1) Get in touch. Ask for our assistance. (If at any point there is a deadline for you please let us know as soon as possible.)
2) If we think we can assist we ask you to complete our Retainer Agreement.
3) Upon accepting you as a client you get a confirmation email.
4) You will receive a deposit invoice by email.
5) Your lawyer will contact you to organise a consultation by email or by (video) meeting.

We mostly ask for 1 to 2 hours of deposit, sometimes more. Your deposit is payment on account of our fees – we draw it down as we work, and account to you for it in our invoices. Whatever we have not earned, you can have back. Occasionally clients want to pay a higher deposit in order to reduce their transaction fees. That is fine. And also please discuss this with us in advance. If your deposit amount is higher than the invoice we may need to manually find your payment in our accounting system. Also let us know if someone else is paying on your behalf.

Every client starts with a deposit invoice, unless special terms have been agreed. The time/work and any expenses are recorded and once we go over the deposit amount you will normally get an invoice in the first week of each month, covering the work done in the previous month up to the invoicing date. The first invoice after the deposit will also list all work done to date and the deposit will obviously be deducted from that.

There is a minimum charge of one hour for any engagement, so any time spent within that first hour is charged as one full hour. After that, time is calculated through our systems (timer) and rounded down to the minute. Except for expenses such as government fees that we pay on your behalf with your approval, and a £/€ 5 admin fee if you ask us to change your payment method or currency after we have started, we do not charge any extras like admin or membership fees. You pay for our actual time that we are working on your case. You can set a time budget, or call stop at any time. These are the basic terms and conditions, the full legal terms and conditions are in our Retainer Agreement. Before we accept you as a client we ask you to complete our Retainer Agreement. You can find an example of a Retainer Agreement here.

This applies if the service is charged on an hourly fee. Although we can give an indication of the expected amount of hours, these are estimations only. When we start a case new information or documentation may change things. Sometimes it makes it easier and quicker, at other times it creates challenges and requires more time. If you want you can set a limit/budget as to the time we spend on you. If we reach the limit we will not charge more. However, it will also stop us from assisting you further unless you change or cancel the budget limit.

Currency. We are cheaply old fashioned in that we prefer to be paid by bank transfer. For most services you can choose between EUR € and GBP £. Customers also have the availability to make debit or credit card payments online in their own currency, including through some bank systems like iDEAL.

How to pay. Your invoice will have our bank details for payments. If you want to pay by bank in another currency (AUD, CAD, NZD, USD, or another) that is sometimes possible but you need to discuss that with us first. Our preference is EUR and this will speed things up for you. Card payments are a change of payment method and can be requested on an occasional basis. Be aware, card payments normally take extra time to clear into our accounts.

We never change our bank details by email. Genuine emails from us only come from @habsburg-legal-services.com and @habsburglegalservices.com.

Where the deposit is exhausted we may ask you to restore it before we carry on. And where an invoice is still unpaid 14 days after its due date we may pause work on your matter — we will always tell you in writing first, and we pick straight back up as soon as payment reaches us. Any deadline that falls while work is paused is yours to watch. We would much rather talk to you than stop: if money is difficult, tell us early and we will look for a way through it.

Different services, and different areas of law, carry different fees. The rate that applies to you is the one set out in your Retainer Agreement.

Where you ask for more than one service and they relate to the same overall purpose, and the same person does the work, the higher rate applies. Where the work divides clearly between services we charge each at its own rate; where it does not divide clearly, we decide, and we will explain how.

If you later ask us for an additional or a different service, that service is charged at its own rate, and we will tell you the rate before we begin it.

We can agree a different fee with you at any time. Any such agreement must be in writing – an email is enough – and once made it binds both of us.

We may change our standard rates from time to time. If we do, we will give you at least two weeks’ notice before a new rate applies to your matter, and if you would rather not continue at the new rate you may end the agreement.

Where anything on this page differs from your signed Retainer Agreement, the Retainer Agreement applies.

If you want priority services then this needs to be requested before accepting our Retainer Agreement. Priority fees are higher and this will give you certain advanced levels of access to your lawyer and the services. Your case will be handled with urgency and you have more direct access. The terms may slightly differ per lawyer and the terms will be confirmed at the time that you request priority. We need to confirm that we accept you as a priority client. The reason for that is that we cannot have too many priority cases at the same time.

Where we charge hourly fees this is in our opinion fair to both the client and ourselves. Legal services are often not straightforward. As such, time spent can for one case be much less than for another. Set fees are normally calculated on the average of similar cases and this does not benefit you, the customer, or us. For example, where it comes to Dutch nationality we see cases only requiring 1 or 2 hours, or challenging cases requiring 10 or 20 hours. It is not always possible to foresee if a case will be, or become, challenging. Although we can give estimates on what we expect from your description of the situation, we sometimes find out additional information or evidence which can result in a case taking much less time, or much more. If we quote for a set fee we will consider these possibilities and quote more than the average. This is standard practice with legal services around the world and mostly not to the benefit of customers. Therefore we advocate customers choosing an hourly rate rather than a set fee. We suggest that if another lawyer only lists set fees, you ask for the hourly rate. Then you can make a comparison. Of course, a set fee is not necessarily bad, and in some countries in Asia and Southern Europe more common. We list set fees here if available, but if you want then do not hesitate to ask.

We welcome you to compare our fees with those of others. We did this ourselves and we found we are on the cheaper side (higher quality for less). We do this on purpose in order for our legal services to be available to most people. With customers from all over the world we realise that not all countries have similar economies and not everyone has similar incomes. We can keep our fees lower because since Covid we mostly work (internationally) from home and do not have huge offices in expensive locations. Of course you can still meet with us. However, since our customers come from all over the world, from Argentina to Japan and in between, we mostly use video meetings and occasionally meet in person.

Previous fee changes: Aug 2019, Feb 2023, April 2025.
Future fee changes will be considered every year or two years.
For some countries and services fees may change at other dates.
Active case clients will be advised and given notice in accordance with our terms and conditions.

It is possible that you (temporarily) cannot afford our fees. Unfortunately we cannot offer free (pro bono) or legal aid (government subsidised) services to you. However, we have our hearts in the right place and will listen to you. We can sometimes consider payment terms if needed. And we may be able to give you advice on how to get financial support, or refer you to a colleague who may be able to offer legal aid. We will at a minimum try to give you some self-help advice. Unfortunately there is a limit to what we can do.