Terms of Use

1. Acceptance of these terms

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of www.blackwoodandslaughter.com and any page, content, form or feature made available through it (together, “the site”). The site is operated by Blackwood & Slaughter, Legal Counsel & Advocates, of 1 Mayfair Place, Mayfair, London W1J 8AJ, United Kingdom (“the firm”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

By accessing the site you agree to be bound by these Terms, by our Privacy Policy and by our Legal Disclaimer, each of which is incorporated here by reference. If you do not accept them, you must not use the site. If you are using the site on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you are authorised to bind that organisation to these Terms.

2. The site is informational only

The site is published for general informational purposes. Nothing on it is legal advice, and nothing on it is intended to be relied upon as legal advice. Legal advice depends on the specific facts of a specific matter, on the law of a particular jurisdiction, and on a lawyer who has been given the whole picture and has agreed to advise. None of those conditions is satisfied by a website.

You should not act, or refrain from acting, on the basis of anything published here. Obtain advice from a solicitor or other qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction before taking any step that affects your legal position. If your matter is urgent, obtain it today; legal rights are frequently lost to the calendar.

3. No solicitor and client relationship

Your use of the site does not create a solicitor and client relationship between you and the firm or any of its lawyers. Neither does sending us an email, completing the enquiry form, or transmitting information to us by any other means, whether or not we reply.

A solicitor and client relationship with this firm arises only when we have completed a conflicts check, have agreed to act, and have confirmed the engagement in a written engagement letter signed by a partner. Until all three of those things have happened, we are not your solicitors and we owe you none of the duties that a solicitor owes a client.

Do not send us confidential, privileged or sensitive information before an engagement has been confirmed in writing. Unsolicited information sent to the firm may not attract legal professional privilege, may not be treated as confidential, may not be protected from disclosure, and will not preclude us from acting for another party whose interests are adverse to yours, including in the very matter you have written to us about. Keep your first message to a short, general, non-confidential outline of the situation.

4. Permitted use and licence

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access the site and to view, download and print individual pages for your own information or for the internal use of your organisation. You may quote short extracts with clear attribution to Blackwood & Slaughter and a link to the page quoted.

That licence does not extend to reproduction, republication, distribution, public display, framing, adaptation or commercial exploitation of the site or its contents, in whole or in part, without our prior written permission. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. We may revoke this licence at any time and for any reason.

5. Intellectual property and trade marks

The site and everything on it, including the text, the written commentary, the layout and design, the typographic arrangement, the photography, the illustrations and the source code, is owned by the firm or used by us under licence, and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws of the United Kingdom and other countries.

The name Blackwood & Slaughter, the phrase Legal Counsel & Advocates, the firm crest, and the other marks, logos and devices appearing on the site are trade marks or service marks of the firm. Nothing on the site may be construed as granting any licence or right to use any of them without our prior written permission. Third-party names and marks appearing on the site are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only.

6. Prohibited conduct

You must not, and must not permit any person or system acting on your behalf to:

• scrape, crawl, harvest, index or otherwise extract content from the site by automated means, except by a conventional search engine crawler obeying our published robots directives;
• use the content of the site, or any personal information appearing on it, to train, fine-tune or evaluate a machine learning model without our prior written permission;
• access the site through any interface other than a standard web browser, or attempt to circumvent any access control, rate limit or security measure;
• probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the site or of any network on which it is hosted, or breach or attempt to breach its security or authentication measures;
• introduce any virus, worm, malicious code or other material that is harmful or technologically disruptive;
• launch a denial-of-service attack, or take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionate load on our infrastructure;
• submit information through the enquiry form that is false, misleading or fraudulent, or impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or organisation;
• use the site or the contact details published on it to send unsolicited commercial communications, spam or recruitment approaches;
• collect or store personal information about other users; or
• use the site for any unlawful purpose, or in any manner that infringes the rights of, or restricts or inhibits the use of the site by, any other person.

We reserve the right to block access, to preserve and disclose records to law enforcement, and to pursue any remedy available to us in respect of a breach of this section.

7. Third-party links

The site may contain links to websites operated by third parties. Those links are provided for convenience only. We do not control, endorse, adopt, verify or accept responsibility for the content, products, services, accuracy, availability or privacy practices of any linked site, and the inclusion of a link does not imply any association between the firm and its operator. You follow such links entirely at your own risk and subject to the terms and policies of the site you reach.

8. No warranties

The site and all content on it are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, conditions and representations of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied terms as to satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, reasonable care and skill, title, quiet possession and non-infringement.

Without limiting that disclaimer, we do not warrant that the content of the site is accurate, complete, current or free from error; that the site will be available, uninterrupted, timely or secure; that any defect will be corrected; or that the site or the servers that make it available are free of viruses or other harmful components. The law changes, and material published here may become out of date without notice. We are under no obligation to update it.

9. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, neither the firm nor its partners, solicitors, employees, agents or suppliers shall be liable for any indirect or consequential loss, or for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, data or anticipated saving, arising out of or in connection with your access to, use of, or inability to use the site, or your reliance on any content published on it, whether the claim is framed in contract, tort, negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, and whether or not the loss was foreseeable when you first accessed the site.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the site and these Terms shall not exceed one hundred pounds sterling.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. That includes, without limitation, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and any liability of a solicitor or a firm of solicitors to a client which the general law or the SRA Standards and Regulations do not permit to be limited. If any part of this section is held unenforceable, our liability shall be limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.

If you are a consumer, that is to say you are using the site wholly or mainly outside your trade, business, craft or profession, nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Any term of these Terms which would be unfair within the meaning of that Act does not bind you.

10. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless the firm and its partners, solicitors, employees and agents from and against any claim, demand, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of or related to your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the site, your violation of any law, or your infringement of the rights of any third party. We reserve the right to assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, at your expense, in which event you will cooperate with us.

11. Publicity information

This site is a publicity communication. It is not intended as a solicitation in any jurisdiction where such a communication would be prohibited. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter. The full notice appears in our Legal Disclaimer.

12. Governing law, jurisdiction and consumer rights

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or with your use of the site, including non-contractual disputes and claims, are governed by the law of England and Wales.

You and the firm irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales for the resolution of any such dispute or claim.

Nothing in this section affects any mandatory right you may have, as a consumer or otherwise, to bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence, or to rely on any protection of the mandatory law of that country which cannot be derogated from by agreement. If you are a consumer resident in the United Kingdom, you may always bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom in which you live.

13. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or if it cannot be so modified, it shall be severed. The remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect.

14. Entire agreement and waiver

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Legal Disclaimer, constitute the entire agreement between you and the firm in relation to your use of the site, and supersede any prior understanding on that subject. They do not vary, supersede or limit the terms of any executed engagement letter between you and the firm, which governs the professional relationship and prevails over these Terms in the event of conflict. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.

15. Changes to these terms

We may revise these Terms at any time by publishing an amended version on this page and updating the date at the head of it. Changes take effect when published. Your continued use of the site after that point constitutes acceptance of the amended Terms. Please review this page from time to time.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms should be addressed to:

• Email: counsel@blackwoodandslaughter.com
• Post: Blackwood & Slaughter, 1 Mayfair Place, Mayfair, London W1J 8AJ, United Kingdom