General conditions & legal notice

Identification

WATT Legal SRL/BV — law firm.

Avenue Louise 64, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.

+32 (0)2 735 58 10 — info@watt.legal

Company and VAT number: BE 0760.623.520

The lawyers practising within WATT Legal are members of the Ordre français des Avocats de Bruxelles. The professional title of avocat was granted in Belgium.

The applicable rules of professional conduct are those of the Ordre des barreaux francophones et germanophone de Belgique, available at avocats.be.

Professional liability is limited to the amount covered by the professional indemnity insurance maintained through the Brussels Bar, averaging EUR 2,500,000, together with the additional professional indemnity insurance maintained by WATT Legal, which, for information purposes only and without contractual effect, currently provides aggregate cover averaging EUR 12,000,000.

Rates

1 — Office costs

The lawyer's office costs are the fixed overheads of practice. They are calculated at 19 % of fees, excluding VAT. All external costs such as bailiffs and experts — the procedural costs referred to under 2 — are charged separately and are not included.

2 — Procedural costs

Procedural costs are those the client must pay to third parties: bailiffs, experts, the court registry, translators and public authorities. The client pays these directly. Where the lawyer advances them on the client's behalf, they appear precisely and in detail in the statement of fees and costs.

All communication between the lawyer and the client's experts is protected by the lawyer's professional secrecy.

3 — Fees

Fees remunerate the services provided by the lawyer and their collaborators.

The rate is in principle agreed at the outset of the engagement, orally or in writing, and confirmed in the invoice and/or timesheet.

The parties agree an hourly rate, or a fixed sum for a given task, procedure or part of a procedure. The hourly rate is the norm. A success fee may be agreed in addition where the outcome is favourable. A fixed fee is possible, for instance for the review of a contract or a due diligence.

As the lawyer can predict neither every intervention, nor the time required, nor the outcome, any estimate given is never binding as such.

The rate takes account of what is at stake, the lawyer's experience, reputation and specialism, urgency, and the client's financial position.

Unless otherwise agreed, services are charged at the agreed hourly rate plus VAT (21 %) and costs. The nature of a matter may justify a fixed sum, a percentage — for debt recovery, for example — or a success fee.

Time spent on research, study and strategy is charged, as is travel time, the lawyer being genuinely engaged on the matter at that point.

4 — Procedural indemnity

In Belgium, the successful party may recover part of its lawyer's fees and costs from the losing party. This is a fixed indemnity, its amount set by the court between a statutory minimum and maximum. Further information at avocats.be.

The court in principle awards the basic amount. At a party's request it may reduce or increase it within the statutory limits.

The parties agree that any procedural indemnity awarded to the client constitutes an additional success fee accruing to the lawyer.

5 — General conditions

The general conditions remain fully applicable. In case of conflict, they prevail over these rates.

General conditions

Save prior written agreement, all accounts, invoices and statements are due and payable within eight days. All payments are made with the compulsory mention of the file number and the number of the statement. In any event the debt is assignable.

In case of dispute between the lawyer and the client, only the French-speaking chambers of the Brussels courts have jurisdiction and Belgian law applies at all times to the agreement.

The client acknowledges that the fees and costs and all other conditions of the engagement have always been the subject of negotiation. The client accepts that the total price of the services cannot reasonably be calculated in advance because of the nature of the service, nor can an estimate be made because there are too many variables, but that the hourly rate expresses the manner in which the price is to be calculated, and that it has been made clear that additional amounts may and will be due depending on the services and costs, the provisions or the interim statements informing the client sufficiently without further information being necessary.

If a combination is made of a reduced hourly rate and a success fee and the client terminates the mandate before the success fee can be realised, the client owes retroactively all fees, costs and attachments to the amount of the calculation of the difference with the original hourly rate.

In case of late payment, interest is due as of right in accordance with the Act of 2 August 2002 on combating late payment in commercial transactions, being the reference rate increased by eight percentage points and rounded up to the nearest half percentage point. Interest is due from the due date until the date of payment in full.

In addition, a fixed indemnity is due of 10 % of the total amount, with a minimum of EUR 450, subject to proof of greater loss. This 10 % penalty clause applies to all agreements between clients and lawyers, but only reciprocally in both directions between lawyers and consumers. Both the interest and the fixed indemnity are limited according to the restrictions of the law in Book XIX.4 of the Code of Economic Law (CEL) as regards consumer clients.

Any protest and/or complaint relating to a request for provision or to a statement of fees and costs, or relating to liability, must, on pain of forfeiture, be duly reasoned and submitted in writing. The protest and/or complaint must, on pain of forfeiture, be submitted by registered letter within 8 days of receipt or of becoming aware of facts which may give rise to liability.

The lawyer is subject only to an obligation of means and liability is limited to serious fault or intentional acts. Professional liability is limited to the amount covered by the professional indemnity insurance maintained through the Brussels Bar, averaging EUR 2,500,000, together with the additional professional indemnity insurance maintained by WATT Legal, which, for information purposes only and without contractual effect, currently provides aggregate cover averaging EUR 12,000,000. The client waives any further compensation above the insured amount, as well as, in general, any consequential loss.

The client waives any contractual or extra-contractual claim against the lawyer as independent executing agent of the law firm and is limited to a claim against the invoicing company which is its sole contracting party, with the express exclusion of all other lawyers and law firms which may form part of the same partnership.

The limitation period for bringing a professional liability claim before the court is contractually limited and set at two years after the lawyer's last intervention and at three years after the facts on which the claim is based, without the latter period being able to exceed the former.

All fees and costs are legally increased by VAT. All existing and new fee agreements, including correction coefficients, are automatically adjusted and increased accordingly.

Office costs exclude external or exceptional costs, which are invoiced separately and are calculated and invoiced in addition to the fees themselves, on a conventional basis, as a lump sum and without the lawyer having to provide any further proof, at 19 % of the amount of the services and fees, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

All fees and costs are subject to periodic indexation. The indexation is expressed as a percentage approximating the effect of inflation. The percentage of this adjustment is a party decision of the lawyer, but is made at market conditions.

Furthermore, the lawyer is always entitled to adjust the rates over time with a view to the future, for example on the basis of increasing seniority, and payment of the following invoice containing that adjustment binds the client and is accepted in that respect.

The fees, services and costs mentioned in the interim statement may not yet be complete and the lawyer reserves the right to supplement them subsequently.

The lawyer and the client expressly agree that, by way of prohibition, no audio or visual recordings may ever be made by the client of the communication between lawyer and client, for example by telephone or during consultations or discussions, nor of the pleading notes, and the client waives here and now any evidential value thereof and confirms that these are, where applicable, contractually prohibited and excluded within the framework of the agreement.

If these conditions conflict with provisions of mandatory law, the latter shall replace or delete them as of right without prejudice to the validity of the contract or the other provisions.

The present conditions are mentioned upon communication of the financial conditions and the client accepts these conditions when the client knows that the lawyer is commencing work. These conditions are also repeated on the invoices and their payment confirms, in so far as necessary, their acceptance. These conditions may be amended from time to time and the new version will be binding after payment of the invoice on which they are mentioned.

The French version of these general conditions is authoritative. The Dutch and English versions are provided by way of translation; in the event of divergence between the versions, the French version prevails.

Privacy policy

1 — Controller

Patricia Lefèvre, for WATT Legal SRL/BV, Avenue Louise 64, 1050 Brussels, is responsible for the processing of your personal data. Any request may be addressed to her at info@watt.legal or by post to the address above.

2 — Data processed

This is a static website. It sets no cookies, uses no analytics tools and loads nothing from any third-party service. No browsing data is collected: no IP address, no pages visited, no browser, no duration of visit.

Personal data is processed only where you provide it voluntarily — by email, by telephone or through a form: identity, contact details, and the information you choose to send us.

3 — Purposes and lawful bases

Your data is processed in order to respond to your enquiry, to assess your participation in a collective action where applicable, to verify the absence of conflicts of interest and, where a file is opened, to constitute and manage it.

The lawful bases are steps taken at your request prior to entering a contract (Article 6.1.b GDPR), our legitimate interest in verifying conflicts and managing our professional obligations (Article 6.1.f), and our legal obligations, notably in relation to the prevention of money laundering (Article 6.1.c).

4 — Recipients

The lawyers and staff of WATT Legal. Where applicable, and only so far as necessary: correspondent lawyers, experts, bailiffs and courts, in Belgium and within the European Union. No transfer outside the European Union takes place without your being informed.

The information you send us is covered by the lawyer's professional secrecy from the moment a file is opened.

5 — Retention

Where your enquiry does not lead to a file being opened: twelve months, then deletion.

Where a file is opened: for the duration of the proceedings, then five years after completion of the engagement, in accordance with Article 2276bis of the Civil Code.

6 — Your rights

You have at all times the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. These rights are exercised free of charge at info@watt.legal, save for manifestly excessive requests. Some may be limited by professional secrecy or by our statutory retention obligations.

Any complaint may be addressed to the Data Protection Authority, Rue de la Presse 35, 1000 Brussels — contact@apd-gba.be.

7 — Links to other sites

This site may contain links to third-party websites. WATT Legal is not responsible for the processing of your data by those sites, to which this policy does not apply.

Intellectual property

This site and its contents are the property of WATT Legal. You may print or temporarily store extracts, without modification, for your own personal use, provided all notices as to rights remain intact. Any other reproduction, modification, republication or distribution, in any medium, requires the prior written consent of WATT Legal.

Disclaimer

The information on this site is of a general nature and does not constitute legal advice. For advice suited to your situation, please contact us.

Third-party websites

This site contains links to other websites over which WATT Legal has no control. WATT Legal accepts no responsibility or liability for the operation or content of such websites. Links to this website are not permitted without the prior and express written consent of WATT Legal.

Accessibility

WATT Legal makes every effort to ensure that the pages of this website are accessible to all persons, including persons with disabilities. The site was designed in accordance with accessibility standards: it works without JavaScript, respects system preferences on animation, and its contrasts have been checked.

Applicable law

This site is governed by Belgian law. Only the French-speaking chambers of the Brussels courts have jurisdiction.