This statement contains the standard terms for our engagement as your lawyers. Unless modified in writing by mutual agreement, these terms will be an integral part of any contract we may have with you. Please review this statement carefully and contact us promptly if you have any questions. We suggest that you retain this statement in your file.
Your engagement is with Benincasa Law Firm. P.A. In accordance with the common terminology used in professional service organizations, reference in these Standard Terms, or otherwise during your dealings with the Firm. Similarly, references to an “office” means an office of any such law firm.
A lawyer will generally be assigned primary responsibility to see that your requests for legal services are met. Additional lawyers and paralegals will assist in providing the most appropriate and efficient legal services, and we will share confidential information with them regarding your matters for the purposes of better serving you.
The scope of any engagement will be set out in a contract signed by the clients and a representative of the Firm.
We will always honor our duty of confidentiality to you and protect your information. Without detracting from our duty of confidentiality to you, this letter confirms our mutual agreement that, so long as we act in accordance with ethical requirements, we and other Firm offices may without your consent act for other persons or entities whose interests are adverse to you or your affiliates in matters not substantially related to our engagement by you. The adversity may be in litigation, legislative or regulatory matters, or in transactions or otherwise, all regardless of type, importance or severity of the matter. We agree, however, that we will not act adversely to you in any instance where, as the result of our representation of you, we have obtained sensitive, proprietary or other confidential information of a nonpublic nature that, if known to any such other client of ours, could be used in a matter in which we are retained by our other client to your or your affiliates’ material disadvantage, unless we screen our lawyers and paralegals who have such information from any involvement in the adverse representation. You also understand that we and other Firm offices may obtain confidential information from other clients that might be of interest to you, but which we cannot share with you.
For the purposes of our engagement, our client is only the entity designated in our contract, accordingly, for conflict-of-interest purposes, we and other Firm offices may represent another client with interests adverse to your affiliates without obtaining your or their consent. We expect you to inform us immediately if the designated client does business under any other name.
Our engagement for you does not create any rights or liabilities to any third party.
We are subject to the rules of professional responsibility for the jurisdictions in which we practice, which list types of conduct or circumstances that require or allow us to withdraw from representing a client. We may terminate our representation for any reason consistent with the applicable rules of professional responsibility. We try to identify in advance and discuss with our client any situation that may lead to our withdrawal, and if withdrawal ever becomes necessary, we give the client written notice of our withdrawal. You may terminate our representation at any time by notifying us. The termination of our services will not affect your responsibility for payment for legal services rendered and additional charges incurred before termination and in connection with an orderly transition of your matters. Our attorney-client relationship will be considered terminated upon our completion of the specific services that you have retained us to perform, or the case has been finished. If you later retain us to perform further or additional services, our attorney-client relationship will be revived, subject to these and any subsequent written terms in the Assignment Letter. The fact that we may inform you from time to time of developments in the law which may be of interest to you, by newsletter or otherwise, should not be understood as a revival of an attorney-client relationship. Moreover, we have no obligation to inform you of such developments in the law unless we are engaged in writing to do so.
When termination occurs, papers and property that you have provided to us will, at your request, be returned to you promptly. Copies of papers we have created for you, which you may need but no longer have, will be made available to you. Our drafts and work products will belong to us. We reserve the right, subject to any applicable laws or rules of professional responsibility to the contrary, to destroy within a reasonable time any items described in this paragraph that are retained by us.
Documents sent to you by e-mail (whether containing confidential information) will not be encrypted unless you request us, in writing, to encrypt outgoing e-mail and we are able to agree with you and implement mutually acceptable encryption standards and protocols. We make reasonable attempts to exclude from our e-mails and any attachments any virus or other defect that might affect any computer or IT system. However, it is your responsibility to put in place measures to protect your computer or IT system against any such virus or defect, and we do not accept any liability for any loss or damage that may arise from the receipt or use of electronic communications from us.
We utilize third party service providers (including those that offer “cloud” services) to facilitate the provision of legal services to you. We evaluate all third-party service providers to confirm their adherence to (i) industry standard frameworks for information security to protect confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and (ii) applicable data protection laws. All third-party service providers operate under service agreements that require conduct that is consistent with our legal and ethical obligations. If you require us to use a specific consumer-grade cloud storage provider (e.g., the free, non-enterprise versions of Dropbox.com, Onedrive.com, etc.) for the storage, sharing or exchange of documents or information generated or used during a specific engagement we assume no responsibility for the security of the data or the provider's security standards.
We obtain data about individuals, such as contact details, information related to individual assignments, billing information, and the like (personal data) in connection with our provision of services to you. Unless we specifically agree otherwise, we act as the controller or local equivalent of personal data (i.e., we determine the means and purposes of the processing) and retain responsibility to address data protection laws to the extent applicable to us. The Firm implements standard contractual clauses and other measures to address cross-border data transfer restrictions in data protection laws. With respect to the administration of the client-attorney relationship (invoicing, archiving, checking for possible conflicts of interest, marketing and knowledge services) and the hosting of personal data (client, contact, time recording, invoice, cash flow data, etc.) as well as all personal data in connection with client-related activities (files, documents, emails, data provided by you, etc.)
One of our goals is to ensure that legal services are delivered effectively and efficiently, and that all billings are accurate and understandable. Please direct any questions about services or billing practices to your client service lawyer.
These Standard Terms shall be incorporated into any specific engagement and will be part of each Assignment Letter. Except for pending uncompleted assignments, these Standard Terms supersede all prior understandings or agreements between you and us and they shall prevail over any contrary or alternative terms of yours or any third party. Any change to these terms must be made or confirmed in writing.