1.    These terms and how we can change them

1.1.    Our agreement with you. These terms, together with any formal or informal engagement letter (including terms on scope or fees, relevant to our engagement, that have been communicated to you including via means such as email), form our agreement with you to provide legal services. These terms apply to each matter we work on with you. If there is a conflict between these terms and our engagement letter, these terms will prevail, unless the engagement letter expressly overrides them.

1.2.    Changes to these terms. We reserve the absolute right to change these terms in response to legal, regulatory and technological changes or changes to our office policy and we may increase our hourly rates as explained in paragraph 6.2.(b). If we do so, we'll notify you.

2.    Consumers' cancellation rights

2.1.    Consumers may have a right to cancel. If you are an individual who is not instructing us in connection with your business, you may have a legal right to cancel our agreement with you and receive a refund of any sums you have paid us in advance. You are likely to have these rights if we take instructions from you outside of our offices or at a distance, for example online or over the telephone. Your right to cancel expires 14 days after our agreement is made and if you request us to start work during that period you will have to pay us for any work we do up until you cancel. Work which we start at your request during the cancellation period cannot be cancelled once completed, even if the cancellation period is still running.

3.    Our services

3.1.    Matters outside the scope of our instructions. We only advise on matters within the scope of our instructions, as set out in our engagement letter. Unless your engagement letter clearly says otherwise, we will not advise you on the financial or tax aspects, or on your wider tax or financial interests, or provide any advice on the law of jurisdictions other than the Republic of Cyprus, or provide any accounting or commercial advice (including on the viability and prudence of this matter), even if a relevant issue arises during the course of our work together. You may wish to seek separate specialist advice on these matters.

3.2.    Only you can rely on our advice. Our advice is intended solely for you. We do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the clients identified in our engagement letter. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, you must not share our advice with anyone else.

3.3.    Third party service providers. We may instruct third parties (such as expert witnesses, certifying officers, and translators) to provide services to you. Where appropriate we may instruct these third parties as your agent, so that you contract with them directly. Notwithstanding how such third parties are instructed, you are responsible for the sums charged by third parties and their services are provided to you on their terms. We use reasonable skill and care in selecting and appointing third parties and provided that we do so, we are not responsible for the services the third parties provide.

3.4.    We're not responsible for delays outside our control. If our services to you are delayed by an event outside our control, we will contact you as soon as reasonably possible to let you know and we will do what we reasonably can to reduce the delay. As long as we do this, we won't compensate you for the delay, but you always have rights to terminate your instructions to us as per paragraph 10.

3.5.    Time sensitive instructions. You may seek our services for matters which are urgent or time-sensitive. Where fees and the scope of our instruction have been expressly agreed upon but other peripheral matters remain pending (for example: the engagement letter is not yet signed by you, KYC checks have not been completed, invoicing logistics are pending, etc.) we may (i.e. we have the right but have no obligation to) begin working on your matter despite these pending issues. If we decide to proceed under such circumstances, then this will be done in order to best ensure that your interests are protected given the urgency or time-sensitivity of the concerned subject-matter. In such a case, if you choose to withdraw or change your instructions to us, you will nonetheless remain responsible for any obligations towards us (including settlement of our fees) in respect of services that we rendered to you up until the point of withdrawal or change of your instructions to us.

4.    What you agree to do

4.1.    You agree to:

(a)    Provide us with clear, timely and consistent instructions.
(b)    Respond fully, frankly, and quickly to our requests for information. 
(c)    Co-operate promptly and fully with us and those we instruct on your behalf. 
(d)    Provide us with full, true, accurate and not misleading information, to the best of your  knowledge and belief. We will not investigate or verify the information you give us unless we have expressly agreed to do so.
(e)    Tell us straight away if your contact details change.
(f)    Take reasonable steps to properly secure your communications with us. This includes protecting the email and computer systems used for your matter. This is important to protect your rights and funds.
(g)    Respect our regulatory or other restrictions. If we tell you that we can't do something for you because doing it would breach our legal, professional, or regulatory duties or breach any of our office policy rules and procedures then you must respect this.
(h)    Pay money on account and our invoices. You must provide us with any required sums on account of costs (see paragraph 6.6) and pay our invoices in accordance with these terms (see paragraph 7).
(i)    Verify any change of our payment details received by email. If you are told about any change of our bank details by email, then you must call us on +357 22 676 126 immediately to check whether the email is genuine, even if it appears to come from our firm. 

5.    Our communications with you

5.1.    Risks of email correspondence. For convenience and speed, we will correspond with you by email and rely on communications coming from your email account. However, email is inherently insecure. We are not responsible for loss or damage caused by email use, provided we have taken reasonable security measures, including against viruses or similar harmful items. In any event, we will not accept any emailed instructions from you to alter your banking details or instructions on where money should be sent without separately verifying the instructions with you.

5.2.    Blocked emails. Our filtering software may prevent us receiving emails from you or in relation to your matter and we are not responsible to you for losses resulting from this. You understand that you have a responsibility to follow-up on your matter generally and ensure that time-sensitive information has been successfully received by us.

5.3.    Opening hours. We are normally open between 8.00 am and 6.00 pm Monday to Thursday and between 8.00 am and 2:30 pm on Fridays, except for bank holidays. Our staff may sometimes respond to communications and work outside of our normal office hours, but this is at our discretion, and we ask you to respect that there will be times when we are not available.

5.4.    Who we can give advice to and whose instructions we can act on. We may give advice and information to, and act on instructions from, any of the individuals to whom our engagement letter is addressed without the need to copy such advice to, or to confirm such instructions with, the other(s). You can let us know in writing that we are authorised to deal with someone else on your behalf in this way. For organisations, rather than individuals, we can ask for a formal resolution confirming who can instruct us. Where an instruction has been communicated to us by certain persons or with copy to certain persons, we are entitled to assume that you have authorised those persons to instruct us on your behalf.

6.    Our fees, disbursements, and expenses

6.1.    How we calculate our fees is set out in our engagement letter. Our fees for our services are calculated either on the basis of time spent or on a fixed, capped basis and may be staged, as set out either in our engagement letter, or where an engagement letter has not been exchanged, in any other document (including emails) recording our fee arrangements.

6.2.    Fees on a time spent basis. If our fees are calculated on a time spent basis:

(a)    Six-minute units. We calculate the time spent by us in six-minute units (an hour is broken down into ten units, each of six minutes) and charge it at the hourly rate for the member of our law firm doing the work. Where a task (such as writing a short or standard letter or email or making a phone call) takes less than six minutes of such a person's time, the time spent is rounded up to six minutes.

(b)    Increases in hourly rates. We reserve the right to increase our hourly rates at any time (for example at the start of a new year). We may also increase our rates if your instructions change, for example if the matter we are working on for you becomes more urgent. We will give you advance notice of any increases.

(c)    Estimates are not binding. Any estimate of the total charges (fees, disbursements, and expenses) for dealing with your matter or reaching a certain stage in it are not binding. We may update estimates as a matter progresses, and you must pay all our charges even if they exceed any estimate.

6.3.    Fixed and capped fees. If we have agreed a fixed or capped fee with you:

(a)    Changes in assumptions. We may increase our fixed or capped fee or switch to charging you on a time-spent basis as we shall agree in advance with you if the assumptions on which the fixed fee is based (as set out in our engagement letter) prove incorrect, or if the services originally envisaged are different to the services actually needed or if the services finally requested or needed, are outside or beyond the originally envisaged scope of services, or if any event or circumstance outside our control justifies, in our reasonable opinion, an increase of the fixed or capped fees.

(b)    What we can charge if you terminate our instructions (or we stop acting for you). If you terminate our instructions (other than because we are at fault) we can charge you the full fixed fee unless you are an individual who is not instructing us in connection with your business (a consumer) in which case we will charge you on a time spent basis for the work we have done prior to termination, if this is less.

6.4.    If we agree to apply the Civil Procedure Cost Rules of the Supreme Court (the Cost Rules):

(a)    We will charge the upper band of the applicable scale of the Cost Rules, absent an agreement to the contrary. 

(b)    Unless agreed otherwise, standard services expressly mentioned in the Cost Rules will be charged in accordance with the Cost Rules, in force at the time the relevant services are rendered. 

(c)    Services not included in the Cost Rules (such communication, meetings, negotiation for compromise etc.) and services which are in the Cost Rules, but which require special handling, due to the nature of the case (such as lengthy preparation of witness statements, complex testimony), will be charged at our hourly rate.

6.5.    Disbursements, expenses, and VAT. All hourly rates, estimates, fixed, capped, or staged fees we quote to you are exclusive of the following, which you must pay in addition:

(a)    Disbursements. We may instruct third parties (such as expert witnesses, translators, freight carriers, and private investigators) to provide services to you or we may pay official fees or carry out searches for you. You will be responsible for associated charges and costs (disbursements).

(b)    Expenses. In addition to our fees, we charge you our expenses which may include the costs of travel, document production (scanning, photocopying, binding), payment transfers, and support staff overtime.

(c)    VAT. VAT on our fees and, where applicable, on disbursements and expenses, unless expressly stated otherwise.

6.6.    Payments on account. We normally hold some money from you as security against non-payment of our charges (fees, disbursements, and expenses) until a matter is concluded. We can require you to pay an appropriate amount on account before we start work and to top it up from time to time. We are not obliged to use such money to pay our bills, but we reserve the right do so. We have the right, but not an obligation, to refrain from rendering any or any further services until you comply with a request for payment on account.

6.7.    Services rendered before we have agreed our fees, are chargeable and will be charged in accordance with the fees agreed with you for the instruction.

6.8.    Where we have not agreed fees for an instruction (either expressly or impliedly), any work performed for the instruction in question will be charged on a time spent basis, at the hourly rate we usually apply for instructions of that type (nature, subject-matter value, complexity etc.). In that event, the said hourly rate will be deemed to be reasonable, unless you prove it is outside industry norms for an instruction of that type.

7.    Our invoices

7.1.    When we invoice you. We invoice you regularly, upon completion of stages of your matter and upon its final completion. All invoices issued by us which are not marked or described as an invoice for prepayment are final for the period they cover or, where they detail itemised services rendered, in respect to those services, and your rights to challenge them are time limited.

7.2.    We can invoice disbursements and expenses at any time. We can invoice you for disbursements and expenses for any period at any time, even after we have invoiced our fees for that period.

7.3.    Payment is due on receipt, and we charge interest on late payments. Our bills are payable within 14 days of receipt. We charge interest on unpaid bills at a rate of 8% above the Central Bank of Cyprus’s base rate, or if the base rate is lower than 0% at a rate of 8%, compounded annually. Interest will begin to run before securing judgment, from the day each amount becomes payable.

7.4.    You are responsible for our charges, even if you have third party funding. Even if someone else has agreed or been ordered to pay our charges (fees, disbursements, and expenses), or you expect this to happen, you are still responsible for paying us. This includes where you are claiming back part or all of our charges from an opponent in litigation.

7.5.    Multiple clients are jointly and severally liable for our bills. If we are instructed by more than one person, then we can require any of those persons to pay our bills in full (joint and several liability). 

7.6.    How to complain about our bills. To complain about an invoice, please follow our complaints procedure (see paragraph 14). 

8.    How we hold your money and pay you interest on it 

8.1.    Where we hold your money and associated risks. We may hold money on your behalf in our client account (for amounts up to €14,950) or in a specific client account opened in your name (for amounts greater than €14,950) in Banks including, but not limited to, Bank of Cyprus, Eurobank, Hellenic Bank, and Astrobank. We are not responsible for any loss resulting from the failure of any bank. Our client account is in Cyprus and is covered by the Cyprus Central Bank Scheme for “Deposit Guarantee and Resolution System for Credit and Other Institutions” (DGS). The maximum amount of compensation under the DGS is currently €100.000 per depositor, per credit institution, including accrued interest. We are not responsible to keep you updated about the DGS or any changes to the terms of the DGS or any reduction of the protection afforded by the DGS. For more information visit the Central Bank of Cyprus website.

9.    How we limit our liability to you

9.1.    Liabilities not excluded. Nothing in these terms limits any liability which cannot legally be limited. Where you are an individual who is not instructing us in connection with your business (a consumer) and the matter is contentious (it involves a dispute with a third party), we do not exclude (but we do limit) our liability to you for our negligence.
9.2.    Exclusion of indirect and consequential loss (business customers only). Subject to paragraph 9.1, if you are a business, we will not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, arising under or in connection with this agreement for any indirect or consequential loss.
9.3.    Losses we are not liable for. Subject to paragraph 9.1, we will not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty or otherwise, arising under or in connection with this agreement for any loss arising as a result of:

(a)    our complying with our legal and regulatory duties, such as delays or disclosures arising in the context of compliance with anti-money laundering legislation;
(b)    errors or defects in third party services instructed by us on your behalf or used by us in the provision of services to you, provided we use reasonable skill and care in selecting and appointing those third parties (see paragraph 3.3);
(c)    circumstances beyond our reasonable control (see paragraph 3.4);
(d)    loss or damage caused by email use, provided we have taken reasonable security measures (see paragraph 5.1); or
(e)    failure of any bank (see paragraph 8.1).

9.4.    Limits on our liability where other advisers are also responsible (business customers only). Subject to paragraph 9.1, our liability to you shall be reduced to the extent we can prove that you would have been able to recover or claim a contribution (in any way, including pursuant to the Civil Torts Law, Cap. 148) from another adviser on the same matter. That contribution shall be assessed on the basis that the advisers contracted with you on broadly the same terms as we have, did not exclude or limit their liability to you, and were able to pay the sums due to you in full.

9.5.    Caps on our liability. Unless agreed otherwise in our engagement letter, our aggregate liability to you, including liability for legal and other fees, costs and disbursements, in respect of all claims relating to the matter for which you engage us is limited to the amount of 10 (ten) times the fees we have been paid at the time of accrual (or if we have not invoiced the full amount at that time tha money that we would have been paid), in respect of that particular part of the relevant instruction. If the relevant instruction is of an ongoing or recurring nature (e.g. annual retainer) the relevant fees on which the cap will be calculated will be the fees paid for the period in question (i.e. the annual fee paid for the instruction in question). Subject to paragraph 9.1, the cap will apply whether the liability arose in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty or otherwise and whether it arises under or in connection with this agreement. You acknowledge and agree that the cap (10 (ten) times the fees we have been paid), is reasonable and that this is why we have not set a lower cap. 

9.6.    No claims against our staff. Services are provided by our staff for and on behalf of our law firm. Our staff do not assume any personal responsibility to our clients in relation to work carried out under these terms and any personal liability of any member of staff is therefore excluded. Any claims against our firm should be brought against the firm. You agree not to bring any claim (including in negligence or any other tort) against any employee or member of our staff including partners as individuals in their personal capacity in connection with any loss or damage suffered in connection with our services. If you do bring a claim against any of our staff, they can rely on our agreement, and its exclusion or limitation of liability clauses, including this clause.

9.7.    No complaint, claim, or other grievance against us without notifying us pre-action. You cannot file, make or raise (simply “take action”) any claim, complaint or grievance (simply a “claim”) against us, unless you give us express written notice of such claim within 30 days of the claim arising. You agree that you will not take any action against us for such claim until at least 30 days have elapsed from you giving us notice of the claim. A written notice, for the purposes of this clause, will not be effective, unless it contains the concise details of your claim with sufficient information to enable us to:

(a)    make decisions about how to proceed;
(b)    try to settle the issues without proceedings;
(c)    consider a form of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR);
(d)    understand your position; At a minimum, understanding you position requires you to explain the basis on which the claim is made, a summary of the facts, what you want from us, and if money, how the amount is calculated. Moreover, in addition to this minimum and, unless it is unreasonable or disproportionate to the claim being made (having in mind the type, importance, or severity of the matter) your notice should also contain the following information to enable us to understand your position:

(i)    The identity of any other parties involved in the dispute or a related dispute.
(ii)    A clear chronological summary (including key dates) of the facts on which your claim is based. Key documents should be identified, copied and enclosed.
(iii)    The allegations against us. What has been done wrong or not been done? What should we have done acting correctly?
(iv)    An explanation of how the alleged error has caused the loss claimed. This should include details of what happened as a result of you relying upon what we did wrong or omitted to do, and what might have happened if we had acted correctly.
(v)    An estimate of the financial loss suffered by you and how it is calculated. Supporting documents should be identified, copied and enclosed. If details of the financial loss cannot be supplied, you should explain why and should state when you will be in a position to provide the details. This information should be sent to us as soon as reasonably possible. If you are seeking some form of non-financial redress, this should be made clear.
(vi)    Confirmation whether or not an expert has been appointed. If so, provide the identity and discipline of the expert, together with the date upon which the expert was appointed.

10.    Indemnity

10.1.    You undertake to fully indemnify and reimburse us for any liability and/or damages incurred by us in the execution of our services described above, provided such liability or damages were not incurred as a result of any default, negligence, or wrongful action of our part.

11.    How you and we can terminate our agreement

11.1.    You and we can terminate this agreement. You may terminate your instructions to us at any time by telling us in writing. We can also stop acting for you, if we have reasonable grounds to do so, for example because you have broken our agreement by not giving us timely instructions or not paying our invoices on time. We can also stop acting for you if the lawyer-client relationship of trust and confidence has broken down, if we discover a conflict of interest, if to proceed would otherwise be contrary to legal or regulatory duties, if the risk profile for your case has significantly changed, or if you experience an insolvency event. We will write to you explaining our decision, giving you as much notice as possible.

11.2.    Payments on termination. If you terminate your instructions or we stop acting for you, you must pay our charges (fees, disbursements, and expenses) incurred up to the point of termination, as well as any charges we incur after termination, for example in transferring your file to another adviser or removing ourselves from the court record.

11.3.    We can retain your documents until you pay. If you do not pay our invoices on time, we can retain documents, deeds and other items relating to any matter we are working on for you until you have done so (subject to such information that may be available to you under data protection laws).

12.    How you can use our advice and how we handle your documents

12.1.    Intellectual property rights. We retain all intellectual property rights in the advice which we provide and the documents which we prepare, but permit you to make use of such work for the purposes of your particular matter only. 

12.2.    Treatment of your documents on completion. When your matter completes or we stop acting for you, unless you request the return of any documents you have supplied to us, we will retain them for as long as we deem necessary for legal and regulatory reasons and then destroy them. 

13.    Our legal status, how we are regulated and our insurance

13.1.    Our legal status and VAT details. We are a Lawyers’ Limited Company (LLC) registered in Cyprus with company number 243954. Our registered office is at Arch. Makariou 3rd 2-4, Capital Center, 1065 Nicosia, Cyprus. Please check our website for a full list of our members. Our VAT number is 10243954Q.

13.2.    How we are regulated. We are a firm of lawyers authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Bar Association and our legal services under this agreement are regulated by the CBA. Our CBA number is 121. You can find out more about the CBA and view the professional rules which apply to us on the CBA website.

13.3.    Our ability to provide financial services. As lawyers regulated by the CBA, we are able to provide certain financial services incidental to our legal work.

13.4.    How we are insured. As required by our professional rules, we maintain professional indemnity insurance to protect clients in the unlikely event of a mistake being made in a case.

14.    Complaints and other concerns

14.1.    Our complaints process. We hope that you are happy with the service we provide. If at any stage you have concerns or wish to make a complaint, inform 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 any of our partners directly (see our website for details). If the person handling your matter cannot promptly resolve your concerns, then it will be dealt with as a formal complaint under our complaints policy. 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 or outcome.

15.    Conflict 

15.1.    Our professional rules prevent us from accepting instructions from two or more clients where there is a conflict, or a significant risk of conflict, between the interests of those clients. If at any time you become aware of an actual or potential conflict of interest, please raise it with us immediately.

15.2.    Should a conflict of interest arise we will discuss the matter with you with a view to resolving the conflict. If we cannot resolve the matter, it may be necessary for us to cease acting for you on that matter or generally; you agree that in such circumstances this will not prevent us from acting for another party involved in the matter giving rise to the conflict. In the absence of a legal conflict of interest our relationship with you will not prevent us from acting for other clients. 

15.3.    So long as we act in accordance with ethical requirements, we 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 with you. Our right will be regardless of type, importance, or severity of the matter and will cover all types of adverse interests, be they in litigation, legislative, or regulatory matters, or in transactions or otherwise.

15.4.    We will always seek to resolve any conflict issues in the most reasonable way for all the clients concerned.

15.5.    After the termination of our engagement, we may act or continue to act for another client in circumstances where we hold information which is confidential to you and material to the engagement with that other client. We will not, however, disclose your confidential information to that other client.

16.    Confidentiality

16.1.    When we may use and disclose your confidential information. We will keep confidential information we obtain through our services confidential, but we reserve the right to use and disclose it to:

(a)    deliver those services, which may include storing confidential information on our computers, in our email, and in the cloud;
(b)    comply with the law, including by performing conflicts of interest checks for new cases against a list of current and former clients, and reporting suspicious activity to authorities (including the Cyprus Police and the Unit for Combating Money Laundering known as MOKAS if we suspect money laundering); and
(c)    comply with requests by regulators and other competent authorities, such as audits by the CBA.

17.    Data protection

17.1.    Our privacy policy. In some cases, we may hold more sensitive information about an individual such as about health. This may be necessary to pursue your legal matter. We are permitted to use such information to provide legal advice to you or in connection with equality legislation. 

17.2.    You can withdraw consent to your information being used in a particular way, but this may limit what more we can do for you (if anything).

17.3.    As a client we may in the future send you a newsletter or similar. We find that most clients find this helpful. We rely on the legitimate interest we have in maintaining contact with former clients to do this in compliance with data protection law and your agreement for the purposes of the GDPR. However, we will never share your information with third parties to market to you and will not contact you about non-legal services. We will make it quick and easy for you to opt out of future communications in every communication we send. 

17.4.    Your information may be kept on computer servers within the European Union. If at any point information is stored on computer servers outside of the EU, we will have selected countries which are either approved for this purpose under relevant data protection legislation or are located where we are happy that the safeguards in place in that country to protect your information are appropriate under such legislation.

17.5.    We do not use your personal information to make automated decisions which affect you.

17.6.    Generally speaking, we will not share your information with third parties unless this is part of the work on your legal matter. For example, lawyers frequently may need to send certain information about clients to other lawyers working on the matter, to court or to government bodies. In rare circumstances we sometimes need to make reports of suspicious activity to MOKAS or the Cyprus Police. We also work with some trusted contractors or consultants who may have access to your information, such as service providers or copiers. All contractors have a contract with us which requires that your information be accessed appropriately and kept confidential (among other data protection requirements). Similarly, we may occasionally need to share client matter information with our professional indemnity insurers and their advisers. If you instruct us jointly with another client, then it will be necessary to share certain information relevant to you with the corresponding joint client in order to fulfil your instructions to us.

17.7.    While we reserve the right to destroy non-original material at any time after the conclusion of your matter, we generally retain files for a period of seven years after payment of the final bill and destroy them thereafter. At the end of a case, original documents will be returned to you but, if we both agree, we may retain certain originals for a longer time period. We will also always keep a small amount of information after file closure to do conflicts of interest searches in the future to comply with our professional duties.

17.8.    We do normally have a right to payment of any outstanding costs before releasing a whole file to you, but individuals may arguably have a separate right under the GDPR to access certain personal data without charge. This may include having it in a particular electronic format (portable format).

17.9.    Our general contact details are set out in our covering engagement letter and the contact details for our information officer can be found on our website. Contact this individual if you want to exercise one of your data protection rights and in particular if you:

(a)    wish to complain about how your personal data is being used; or
(b)    wish to request that our records about your personal information be corrected or deleted.

17.10.    While we are regulated as a firm of lawyers by the CBA, if you have a complaint about how your personal information is being used which we have not been able to address you may also be able to make a complaint to the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection directly. You can learn more about the CPD and personal data rights from the CPD's website www.dataprotection.gov.cy.

18.    Anti-money laundering and financial crime procedures

18.1.    How we verify your identity. As a firm of lawyers, we must comply with different legal and regulatory requirements aimed at preventing crime. You agree to co-operate with us in order to verify your identity, your business structure, organisation history and sources of income and other matters relevant to discharging our legal and professional duties in this respect. This may include attending our offices with identification and other documentation for verification, but could also involve disclosure of more personal information such as bank statements and evidence of income. If it is not possible to attend our offices, lawful alternatives will be considered with you.

18.2.    Reports to the Cyprus Police. If we have to report information about you or your matter to the Cyprus Unit for Combating Money Laundering (MOKAS) or the Cyprus Police, we may be prevented by law from informing you of this fact. If this happens, we can stop work on your matter and withhold your money without notice or explanation to you, until the issue is resolved.

18.3.    Client account. Strict limits apply to how we operate our client account (used to hold money on a client's behalf in connection with a legal transaction). We may not accept cash. We cannot offer a banking facility and there are limits on how funds can be paid into and out of our client account.

19.    Exclusive jurisdiction and governing law

19.1.    These terms are governed by Cyprus law. This Agreement and any dispute or claim (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter or its formation, shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of Cyprus.

19.2.    Exclusive Jurisdiction. You can bring claims against us only in the Cypriot courts. We both irrevocably agree that the courts of Cyprus shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute or claim (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of or in connection with this agreement or its subject matter or formation.

20.    Other important terms
20.1.    Nobody else has any rights under this contract, except our staff. This contract is between you and us. Other than our staff (see paragraph 9.6), nobody else has rights under it or can enforce it. Neither of us will need to ask anybody else to sign-off on ending or changing it.

20.2.    If a court invalidates some of this contract, the rest of it will still apply. If a court or other authority decides that some of these terms are unlawful, the rest will continue to apply.

20.3.    Waiver. A delay or failure by us to exercise, or the single or partial exercise of, any right or remedy shall not waive that or any other right or remedy, nor shall it prevent or restrict the further exercise of that or any other right or remedy by us. A waiver of any right or remedy by us, is only effective if given expressly in writing and shall not be deemed a waiver of any subsequent right or remedy.