Assessing, accepting and declining instructions

When a potential client approaches you with a new matter, you will need to consider whether you will accept the instructions. While you do so you are under no obligation to act, but you must not leave the client in any doubt that you are not yet acting. Beware any relevant time limits as you may have an implied obligation to respond to the client within a reasonable time by reference to any relevant deadlines.

The decision to accept or reject a new matter rests with the Pod Principal who will do the work. There are various factors addressed in this Manual and our policies, which set out instances where we cannot allow you to act (e.g. conflict, sanctions, risk), but in practice these rarely feature because most of our instructions are repeat instructions for sophisticated clients.

You may only accept a new matter where you (and thus the firm) will be able to meet our obligations to the client. You should:

• ensure the firm has adequate expertise to deliver the services
• ensure the firm has adequate time and resources to deliver the services
• ensure the firm will remain independent and able to act in the best interests of the client (see the guidance relating to Conflicts)
• ensure the preservation of our independence
• ensure you expect to be able to charge and be paid a fair fee, commensurate with the firm's position as a leading City firm
• ensure you expect to be able to have a constructive and professional relationship with the client

You may be asked by a client to act on a matter which requires urgent work immediately. Those are high risk matters and should be flagged as such at the matter opening stage. You should also:

• consider the reason for the urgency - it may suggest that this is a client for whom you do not wish to act
• ensure you can do the same quality work in the timescale available
• consider the team and any resourcing requirements and check their availability
• ensure you get adequate money on account if you do decide to act
• make doubly sure the client knows we are not acting until we say we are
• ensure you do not promise too much in our engagement letter or general correspondence - see the section on Last-minute instructions from clients

If you are in any doubt about the above, you should discuss with the General Counsel or simply decline to act. You have almost carte blanche when declining to act. You simply need to ensure that doing so is not for a reason prohibited by anti-discrimination, equal opportunities and diversity laws.

It is fundamental to our business model, that colleagues only undertake work in which they themselves have a strong track record. As a rule of thumb, colleagues must only undertake work in an area where they have at least 5 years' directly applicable experience. To the extent that any of the new retainer includes work where you are not a subject matter expert, then you must bring in a colleague who is. Where none of the matter falls within your core competence, then it is at your discretion as to whether you pass the matter over to a colleague entirely, or whether you work with that colleague in a client ownership capacity. If you choose the latter, you must ensure that your chosen subject matter expert has full conduct of all matters falling outside your core expertise and within theirs.