When you pay, and what happens if you cancel.

Our clients are individuals instructing us about their own employment. You are engaging us as a consumer, usually after a telephone or video consultation, so your engagement is a distance contract under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. That gives you specific protections, including a cancellation period, and these terms are built around them rather than bolted on afterwards.

No client relationship and no chargeable work begins until you have had your free consultation and a written engagement is in place. Anything we discuss before that point is without charge.

A written engagement means one of two things, and only these two. Either you have signed a Letter of Engagement, which is the normal route, or you have confirmed a Rapid Instruction Confirmation by reply, which is the urgent route set out at section 5. Both are written engagements and both carry the same terms. A telephone call, however clear, is not an engagement, and we will not start work on one. That rule protects you more than it protects us.

Every fee is fixed and confirmed in writing before any work begins, scaled to your salary band, with no hidden or surprise charges. When the fee falls due depends on which of three groups your service sits in. The group turns on one thing: whether the timing of the work is fixed by someone other than us.

Group A. Services we deliver to you

Rapid Defence Review, Structured Defence Strategy, Negotiation Strategy, ACAS Negotiation / Early Conciliation, Basic ET1 Drafting, Standard ET1 + Particulars, and ET1 Amendment / Urgent Drafting.

• Where your confirmed fee is below £500, it is payable in full on instruction.
• Where your confirmed fee is £500 or more, half is payable within 24 hours of the instruction invoice, and the balance is payable when the work is ready to be released to you, before it is released.

This means we never hold a completed piece of work you have paid for only in part, and you are never chased for money while your matter is still open.

Group B. Services where a hearing date is fixed by your employer

Full Hearing Defence (Half Day and Full Day), Appeal Defence Package, and Complex Case / Equality Act Overlay where your confirmed scope includes attending a hearing.

• Half of your confirmed fee is payable within 24 hours of the instruction invoice.
• The balance is payable no later than three clear working days before the hearing.
• Where you instruct us five working days or fewer before the hearing, the full fee is payable on instruction.

The five working day point is not arbitrary. Under Section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, a hearing can be postponed to an alternative time you propose, provided it is reasonable and not more than five working days after the date originally set. While more than five working days remain, that postponement right is a live safeguard for both of us. Inside five working days it is no longer available, which is why an instruction that close to the hearing is paid in full at the outset.

Group C. Services priced after we have seen the papers

Complex Case / Equality Act Overlay and Complex Multi-Claim ET1. These cannot honestly be fixed before we have read the file, so they work in two steps.

• You pay a scoping fee on instruction. The figure is shown on the Services & fees page and confirmed in your Letter of Engagement.
• We read the papers and issue a written scope and a confirmed fixed fee. You receive that document whether or not you go further.
• If you proceed, the scoping fee is credited in full against your confirmed fee, and the balance then follows Group A or Group B depending on whether attendance is included.
• If you decide not to proceed, the scoping fee is retained and the written scope is yours to keep and use.

Every service is broken into stages, and a set share of the fee attaches to each one. This is published in advance for a reason: if you ever cancel part-way through, or your matter resolves before it is finished, you are charged for the stages actually completed and no more. The share is the same whatever your salary band; only the fee it applies to changes. A stage is complete on the dated event shown, either when a document is issued to you, or when the work is recorded as complete on your file.

Group A. Services we deliver to you

Group B. Services where a hearing date is fixed by your employer

Group C. Services scoped after review

You have a statutory right to cancel your engagement within 14 days of the day it is entered into, without giving any reason. This is your cooling-off period under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

Because our work is usually time-critical, we will normally need to start before those 14 days are up. We can only do that if you ask us to. So whichever route you engage us by, the same three confirmations appear in the document you sign or acknowledge. In it you:

• expressly request that we begin work within the 14-day cancellation period;
• acknowledge that once the service has been fully performed you will no longer be able to cancel it; and
• acknowledge that if you cancel while the work is part-way through, you will pay a proportionate amount for the stages completed.

Those three confirmations are not buried in the small print, and they are not optional extras we can add later. They appear in your Letter of Engagement on the normal route, and in your Rapid Instruction Confirmation on the urgent route at section 5. Neither document works without them.

We will also give you clear information about how to cancel and a cancellation form you can use, and we give it to you at the same time, not afterwards. If we have not given you that information, or you did not ask us to start within the cancellation period, you will not be charged for anything we have done in that period. That is your protection under regulation 36(6) of those Regulations, and it applies just as fully to an urgent instruction as to an unhurried one. The pressure of your hearing date does not dilute it.

One point people reasonably worry about, so we will state it plainly. Asking us to start immediately does not shorten your 14 days and does not waive your right to cancel. It changes one thing only: if you do cancel after we have started, you pay for the stages actually completed rather than nothing at all. The right itself survives right up to the moment the service is fully performed.

Some people reach us with a hearing on Thursday and a letter they were given on Monday. In that position, a full engagement pack that takes a day to issue, read, sign and return is not caution, it is lost preparation time. So there is a second route in, and this section explains exactly what it is.

The Rapid Instruction Confirmation

Where your hearing, appeal or deadline falls within five working days, or where waiting for the full pack would cost you preparation time you cannot spare, we send you a Rapid Instruction Confirmation instead. It is a short email, written to be read and answered in minutes rather than hours. It sets out:

• the single named service you are instructing, taken from our published list;
• your salary band and the exact fixed fee that follows from it, with no VAT added;
• when that fee falls due, which for an instruction this close to a hearing is usually in full at the outset, for the reason given in section 2;
• your right to cancel, how to exercise it, and the cancellation form you can use;
• your express request that we begin work straight away, inside the 14-day cancellation period;
• your acknowledgement that once the service has been fully performed the right to cancel it falls away; and
• your acknowledgement that if you cancel part-way through, you pay a proportionate amount measured against the published stage schedule at section 3.

You confirm it by reply. That reply is your instruction, and work begins on receipt of it. Nothing is chargeable before it arrives.

What it does not do

This matters more than what it does, so it gets its own heading.

• It does not reduce your cancellation rights. Your 14 days run from the day the engagement is entered into, exactly as they would on the normal route. You have every protection described at section 4.
• It does not change your fee. There is no urgency premium and no surcharge for using this route. The fee is the published fee for your service at your band, and it is the same fee you would have paid with a fortnight to spare.
• It does not replace your engagement documents. Your full Letter of Engagement and your Authority to Act follow by email, and we aim to send them the same working day. When they arrive, read them. Where they say anything different from the Rapid Instruction Confirmation, the signed documents govern.
• It does not by itself authorise us to attend your hearing. Attendance is governed by your Authority to Act, which defines what we may and may not do in the room. Where the Rapid Instruction Confirmation is used for a hearing, a signed Authority to Act is still required before we attend, and it is the one document we will chase you for.
• It is not a verbal instruction written down afterwards. We do not treat a phone call as an engagement and then paper it later. The confirmation goes out first, your reply comes back, and only then does work start.

When we will not use it

We will not offer this route where the urgency is not real, because a shortened process should never become the ordinary one. We will also tell you, honestly and quickly, where the time left is not enough to do the job properly. An instruction we cannot deliver well is worse for you than no instruction, and you should hear that before you pay rather than afterwards.

If you would rather wait for the full pack, say so. Some people prefer to read everything before committing, even under time pressure, and that is an entirely reasonable choice. We will tell you what the delay costs your preparation, and then it is your decision to make.

The table below sets out what happens to your fee in each situation. The principle running through it is symmetry: if we are the ones who cannot continue, you are not out of pocket for work not done.

A representative falling ill on the morning of a fixed hearing is the one operational risk that cannot always be solved in-house, because the statutory postponement window is only five working days. In this situation we would seek either an emergency postponement from your employer or assess whether a virtual option can be provided. You are never left to face the hearing having paid for representation you did not receive.

Where your confirmed fee is £1,000 or more, you can ask to pay in up to three instalments. All instalments are cleared before your hearing, or before your document is released, whichever applies. The payment dates are set out in your Letter of Engagement when the plan is agreed.

An instalment plan carries no interest and no charge of any kind. It is offered so that higher-value representation is within reach without exposing you to credit costs, and it sits within the exemption for short interest-free instalment arrangements under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) Order 2001.

If a payment is more than 14 days overdue, we may charge simple interest at 4% a year above the Bank of England base rate on the amount outstanding, running from the date it became overdue until it is paid. We do not add debt recovery administration charges.

If a balance for hearing representation is not paid, we will write to you on the day it falls due to set out the position and a date for payment. Where more than five working days remain before the hearing, we will help you seek a postponement from your employer so your position is protected. If payment is still not made, we will withdraw in writing, hand you all work prepared to that point, and notify your employer that our Notice of Representation is withdrawn. We will not simply stop work close to a hearing and leave you exposed.

We accept bank transfer, which we prefer, and debit or credit card. We do not add any surcharge for paying by card, and we do not accept cheques.

Our fees are all-inclusive. Hearings within Birmingham carry no travel surcharge. Representation elsewhere in the West Midlands beyond the city boundary is charged at £0.55 per mile, the HMRC approved rate, confirmed in your Letter of Engagement. No other cost is charged unless it is agreed with you in writing in advance.

Zhan Associates is not registered for VAT, so no VAT is added to any fee. If our VAT status changes, we will tell you in advance and state any VAT clearly.

Many people hold employment legal expenses cover through home or motor insurance, a packaged bank account, a credit card or a membership, without realising it. We ask about this at the outset, and if you have cover you should notify your insurer before instructing anyone, including us, because a claim can be refused if it is raised too late.

Where an insurer agrees to fund your matter, we do not take a retainer until that funding is confirmed in writing. You remain responsible for the fee until the insurer confirms it will meet it.

When you engage us, three documents govern your matter, in this order. Your Authority to Act governs the scope of your representation. Your Letter of Engagement confirms your service, salary band, exact fixed fee and payment dates. These Payment Terms and Cancellation Rights sit within that framework and explain the payment and cancellation position in full. Where anything here differs from your signed documents, the signed documents govern.

A Rapid Instruction Confirmation, where one has been used, sits below all three. It is a temporary bridge, and it holds the position only until your Letter of Engagement and Authority to Act arrive and are signed. From that point it is superseded entirely, and if it ever appears to say something different from them, they govern and it does not. It stays on your file as the record of when and on what basis work began. A shorter summary of the position appears in our Terms of Service, and a plain-English explanation of what each signed document is for appears on our Your Documents page.