This document sets forth the terms and conditions pursuant to which our Luxembourg law firm and its lawyers agree to provide legal services.

1. Fees, disbursements, office expenses and VAT

Our Luxembourg law firm’s fees will generally be charged to you on the basis of the number of hours of work performed with respect to a particular matter by all lawyers / professionals involved in the matter and the applicable hourly rates of such lawyers / professionals. The hourly rates are set on the basis of the particular expertise and experience of the lawyers / professionals involved. A list of applicable hourly rates or our law firm’s lawyers / professionals is provided upon request.

Our law firm’s fees do not include the following which will be charged separately:

(a) direct disbursements to third parties (related invoices will be provided upon request);

(b) general office expenses (such as secretarial work, stamps, telephone, photocopying, facsimile expenses, computer services, etc) which will be charged on the basis of a percentage applied on the fees.

In litigation matters, we will keep any court awarded fees (“émoluments”) that the court could order the losing party to pay to our law firm, in accordance with the regulation dated 21 March 1974.

Upon request, estimates of the anticipated fees for a particular matter may be provided by the lawyer responsible for the matter. However, unless otherwise agreed, such estimates should not be considered as a fixed price. This is particularly the case if additional requests are made by you or if unanticipated tasks or difficulties are encountered while performing the agreed work. In principle, the lawyer responsible for the matter will inform you if an increase of fees may be foreseen.

VAT, where applicable, will be charged on our fees at the rate of 17%.

At the beginning of a new matter, the lawyer responsible for the matter may require the payment of a retainer to cover a portion of the anticipated fees and disbursements.

2. Billing and Payment terms

A statement of fees and disbursements will be sent to you periodically (generally on a monthly basis) for the work performed by our law firm.

A listing providing the details of our Luxembourg law firm’s statement of fees, setting forth the specifics of the services provided by the lawyers / professionals involved in the matter, will be provided at your request.

All statement of fees and expenses of our law firm are payable within 20 days of their date of issuance. If the payment is not made by the due date, interest will be charged at rate of 1% per month. In addition, our law firm reserves the right to retain your files until all our outstanding statements of fees and expenses, and applicable late payment interests thereon, are settled.

3. Coordination of work

In order to ensure that each new request for services addressed to our law firm is dealt with by the most appropriate lawyers / professionals, you will direct all new matters to your main contact lawyer who will be responsible for coordinating the assignment of the work with other lawyers / professionals involved in the matter and for following the performance thereof. The initials of your contact Lawyer are mentioned in the matter reference number (Stéphan Le Goueff is the contact lawyer for all matters with reference number starting with LGA). You may also designate a contact person (or lawyer) to communicate with our law firm.

4. Communications

Unless otherwise requested by you, communications with our Luxembourg law firm will be made by mail, telephone or electronic communications (fax, e-mail, etc). As the confidentiality of electronic communications may not be guaranteed, you should notify your contact lawyer in the event that you prefer not to use such communications. If the matter requires a certain urgency we may resort to courier services company. In such case, the corresponding costs will be charged to you.

5. Conflict of interest

In the event that a conflict of interest would arise at the outset or during our relationship, your contact lawyer will inform you of the situation and we will jointly decide the steps to take to address the situation.

6. Confidentiality

Luxembourg lawyers are bound, by law, to comply with strict professional secrecy rules. Any breach of this rule by a lawyer may give rise to criminal and/or disciplinary sanctions. Thus, irrespective of the execution of a confidentiality agreement, your matters will be kept strictly confidential unless the disclosure thereof is authorized by you or otherwise required by law.

7. Money laundering regulations

Notwithstanding the above professional secrecy duty, money laundering regulations require Luxembourg lawyers to obtain certain information regarding their clients and, in the case of suspicious activities involving money laundering, financing of terrorist activities, and related criminal offenses, Luxembourg lawyers disclose such suspicious activities to the competent authorities without informing the client of such disclosure.

8. Rules of ethics

Luxembourg lawyers must comply with the rules of ethics set forth in the Interior regulation of Luxembourg Lawyers, published in the Mémorial, A (www.legilux.public.lu) and, for cross border activities, within the European Union, with the Code of Conduct for Lawyers in the European Union.

9. Limitation of liability

Our liability, in connection with work performed for you, covers only direct damages suffered by you and caused by our fault or negligence. In such case, the amount of our liability will be limited to the amount of the indemnity paid under our lawyers’ professional liability insurance policy. In the event that the lawyers’ professional liability insurance policy would not apply for any reason, then our liability shall be limited to an amount corresponding to the lower of Eur 100.000 or five times the total amount of the fees paid by you in connection with the matter having given rise to the claim.

10. Data protection

All personal information (any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person) relating to you or your firm are collected and processed in accordance with the Regulation n°2016/679 of 27 April 2016 (the “General Data Protection Regulation” – GDPR).

We will only collect and process the personal information that you have provided about you (contact details, VAT number, identification documentation) and that is necessary for the purpose of providing our legal services and in certain cases in accordance with legal obligations to know our customers (KYC rules). It is therefore a requirement necessary to enter into a contract with us to provide this personal information, and in certain cases necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which our law firm is subject.

We will not transfer or disclose your personal data to any third party, save in compliance with our legal obligations or with your prior consent. In order to guarantee the best security standards of the data, our data are hosted by our IT provider the company Cloud Managed Data (CMD) located at 9, Rue Robert Stümper – L – 2557 Luxembourg. We will not process your personal information for marketing purposes.

We will only retain personal information for the duration of our contractual relationship with you, and further applicable limitation period (that is generally 10 years).  Following the expiration of this period, we will delete  or anonymise all personal information held about you unless we have the legal right or obligation to retain such information.

You have a right to request access to and rectification or erasure of your personal information or restriction of processing and to object to processing as well as the right to data portability.

You may contact us for any questions or requests relating to the use of your personal information, or in order to exercise your rights, at the following email address: info@lgavocats.lu. We will respond to you within not more than one month.

If you are not satisfied with our use of your personal information or our response to you, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority (the “Commission nationale pour la protection des données – CNPD” in Luxembourg – www.cnpd.public.lu).

11. Applicable law and competent jurisdiction

As a Luxembourg law firm, we require the relationship between our law firm, its lawyers and you to be governed the laws of Luxembourg and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the city of Luxembourg.

12. Agreement with these engagement terms

By engaging our Luxembourg law firm and lawyers to provide professional services, you agree to be bound by these engagement terms.

13. Language

The English version of these terms and conditions shall apply when the language used for communications with you is English.