Privacy and Confidentiality. As your attorney, we owe you a duty to keep all private information confidential from other parties. The “attorney-client privilege” prevents us from disclosing information about you to anyone else without your permission – even to other members of your family – unless we have agreed to a joint representation.
Conflicts of Interest. It is our duty to represent your interests to the best of our ability. We attempt to do our due diligence early in the relationship to confirm that we do not have a conflict of interest in representing you, but new information may arise later that creates or identifies an issue. If this occurs, we will work with you to transition your matter to new counsel outside of JKS.
Consent to Use of Electronic Communications and Artificial Intelligence (AI). If you provide us with an email address, we take this as permission to communicate with you by email, issue bills, send digital documents for review, and ask for electronic signatures via Docusign (or the like) to expedite transactions and reduce paper usage. In order to maximize efficiency for clients, we may utilize AI as a tool to enhance certain aspects of our services. JKS may utilize AI to record a meeting, draft a letter, or conduct research – all of which is subject to additional attorney review before final acceptance. Maintaining client privacy is an utmost legal and ethical concern for JKS. AI is not a substitute for the expertise or judgment of an attorney.
JKS Fees. You are responsible for paying all legal fees and reimbursable costs. These will be billed to you at the address you have provided after the end of each calendar month. We currently send bills out via mail. We intend to make electronic billing our default in the future; thereafter, you should not expect to receive bills in the mail unless you make arrangements with us. Retainers, if applicable, are exhausted first. We reserve the right to stop working on your matter if any bill is not paid within 30 days. We have outlined our current hourly rates, or other agreed upon fee structure, in the engagement letter. Hourly rates are subject to change without notice. We bill in increments of one-tenth of an hour (6 minutes) with a minimum charge of two-tenths of an hour. We reserve the right to charge interest on past-due balances at 4% per month.
JKS does not generally charge clients for the expenses of ordinary postage, faxes, or copies made in our office. All of these “internal costs” are built into the hourly fee structure. Mileage costs may be charged at the applicable Federal mileage reimbursement rate.
If a set or estimated fee was provided to you, it includes only our legal work described in the letter to which this Addendum is attached; it does not include additional costs identified below. If you ask us to do any legal work not specifically described in the Terms of Engagement letter, we will additionally charge for the time it takes to complete this work; it will not be included as part of your original estimate.
Additional Costs. You will be required to reimburse us for any out of pocket disbursements made on your behalf (such as UPS, Federal Express, or other private delivery services; copies made by an outside contractor; recording or filing fees and fees for copies of documents purchased from the Register of Deeds, Register of Probate, or Secretary of State; excess postage (over $1 per item); and similar “out-of-pocket” expenses). For example, corporate matters may have formation filing fees with the Maine Secretary of State, change of Clerk fees, or other filing fees depending on the needs of your entity. Real estate transactions may have fees for deed recording (currently $40 per deed), FinCEN mandatory reporting (currently $350 per entity), title searches (costs vary based on complexity of research), or other costs. Probate matters will incur filing fees with the county Probate Court upon filing.
Additionally, certain filings require disclosure of personal information to a third party vendor; by agreeing to engage JKS, you are authorizing this disclosure.
Unauthorized Practice of Law. Please note that in any law firm, non-attorney staff may be able to assist with certain questions or document preparation, but are prohibited from offering legal advice because it is an ethical violation and constitutes the “unauthorized practice of law.” Our legal staff works under the supervision of JKS attorneys and may have to wait for attorney input before responding to your question or concern.
Cooperation, Communication, and Withdrawal. You must agree to be truthful and cooperative with us, to respond to our inquiries and communications promptly and to provide promptly all information known or available that may be relevant to our engagement. You will provide us with factual information and materials as we require in order to perform the agreed-upon services. You must keep us informed about changes of address, phone number, or email. If an issue arises where our communications are no longer productive, an adversarial relationship seems to be forming, or your payment is not forthcoming, we reserve the right to withdraw from the matter and terminate the relationship.
Termination of Engagement. You may terminate this representation at any time with or without cause by notifying us in writing of your desire to do so. We will cease legal work immediately. You will be responsible for paying all legal fees incurred on your behalf in this matter until written notice of termination was received by us.
To the extent permitted by rules of professional responsibility and the court, we may terminate our representation at any time if you breach any material term of this agreement, fail to cooperate or follow our advice on a material matter, if a conflict of interest develops or is discovered, or if there exists, at any time, any fact or circumstance that would, in our opinion, render our continuing representation unlawful, unethical, or otherwise inappropriate.
Retention and Destruction of Files. At the conclusion of this engagement, original documents can be returned to you at your request, unless we agree to hold them in safekeeping. JKS will keep copies of the documents for at least eight years. Our current practice is to maintain scanned copies of all legal documents and other significant components of the file in digital format. We may have printed copies as well; however, as permitted by Maine law, we can discard paper copies at any time, so long as we maintain the scanned copies for eight years from the conclusion of the engagement.
Our policy of discarding or destroying documents in your file does not apply to any original legal documents, such as signed original business or estate planning documents you have left for safekeeping with the firm.
Your documents can only be released to you, the client, unless you give us permission to release them to someone else. This is part of the attorney-client privilege outlined earlier in this addendum.
No Continuing Duty to Update on Changes to the Law. Once this matter has concluded, our representation of you in this matter will end. From that date forward, we will have no duty to inform you of changes in the law that may affect you or any legal instruments or documents that we prepared on your behalf. If at a later date you would like us to advise you on any changes in the law or review any legal instruments or documents, please contact us to renew your engagement.
rev. 4/26
