Prospective Clients
If you would like to use our services, we are happy to discuss this in person, by telephone, or by email.
However, if you contact us by email, you must remember:
- You are not a clients of ours until we have accepted your instructions.
We are not obliged to act for anyone; we may also be prohibited from accepting instructions e.g. if we are already acting for someone else in the same matter. Until you are a client, you do not have the full benefits of confidentiality and legal privilege of communications between solicitor and client. Further, if a non-client provides information which is of benefit to a client, we are expected to use that for the benefit of our client. - Unencrypted email is not a secure form of communication: it may be possible for other people to read the contents en route.
You must satisfy yourself as to the risks involved in sending unencrypted email before putting any confidential or commercially sensitive information in an email to us. - We are required to obtain proof of your identity before carrying out substantial work for you.
By law and the regulations of the Law Society of Scotland, we require to obtain proof of identity before carrying out most work for clients. If you wish to deal with us solely by email, we must have independent verification of both your identity and your email account.
Also under Law Society regulations, we are not permitted to act solely by email in certain types of work, for example drawing up Wills or Powers of Attorney, as we require to ensure that you know what you are doing and are not being coerced by anyone else into granting the documents on those terms - obviously we cannot do this by email. - Read our Terms of Business
Unless agreed otherwise in writing, our General Terms of Business apply to all our work. If you are instructing us by telephone or email, you should pay particular attention to the section on "Distance Selling Regulations". Once we accept your instructions, we will send you a copy of the Terms of Business which apply to your case.
Therefore when contacting us initially by email, please provide just enough detail, to let us know what will be involved in your case. We suggest:
- Your name, address, and ideally a contact telephone number.
- A basic outline of the matter involved (e.g. that you want to sue someone for a debt, the address of a house you want to buy, etc.).
- Names of any other person you believe are involved in the case (if any).
Email us at Servicedesk@highlandlaw.co.uk
We will then respond to you, asking for any further details we need, or advising if we are aware of any reasons why we cannot act for you.