FAQs

Q). How much do you charge?

A). Fixed prices are available on request for many services.

These include:

• Standard residential conveyancing - please contact Jane Riley
• Wills - please contact Peter Awad
• Some commercial lease drafting - please contact James Hayward
• Certain commercial transactions - please contact Iain Thom
• First appointments in litigation matters (personal injury appointments are free) - please contact Anthony Wooding
• Some first appointments in Family matters - please contact Clare Thomas
• Some tenancy repossession cases - please contact Anthony Wooding

 Please note fixed pricing is not always possible.  For instance in a court case at the start we cannot give estimates for going to trial until we have read all the documents and interviewed all the witnesses, or in winding up an estate we do not know at the start how many and how complex the assets are.  Here we will give you ranges i.e. our costs will be between 'x' and 'y' with a view to giving more detail later.

We will also offer where possible estimates for stages in work e.g. in a court case for reading all your papers or for preparing a defence document: from experience we find clients find this particularly useful as they may not want to instruct us to go all the way to trial but rather reach a settlement when we can.

Q).  Which areas of law don't you cover?

A).  We cover most areas of law which individuals and businesses are likely to come across and even some they aren't!

There are some exceptions.

We no longer do criminal cases, but we have a good relationship with another firm to which we refer these.  In the rare occasions where we cannot help we will tell you from the start.

Q).  Do you do legal aid work?

A). Yes if the matter relates to children where social services are involved. Please contact Laura Rowland at laura [dot] rowland [at] kerseys [dot] co [dot] uk. Otherwise, for divorce, legal aid will only be available in very limited circumstances from 1st April 2013.

We offer legal aid for housing work. We can only take on a very limited number of housing cases in the few areas which are still covered by legal aid. Please contact Alicia Wiles for housing at Alicia [dot] wiles [at] kerseys [dot] co [dot] uk .

Q).  Will I have a specific lawyer assigned to me?  How will I know their status and experience?

A).  You can check out the profile of all our lawyers from the Our People tab.  You will get a letter telling you who is assigned and who is their supervisor where applicable.  In the vast majority of cases you will be seeing a solicitor and collectively our experience in terms of breadth and depth within the firm we believe is second to none.  We also have access to a large bank of external experts such as counsel for work which would benefit from some external input as well as ours.

Q).  What if I am not happy with the service I receive?

A).  Whilst we believe we provide a good service we know that in the best run businesses there are occasions when expectations are not fully met.

We have a complaints procedure which will be provided to you.  We are fully regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and carry insurance for claims up to £10 million.

We will also provide you with our terms and conditions upon instructions received from you.

Q). Will my personal details be safe?

A). Kerseys operate a strict confidential policy on all personal data held in respect of clients.  Kerseys is registered with the information commissioner and complies with the Data Protection Act.

Q). What if there is a fire at Kerseys, will my deeds and papers be safe?

A). Kerseys has a policy to place all important deeds and documents in its strongroom which is a fireproof safe, your documents should therefore be safe.  In addition to this documentation may be scanned into the computer system which is backed up regularly.

Q). What if your computer system crashes or is infected by a computer virus?

A). Kerseys regularly backs up its data and keeps data disks off site in the event of the computer system crashing we expect very minimal disruption as we will be able to restore the system using back up data tapes.  We also keep hard copy files.