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TERMS & CONDITIONS
Our terms and conditions of business will apply to any assignment undertaken by Carsted Rosenberg Advokatfirma GmbH (“Carsted Rosenberg”), unless otherwise agreed in writing in our engagement letter. No client-lawyer relationship between you and Carsted Rosenberg or any affiliated businesses and firms, is or may be created by access to or use of the website or any information contained therein. The only way to become our client is through a mutual agreement in writing after we have completed our standard client intake review process.
If you are interested in engaging Carsted Rosenberg to represent you, please contact us so that we can determine whether the matter is one for which we are willing and able to accept professional responsibility. If you submit information to us by email or otherwise, you acknowledge that it will not be considered to be confidential until a written engagement to represent you has been entered into.
1. Conflict of Interest
We reserve the right to decline any representation if it would create a conflict of interest with any of our current or former clients. In accordance with the rules of the Danish Bar and Law Society, the Law Society of England & Wales and our internal conflict of interest procedures, we ensure that there is no conflict of interest before we accept a client engagement. If a conflict of interest or impartiality should arise in the course of a client engagement, which will cause us to discontinue our engagement, we will be pleased to recommend another law firm.
2. Identity Information and Anti-Money Laundering
All law firms are subject to the applicable Money Laundering Acts. Accordingly, we are obliged to obtain and keep identity information on any client and to complete all necessary anti-money laundering checks. We will therefore require and retain certain documentation from you to duly identify you and any beneficial owners of a client company. We will be precluded from representing you until all necessary documentation has been provided to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identity of our client and, where there is a beneficial owner who is not the client, the beneficial owner.
We are professionally and legally obliged to keep your affairs confidential. However, law firms may be required by statute to make a disclosure to the national authorities where they know or suspect that a transaction may involve money laundering or terrorist financing. If we make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we may not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made. We may have to stop working on your matter for a period of time and may not be able to tell you why.
We do not hold or administer client funds and we do not provide client accounts. To the extent that a client account or trust account is needed, we refer to a financial institution that takes deposits in the ordinary course of business.
3. Professional Fees and Payment Terms
Our legal fees are based on various parameters, including time spent, the expertise and experience of the professionals involved, the complexity of the assignment and its importance to the client, the values involved, the result achieved and the liability exposure. Our professional fees are exclusive of relevant costs and disbursements. All disbursements and relevant costs associated with the services rendered to the client are charged separately at cost price.
It may be difficult to estimate the professional fees upon commencement of an assignment. However, upon request we will provide an estimate of the expected fees, costs and disbursements. An estimate is always provided in relation to private clients. We will inform our client as soon as possible if we have reason to expect that the total fees are likely to exceed the given estimate. In certain cases, we endeavour to provide our clients with a fee cap or a fixed fee agreement to enable our clients to know exactly what their likely legal costs will be. In other cases, we may agree a fixed fee for certain steps in a transaction. We may request clients to pay a deposit to cover disbursements, costs and/or an up-front non-refundable fixed fee depending on the circumstances.
Our invoices are due and payable within seven (7) calendar days of the invoice date. If the due date is not a business day, the following business day shall apply. The fees and invoices are deemed accepted if they are not contested within a period of ten (10) calendar days after receipt. Should any invoice remain unpaid for more than ten (10) calendar days after the due date, Carsted Rosenberg will cease working on the transaction until payment in full has been made. For invoices upon which payment is not received, interest shall accrue automatically without separate notice in accordance with the provisions of the EU Late Payment Directive 2011/7/EU and the Danish Interest Act at a rate of eight (8) per cent above the official rate of the Danish National Bank together with applicable late payment charges.
The client shall be responsible for all taxes, such as VAT, sales and use tax, gross receipts tax, withholding tax, and any similar tax, imposed on or in connection with the services rendered, other than Carsted Rosenberg’s income and property taxes.
It is our firm’s policy not to accept cash from clients. If you try to avoid this policy by depositing cash directly with our bank, we may decide to charge you for any additional checks we decide are necessary to prove the source of the funds. Where we have to pay money to you for any reason, it will be paid by bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party.
4. Invoicing
Unless otherwise agreed, we invoice our clients on a monthly basis to enable our clients to keep track of their legal costs. The terms of payment are the date of invoice plus seven (7) calendar days. VAT is added to the invoice in accordance with the applicable regulations. On fixed fee engagements, we invoice our clients up-front then the service is being provided. We generally invoice our clients by electronic communication. However, upon request we will submit our invoices by postal mail.
If you receive any instruction to pay to a different bank account, please contact Carsted Rosenberg before making payment, even if that instruction appears to have come from Carsted Rosenberg.
5. Confidentiality
All Carsted Rosenberg employees are subject to a professional duty of confidentiality. Any information from or regarding clients of Carsted Rosenberg which we receive in connection with an engagement is treated as confidential, unless it appears from the circumstances that such information is not of a confidential nature. Carsted Rosenberg reserves the right to close assignments that are not active, including with a view to accepting assignments for other clients in respect of the same matter. If an assignment is closed, we will ensure that any confidential information received by us in connection with it will not be used in connection with other assignments.
6. Insider Trading
All Carsted Rosenberg employees are subject to the applicable legislation on the prohibition of disclosure of insider information in relation to listed companies and the applicable restrictions on trading in listed securities.
7. Use of our Advice
Our advice is specific to each individual assignment and, accordingly, must not to be used for any other purpose without our express prior consent. Unless otherwise agreed, we are only liable to the client for services rendered.
8. Completion of the Engagement
Carsted Rosenberg completes the engagement at the point of its natural conclusion or when the client requests that the case be closed. You may end your instructions to us in writing at any time, but we can keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for fees and expenses. If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, you will remain obliged to pay our fees and expenses up until that point. These are calculated on an hourly basis plus expenses or by proportion of the agreed fee. We reserve the right to discontinue our assistance immediately if the credit period of our invoices despite reminders has been exceeded considerably, or if the client becomes insolvent. We also reserve the right to withdraw from an engagement if, in exceptional cases, we no longer wish to be responsible for handling the engagement or if we believe that it is in the best interests of the client that our cooperation ends. We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.
Original documents are usually submitted to the client on or before completion of the assignment. After completing the assignment, we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is still money owed to us for fees and expenses. We keep the files on record for at least five years from the date of the last invoice in relation to an engagement. We keep files on the understanding that we can destroy them five years after the date of the final bill. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody.
Upon successful completion, Carsted Rosenberg reserves the right to refer to our involvement in a given transaction, once it is completed successfully and provided the transaction is known to the general public, for the purposes of marketing of Carsted Rosenberg.
9. Complaints
We are committed to providing our clients with an efficient and professional service. In the unlikely event that a client may not be satisfied with our assistance or our fees, we kindly request the client to contact the partner or member of the who is responsible for overseeing the client relationship. We will make every attempt to ensure that the complaint is resolved promptly and to communicate the outcome in writing.
If following the completion of our complaints procedure the client remains dissatisfied, the client may be entitled to complain to the Legal Ombudsman (PO Box 6806, Wolverhamption, WV1 9WJ, enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk). Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must be made within six months of receiving our final written response to your complaint or within six years of the act or omission about which the client is complaining occurring (or if outside of this period, within three years of when you should reasonably have been aware of it).
Carsted Rosenberg is subject to the Danish Bar and Law Society’s and the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s general rules on complaints. Should it be necessary to file a complaint concerning Carsted Rosenberg, we refer to the complaints procedures available at www.advokatsamfundet.dk and www.sra.org.uk.
Any complaints concerning lawyers admitted to practice in the State of Washington should be addressed to the Washington State Bar Association by following the grievance procedure available here.
10. Liability, Limitation of Liability and Insurance Cover
Carsted Rosenberg is liable for our advice to clients in accordance with the general rules of Danish law. We hold the statutory professional liability insurance with HDI Global Specialty SE, Roderbruchstrasse 26, D-30655 Hannover, Germany, represented by HDI Danmark, Indiakaj 6, 1., DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark with an additional insurance cover provided by Zürich Versicherungsgesellschaft AG, Switzerland. The liability for the services provided cannot exceed ten times our salary for the engagement and is generally limited to the total policy limit under our statutory professional liability insurance. To the extent permitted by law, we do not accept responsibility for any loss which may arise from our engagement. We are not liable for any consequential loss, including, but not limited to, loss of profit, data, goodwill, reputation, or any other indirect loss, including loss of business or otherwise.
A client may raise claims against Carsted Rosenberg only and not against any of our partners, employees, consultants or sub-contractors individually, to the extend permitted by applicable legislation. If Carsted Rosenberg is held to be liable towards any third party and such liability arises out of our work for the client, the client must indemnify Carsted Rosenberg for any such liability which, together with any claims from the client, exceeds the limitations prescribed in this clause or for which Carsted Rosenberg is not liable towards the client.
If not prohibited by applicable legislation, no action, regardless of form, arising under or relating to our engagement or services rendered, may be brought by either party more than one (1) year after the cause of action has accrued, except that an action for non-payment of any invoice may be brought by Carsted Rosenberg no later than two (2) years following the due date of the concerned invoice.
In accordance with the Washing Supreme Court Admission and Practice Rule 26, lawyers admitted to practice in the State of Washington are not required to have professional liability insurance coverage. For the purposes of insurance disclosure and limitation of liability, legal advice rendered by Carsted Rosenberg and any member of the bar of the State of Washington working for Carsted Rosenberg, does not have professional liability insurance cover and the services rendered to the client are being rendered without professional liability insurance in relation to the State of Washington. Carsted Rosenberg and any member of the bar of the State of Washington working for Carsted Rosenberg exclude to the fullest extend permitted by law any liability in relation to such advice. To the extent no excluded, no liability can exceed the salary received for legal advice relating to the State of Washington.
The title "partner" or "associate" is used for practical convenience to define seniority and does not of itself mean that any individual to whom it is applied is a partner in a general partnership or a shareholder of Carsted Rosenberg. In order to limit the personal liability and exposure to litigation of our shareholders, partners, employees, consultants and agents, our services are provided to the client on the basis that the client will not bring any claim for damage against any of such persons personally but only against Carsted Rosenberg.
11. Governing Law and Venue
Any dispute between a client and Carsted Rosenberg shall be decided by the Danish courts in accordance with Danish law. The City Court of Copenhagen shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute unless otherwise agreed in writing.
12. Binding Nature of these Terms of Business and Rule of Priority
It is possible for Carsted Rosenberg to request signature of an engagement letter prior to the rendering of our services but we are not obliged to do so. The non-signature of any document does not affect the application of these business terms. The performance, in full or in part, of our services implies that you are in agreement with these business terms and with the content of the engagement letter. In the case of any contradiction between the engagement letter and the our business terms, the engagement letter shall take priority and be supplemented by the these terms of business.
Version January 2023