to discuss the content and provide you with advice, or will seek to increase the terms of settlement in accordance with your instructions.

Schedule 1: Client Due Diligence

1. Requirements of the anti-money laundering and crime prevention regulations

To comply with anti-money laundering and crime prevention regulations, we need to verify your identity using Valid8 and Experian. These checks are done at the point of instructing us and will confirm your identity, address and any adverse markers we need to be aware of. You acknowledge that this may leave a footprint on your credit file but will not affect your credit rating. On rare occasions we may also ask you to provide proof of ID such as a passport and proof of address such as utility bills or council tax bills. You agree that we cannot proceed without these.

Schedule 2: Cancellation Form

Complete and return this form only if you wish to cancel our agreement within the 14-day cooling-off period described in section 5.3.

To: Settlement-Advice.com, a trading name of RGF Lawyers Limited, 71-75 Shelton Street, London, WC2H 9JQ.

Email: [email protected]

I/We [*] hereby give notice that I/We [*] cancel my/our [*] contract for the supply of the following service: legal advice on my/our [*] settlement agreement.

Date of instruction: ____________________

Name of consumer(s): ____________________

Address of consumer(s): ____________________

Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper): ____________________

Date: ____________________

[*] Delete as appropriate