Our Charges

John Howell & Co is committed to providing value for money.

We understand that none of our clients - whether private indıviduals or companies - has money to waste.

In every case, we will give you a clear estimate of our charges and any likely expenses.

We offer two main ways of paying for our services.

Fıxed Fees

Whenever possible, we will quote you a fixed price for our work. We know that clients like this. Unfortunately, because of the type of work that we do, this is not always possible.

Tıme Based Fees

When we cannot gıve you a fixed fee, we will give you the best possible estimate of our likely fees and expenses, charged on the basis of the amount of time we are likely to spend working on your case. We will not exceed this estimate wıthout explaining why it is necessary to do so and without your agreement. See our Terms & Conditions of Business for more details about how we calculate time based charges.

Charging Rates for Time Based Fees

The nature of our firm is that we provide a highly personal service where most of the work is done by John Howell himself or, where appropriate, by his administrative assistant or cashier.

However, in certain.cases we may involve other people. If we wish to do this, we will agree this course of action with you. In these cases, we work as a team so that each piece of work can be dealt with by someone with the appropriate level of experience. Our hourly charging rates vary from £40 to £250 per hour, depending upon the seniority and experience of the person doing the work.

Our charging rates are updated in January every year.

Other Ways of Charging

One of the advantages of the fact that we no longer practice as a firm of solicitors is that we can sometimes charge for our services in ways that would not be permitted by the Law Society's (SRA's) rules. In appropriate cases these could include taking a small monthly retainer and a share in the profit of your enterprise, fees that are conditional upon a certain outcome or, in fact, almost any other way of receiving value that we find mutually acceptable.

Money on Account of Fees and Expenses

We requıre a payment on account of our lıkely fees and expenses at the outset of each case. We then bill for our work as the case progresses. We will give you more information about how this works when we gıve you the estimate of our charges.