Legal Statements and Conditions of use: Email Policy
Email Policy for internet domains belonging to Highland Law Practice
All email sent to and from the domain highlandlaw.co.uk, and all other internet domains registered to Highland Law Practice is subject to our Email Policy. Sending an email to our domain is deemed contractual acceptance of the terms of this policy.
Email Disclaimer
All emails from our domain are deemed to contain the following disclaimer:- This email is confidential and contains information intended for the addressee only; it may also be the subject of legal or professional privilege, or be otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not the addressee of this email, please delete it and notify the sender as soon as possible.
- We routinely scan all outgoing email for computer viruses; however due to the nature of email, we cannot guarantee that any email will be uninfected upon receipt, and recipients are advised to check all incoming email and attachments for viruses or other malicious software.
- E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, or arrive incomplete. Therefore we do not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message arising as a result of e-mail transmission.
- This email is not intended to and shall not form any part of a contract or constitute any obligation on the firm unless electronically signed by a partner or authorised signatory with a secure digital signature.
- When you email Highland Law Practice, you accept our Email Policy as from time to time applying.
Personal Emails
Our staff are permitted to send and receive personal emails, subject to certain conditions under our Acceptable Use Policy.
Staff can be emailed in the format firstname.lastname@highlandlaw.co.uk
Please note that in terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Acts, all emails to and from the domain highlandlaw.co.uk are subject to examination by the firm, either on a random or systematic basis. We therefore cannot guarantee the privacy of any such email, and you must accept this in sending any personal email to our staff at their work email address.
Any email of abusive, threatening or illegal nature received at our domain may be reported by this firm to the police, regardless of addressee or the addressees wishes.
If you consider that personal email received from this domain is of an abusive, defamatory, threatening or illegal, or otherwise inappropriate nature, please forward a copy to Abuse including senders full email headers to permit us to investigate.
All personal emails are deemed to include the following addition to our Email Disclaimer:
- Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Highland Law Practice. Employees of Highland Law Practice making personal use of the firms email domain are required to comply with the firms Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), which prohibits abusive, defamatory, threatening or illegal emails or emails which infringe copyright or any other legal rights. Any email contrary to the AUP is outside the scope of the employment of the individual concerned; Highland Law Practice will not accept any liability in respect of such communication, and the employee responsible will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising.
Receipt of Email: General
- Emails received will be viewed in plain text (email) format; for security and convenience please do not send emails in HTML (webpage) format.
- Emails are only considered "received" when they are accepted by an email server within our premises; where an email is received by our equipment outwith working hours, delivery will be deemed to take place at the next opening of our offices.
- Legal Service of writs or other documents will not be accepted by email, unless following prior agreement in writing signed by a partner of the firm.
Email from Prospective Clients
Prospective clients are invited to contact us in person, by telephone, by fax or by email to Servicedesk@highlandlaw.co.uk
However, before doing to please note:
- You are not a client 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 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". If we accept your instructions, we will send you a copy of the Terms of Business which apply to your case when we confirm that we will act for you.
Suppliers & Commercial Email: Existing Suppliers
Existing suppliers, or businesses we have identified as potential suppliers, may be provided with an email address for direct communications with the relevant person within the firm. This should not be disclosed to third parties without our prior consent.
Unsolicited Commercial Email
All unsolicited commercial email should be directed to marketing@highlandlaw.co.uk.
Such emails will only be acknowledged if we wish to receive further information or wish future mailings to be directed to a particular person within the firm.
Please note that for security, automatic responses and "web-bugs" will be blocked when we view such emails.
Important Note:
- Any unsolicited commercial email directed to any other email account at the domain highlandlaw.co.uk will, by such submission, be held to be a request for advice or archiving of the email.
- A fee for this will be charged in accordance with our current standard Terms of Business, but subject to a minimum fee of £95+VAT. Payment to account is due at our Wick office within 7 days of our receipt of your email.
- In addition to our fee for the time spent in considering and responding to your email, we shall in addition be entitled to a fee and any outlays required to confirm your identity whether or not we subsequently accept you as a client.
- Such emails, being commercial, do not benefit from the protection of the Distance Selling Regulations, and accordingly you will not have a "cooling off" period to revoke this request.
- If you claim that a person has "opted in" to recieve your email, you must exhibit on demand evidence demonstrating who within this office gave you permission to send such email, also when and how they did so: failure to provide this information will be founded upon.
Email about this website
To report broken links, or give us your comments or suggestions for this website, email webmaster@highlandlaw.co.uk.
Supported RFC2142 addresses
The domain highlandlaw.co.uk currently supports the following RFC2142 recommended standard addresses:
- Postmaster - to report on technical issues involving our email.
- Abuse - to make complaints about apparent misuse of email from our domain.
- Info - for requests for information about the firm.
- Marketing - as an address for those who want to sell things to us.
- Support - an alias for Servicedesk, for those wanting to use our services.
