About us
Napier Sterling Law Limited (“we”, “our” or “us”) is a private limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 14917462. Our registered office is at Yorkshire House, 219 St John Street, London, EC1V 4LY. The terms ‘Partner’ and ‘Legal Director’ are used to refer to a senior employee and does not denote any legal or statutory obligation or position. A list of directors is available on Companies House.
To contact us, please email contact@napiersterling.com or telephone +44 (0) 300 124 7878.
Insurance
We maintain professional indemnity insurance with Fortegra Via NBS Underwriting. They can be contacted at 5th Floor, 20 Fenchurch Street, London EC3M 3BY.
Regulatory
We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA Number 8006358). The professional standards and requirements by which we bound can be viewed here.
Investment activity
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Conduct Authority so that we can carry on insurance distribution activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, is regulated by the SRA. The register can be accessed via the Financial Conduct Authority website at www.fca.org.uk/firms/financial-services-register.
Our bank account, client money and interest
We do not operate a client account. We do not hold any client money other than that which is paid into our office account in respect of our fees and disbursements incurred on behalf of our clients and which is received by us prior to delivery of an invoice for the same. We utilise the services of a third party managed account provider for holding client money. As the provider is a payment institution, and not a bank, interest will not be earned or paid on monies held on your behalf.
Fees
We will charge clients fees in accordance with the terms of the relevant client care letter.
Clients have the right to object to fees by applying to the court for an assessment of the relevant bill under Part III of the Solicitors’ Act 1974. Note that if you apply for an assessment, the Legal Ombudsman may not be able to deal with your complaint (see ‘Complaints’ below).
If all or part of a bill remains unpaid, we may be entitled to charge interest.
VAT
Our VAT number is 455 4569 63.
Complaints
If at any stage, you have concerns or wish to make a complaint please tell the person handling your matter straight away about the nature of your concern. If you do not feel comfortable speaking with the individual handling your matter, then you can contact our complaints partner directly here. If the person handling your matter cannot promptly resolve your concerns, then it will be dealt with as a formal complaint. This process involves an investigation of the concerns by a senior member of our firm. We will then write to you within eight weeks setting out our final response to the complaint and how you can pursue you concerns further if you do not agree with our proposed resolution/outcome.
Individual consumers and smaller organisations may be entitled to complain to the Legal Ombudsman about our service if they remain dissatisfied. The Legal Ombudsman would generally expect clients to follow a firm’s internal complaints procedure first, however. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you. You can find further information about the Ombudsman on the website www.legalombudsman.org.uk. You can write to the Ombudsman at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6168, Slough, SL1 0EL or by email on enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk or call on 0300 555 0333.
Alternative complaints/dispute resolution bodies do also exist (such as Ombudsman Services, ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation) which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services if we both agree to use such a scheme. If we agree to use such a scheme, we will inform you when notifying you of our final response to your complaint.
Please note that the Legal Ombudsman is there to deal with concerns about the level of service which a client has received. Where there are more serious concerns that a solicitor or solicitor’s firm have been involved in professional misconduct then reports can also be made to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. This could be for quite unusual and serious acts of misconduct such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. Obviously, we do not anticipate any such problems arising and would ask that you notify the matter supervisor straight away if you have any such concerns.