Terms and Provisions of Legal Services
We are acting in respect of the drafting of two BC wills for a married couple or a couple in a common law relationship, subject to and upon the terms set forth in this letter.
We have been asked by each of you to jointly represent you in this matter so that your planning and documents can be integrated and complementary without the multiplied expense of one of you having to retain a different law firm to do your estate planning (and having each lawyer review the other lawyer’s work). We understand from you that there are currently no contentious issues between you. However, because of the potential for conflict that arises whenever we represent more than one client in the same matter in which each client has separate and potentially conflicting interests, we can only accept such an engagement if:
- We believe that we can provide competent and diligent representation to each client; and
- We have the informed consent of each client to the terms of the joint retainer as they relate to conflicts and confidentiality.
We believe that we will be able to provide competent and diligent representation to each of you in a joint retainer, unless we learn from either of you that contentious issues have arisen or one of you directs us not to disclose to the other of you some or all of what you have told us.
Because we are jointly representing each of you under this engagement, under our professional and ethical obligations:
- No information received by us from either of you in connection with this matter can be treated as confidential insofar as each other is concerned; and
- If a conflict develops between you that cannot be resolved, we will be unable to act for both of you and may be required to withdraw completely.
If one of you contacts the responsible lawyer to make a change or prepare new documents after we complete this matter, we will be unable to accept the new instructions and make the requested change or prepare the new documents, unless you have (1) divorced or otherwise permanently ended your relationship with each other, (2) one of you has died, or (3) both of you agree that the responsible lawyer should make the requested changes.
In order for us to properly execute our duties as your legal counsel, it is necessary for you to provide us with all relevant facts and to be completely honest with us. We can only properly represent you if we are fully informed. While we do not expect any problems, please note that we will be unable to continue representing you in the case of a conflict of interest. We will work with you towards your desired outcome. We, however, cannot guarantee that your desired result will in fact be achieved. For us to work towards your desired outcome, it will be necessary for you to abide by the terms in this agreement.
You must provide us with two pieces of government-issued ID per the Law Society of British Columbia’s client identification and verification procedures.
We expect that most of the work will be performed or supervised by Pax Law Corporation’s primary Wills and Estates solicitor, Amir Ghorbani, however, we reserve the right to assign an assistant, lawyer, articled student, or engage the services of an external lawyer or researcher to perform legal services if in our judgment that becomes necessary or desirable.
The cost for the provision of our incorporation services is:
- $800 + applicable taxes (total $896) in legal costs.
We will only start work on your file after receipt of the retainer amount for the service you request.
This Agreement creates important legal obligations. We recommend that you should take as much time as you think necessary before signing this retainer agreement to review it carefully, to discuss it with persons whose judgment and experience you trust, and to have it reviewed by legal counsel if independent legal advice is appropriate.
You are always able to change legal counsels and hire another lawyer or law firm to act for you.
If you retain another legal counsel, it is your responsibility to ensure that our bills are paid. If you fail to do so, we may decide not to send your file to the new lawyer until our bills are paid.
You have the right to terminate our services to you upon written notice to Pax Law Corporation. Subject to our obligations to you to maintain proper standards of professional conduct, we reserve the right to terminate our services to you for good reasons, which include, but are not limited to:
- If you fail to cooperate with us in any reasonable request;
- If there is a serious loss of confidence between you and us;
- If our continuing to act would be unethical or impractical;
- If our retainer has not been paid; or
- If you fail to pay our accounts when rendered.
We reserve the right to withdraw as your legal counsel. You understand that you may need to retain new counsel if we withdraw.
We will try to return your phone messages or respond to your emails or letters as quickly as possible, but we will not always be able to do so on the same day that you sent them. We are often in court representing clients. We devote our time during that period to that client and have only a limited ability to return other clients’ phone messages or reply to their emails or letters.
Please note that our firm uses the cloud for our file retention and management system, and your information may be saved onto the cloud.
If you find the foregoing acceptable, please sign this agreement in the place indicated below.