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Standard Terms of Engagement for Legal Services
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Client Service Lawyer
One lawyer will generally be assigned primary responsibility for seeing that your requests for legal services are met. Additional lawyers and paralegals from other Firm offices may assist in rendering the most appropriate and efficient legal services, and we will share confidential information with them regarding your matters for the purposes of better serving you.
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Scope of Our Engagement and Fees.
The scope of any engagement will be set out in a separate letter that will be sent to you each time we agree to represent you on an individual matter (Assignment Letter). Our fee arrangement will be set out in that letter.
Conflicts
We will always honor our duty of confidentiality to you and protect your information. Without detracting from our duty of confidentiality to you, this letter confirms our mutual agreement that, so long as we act in accordance with ethical requirements, we and other Firm offices may without your consent act for other persons or entities whose interests are adverse to you or your affiliates in matters not substantially related to our engagement by you. The adversity may be in litigation, legislative or regulatory matters, or in transactions or otherwise, all regardless of type, importance or severity of the matter.
We agree, however, that we will not act adversely to you in any instance where, as the result of our representation of you, we have obtained sensitive, proprietary or other confidential information of a nonpublic nature that, if known to any such other client of ours, could be used in a matter in which we are retained by our other client to your or your affiliates’ material disadvantage, unless we screen our lawyers and paralegals who have such information from any involvement in the adverse representation./p>
Questions
One of our goals is to ensure that legal services are delivered effectively and efficiently, and that all billings are accurate and understandable. Please direct any questions about services or billing practices to your client service lawyer.
Agreement
These Standard Terms shall be incorporated into any specific engagement and will be part of each Assignment Letter. Except for pending uncompleted assignments, these Standard Terms supersede all prior understandings or agreements between you and us and they shall prevail over any contrary or alternative terms of yours or any third party. Any change to these terms must be made or confirmed in writing in the Assignment Letter and be signed by the Managing Partner of one of our Firm office.