General conditions of intervention
1.
LawellMcMiller is a limited liability company construed under Belgian law whose object is the joint practice of the profession of lawyer.
2.
Unless otherwise agreed in writing, these general terms and conditions apply to all services provided by LawellMcMiller, its partners, associates, trainees and any person in its service or acting on its behalf or on its instruction, and any person for whom it is responsible. They exclude the application of the general conditions of any other person and in particular those of the client.
These terms conditions shall be deemed to be accepted by the client if he does not object to their acceptance immediately upon receipt thereof, and in any event, in particular but not exclusively, by the normal and unopposed continuation of the performance of the requested services.
3.
LawellMcMiller may call upon partners, associates, trainees or employees within its firm, as well as third parties to carry out the assignments entrusted to it. It is not liable for third parties, unless otherwise stipulated.
LawellMcMiller is free to choose the bailiff or translator it must call upon, but nevertheless keeps the client informed in advance of the role and costs of their intervention.
If other third parties, such as specialized lawyers, notaries, experts, technical consultants or accountants are used, the choice of the third party will be made in consultation with the client and with its consent.
The client undertakes to pay without delay the invoices sent to him for the payment of the fees and costs of the third parties incurred by LawellMcMiller in accordance with the preceding paragraphs.
4.
LawellMcMiller’s lawyers are bound by an obligation of means only. Their civil liability shall in any event be limited to the amount of coverage under their professional civil liability insurance policy. However this limitation does not apply in the event of gross negligence or fraud on the part of the lawyer.
5.
Any contestation of a statement of costs, disbursements and fees or of a request for an advance must be made within fifteen calendar days of its dispatch. Failing this, the statement or request is presumed to be accepted by the addressee.
Unless otherwise agreed, all of our statements of costs, disbursements and fees and requests for provision are payable in full and without discount. They are, in any event, payable at LawellMcMiller ‘s head office in Brussel or to its bank account.
When it has been agreed that an amount charged to the client will be payable in installments, failure to meet a due date entails, after formal notice has remained unheeded for eight calendar days, definitively and irrevocably the loss of the benefit of the terms and deadlines as well as the immediate payment of all sums remaining due.
Without prejudice to the option provided for in article 6 of these conditions LawellMcMiller reserves the right, after a period of thirty calendar days from the date of a request for provision or a statement remaining unpaid, to claim late payment interest in accordance with the law of August 2, 2002 concerning the fight against late payment and its Royal Decrees of execution, deemed to have been made conventionally applicable to the client, even if it is a consumer. In this case, this interest shall be automatically calculated from the date of the statement or of the request for provision.
6.
LawellMcMiller’s lawyers expressly reserve the right, after warning, to suspend any intervention in any file if an amount charged to the client’s account remains unpaid despite several reminders.
They also have the right, after warning, to suspend or interrupt any service if they do not receive useful information for handling the matter or if they do not receive the requested instructions.
7.
If the total or partial intervention of a paying third party (legal protection insurance, group, association, trade union, family, etc, ...) is envisaged, the client will immediately inform our lawyers and will communicate to them without delay the precise details of this paying third party as well as the conditions of its intervention (in particular the maximum amount of its intervention).
In any event, clients remain personally liable for the payment of LawellMcMiller 's fees and expenses - without prejudice to its right to terminate its mission at any time - even in the event of refusal or default of the third-party payer or in the event that the ceiling for intervention by the third-party payer is exceeded.
8.
LawellMcMiller's lawyers are subject to the law of September 18, 2017 on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. Consequently, clients are required to provide all the information that these lawyers are obliged to collect pursuant to this law and to spontaneously provide all documents allowing the establishment of their identity. They authorize a lawyer to take copies of these documents. The law requires LawellMcMiller's lawyers, when they observe, outside of their mission of legal defence or consultation relating to the analysis of the client's legal situation, facts that they know or suspect to be related to money laundering or the financing of terrorism, to communicate this information to the Chief of the Bar Association to which they belong. The latter will, if necessary, transmit the suspicious transaction report to the Financial Information Processing Unit (Cellule de Traitement des Informations Financières / Cel voor Financiële Informatieverwerking).
9.
These general conditions and the mandates to which they apply are governed by Belgian law.
All disputes between one of our lawyers and a client, if they are not resolved through mediation or arbitration organized by the Bar Association to which the lawyer belongs, are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts and Tribunals of the district of Brussels. Notwithstanding this exclusive jurisdiction clause, however, LawellMcMiller and its attorneys may summon their client before any other court of competent jurisdiction by virtue of the place where the client is established.
February 2021