Pricing

Our approach to pricing our legal services is to be transparent and flexible.

Transparent in that we will explain as early as possible what we will charge you in terms of our fees and disbursements and those of any third parties (eg expert witnesses in dispute resolution), when we will charge you, why and how our fees are calculated. We will also explain what we won’t charge you for: eg unlike most law firms, we do not charge you for simply receiving correspondence. We will tell you whether VAT is added.

We will estimate or fix our fees where we can. We don’t want you to have any unnecessary surprises on that front. You may need to budget for fees and/or you may have legal expenses insurance to cover them, and so you need to be forewarned about fees if possible. Monthly invoices also help you to avoid surprises as they reduce the ability for fees to mound up too much.

We provide breakdowns of our fees and disbursements with our monthly invoices and if you require additional information we will be happy to provide it if we can.

In any litigation you are involved in the Court will oversee and manage the parties’ legal costs and require detailed budgets from them. We will liaise closely with you about these additional tasks.

Our hourly rates vary depending on the experience and expertise of the person working on your matter, the complexity of the matter and its significance (importance, urgency etc). Our hourly rates will be set out clearly in our letter of engagement.

We often ask for money on account before commencing work on your behalf.  If the money on account is not sufficient to extinguish an invoice, we ask you to pay the residual balance within 14 days.

In dispute resolution our fees must be proportionate to the value and significance of the dispute. If the dispute is relatively low in value, we will suggest other more cost-effective paths that exist.

From our transparency we hope that you will be able to clearly see that we provide excellent value for money to our clients.

We are also flexible in that Solicitors can operate a few different pricing models for their fees, eg hourly rates, conditional fee agreements, monthly retainers, fixed fees and so on. We will apply the model that we think is the most suitable one for your situation and happily discuss alternatives with you if you ask us to. There is no one size fits all. It is the case though that hourly rates and fixed fees remain the most common models.

Our hourly rates

Our current standard hourly rates (+ VAT) are below and we adjust them if the individual matter requires it:

Solicitors £400
Paralegals £120

We review our rates every year in the spring and may then alter them.

Only senior lawyers

Ridgemont lawyers are always very experienced. We do not have junior lawyers. So you will only have senior experts and support staff (eg paralegals) working for you.

Typical Ridgemont fees in dispute resolution

Below are some typical sums that you can expect to incur as Ridgemont legal fees if you are involved in dispute resolution (please add VAT). They can only be broad brush guides because every case has a number of variables that cannot be predicted. Whether you are the claimant or defendant will also impact on your total fees. If you are unsuccessful in the dispute you may also have to pay some/all of your opponent’s legal fees. Disbursements (eg adjudicator or court fees) also need to be added.

Adjudication: eg £10,000 – £15,000 + VAT for a smash & grab dispute and £20,000 – £30,000 + VAT for a true valuation dispute.

Litigation and arbitration: given that these forums typically last say 10x longer than an adjudication does and are far more thorough at every stage, it is reasonable to multiply total guideline Ridgemont fees in adjudication (examples above) by at least a factor of 5.

If you settle, your legal costs will be substantially less if you settle early on in the dispute.  Often we can achieve settlement through exchange of correspondence, in which case, legal costs will be substantially less than if the dispute proceeded to a hearing.

Mediation is often used to avoid the costs (and risk) associated with litigation.  Our fees on advising in a mediation are typically around £10,000 + VAT (depending on preparation time).  In addition, you would normally be expected to pay 50% of the cost of the mediator and any venue.

Typical Ridgemont fees in procurement advice

We recognise that you need clarity on the cost of procurement advice.  As such, we will always provide you with a detailed fee estimate taking into consideration the specific circumstances of your development. 

For drafting or review a straight forward Letter of Intent, we would expect that our fees will be around £1,200 + VAT.

Generally speaking, negotiating a standard form Construction Contract & bespoke Amendments, any Collateral Warranties and any Performance Bond/Parent Company Guarantee, if necessary, will cost in the region of £3,500-4,000 + VAT.

Our fee for drafting or reviewing a bespoke Appointment is £1,750-2,000 + VAT (per Appointment).

The exact cost will depend on the procurement method, the documents you need us to produce, the complexity of the matter and various other factors.

Typical Ridgemont fees in relation to commercial leases and licences

We regularly advise Landlords and Tenants on the drafting and negotiation of commercial leases.  Typically, our fees for drafting and negotiating a lease will be £6,000-8,000 + VAT.  If we are acting for a commercial tenant, our fees are typically £5,000-6,000 + VAT.  These fees may vary depending on the particular circumstances and the length of negotiations.

If you are taking a licence of a premises, we would expect our fees to be around £2,000 + VAT.  These fees may also vary depending on the particular circumstances and the length of negotiations.

You can find out more about how we charge in the videos below.

⥽ Client Fee Structures ⥼