Our Fees

Abraham Lincoln once said that an "attorney's time is his stock in trade".


Our lawyers are retained to provide their time and apply their knowledge, advice, and thoughtful consideration to our clients solve their problems. An attorney's hourly fee should fairly reflect his level of skill and experience.


Initial Consultation

There is no lawyer without a client. The client goal is key to define success for the work of the Solicitor. We need to understand fully what are your needs, apart from the facts of the case, to be able to provide you with the best service.

We used to offer our first consultation free, but unfortunately, we are not doing it anymore. Other clients, that have already contracted our service, had to wait more time to see their matters being expeditively advancing because we were taking time to attend this free of charge consultation. 

Our first consultation meeting is estimated to be 1 hour billing time, so that we can meet you in person (or online) to review documents & your situation. We also require the fee being payed in advance, but we will discount this amount from any legal matter that we undertake, so we can certainly keep saying that is free (provided that you decide finally to be a client of ours). 

Please understand that some cases are more complex and will require more time. In those cases, we will tell you in advance an estimation of the fee that might be required.

Hourly Rates

This is our standard billing criteria. We will charge our clients for the time that an attorney, paralegal, or law clerk spends in the prosecution of his or her matter. Our hourly rates are 180€ professional solicitor and 90€ paralegal assistant, with increments of minimum six minutes (one-tenth of an hour), non vat included. We will gladly give you an estimate of the time expected for the case. We will also let you know when the time involved exceeds the estimation provided.


Services Offered For Fixed Fees

For conveyance cases, wills and straightforward inheritance work, we have flat fee rates available. The amount of the fee depends upon the conveyance value and the complexity of it. Whenever possible we will offer you a fixed fee for dealing with the whole of your case.

Please note that the fixed fee could be revised only if the nature of the work changes substantially, for example, if we discover title problems when dealing with the purchase of a property and you decide to continue with it asking us to resolve the problems before you purchase, in the case of an inheritance when new assets appear during the procedure which where no disclosed when the initial budget was prepared, etc. In any case, we will let you know in advance prior to compromise new fees. 

Correspondence service fee

It is a common policy after a conveyance to address all postal and electronic correspondence from our non resident clients to our personal address office. This correspondence usually include notifications from communities, utilities, townhall, tax authorities, etc… and the service entails us a labor cost and added time in classifying the relevant information and advising and informing our clients about it.

We are offering a six month free correspondence service to our clients after we deal a conveyance process for them.

After the six months period of free corresponding service, we are offering our clients to continue with this service for a monthly fee of 30 euros + VAT, that will be automatically deducted in your bank account if you do not give us difference instructions about it or alternative correspondence address of your preference to change them.

If you are already a client of us and we have been receiving your postal and electronic correspondence and notification in the past and now, please note that we will start charging your bank account for this service starting May 2016. Otherwise please let us know an address of your convenience to modify it.

Javier Herrera Llamas

Have your Bank been charging you more than they should for your mortgage?. Time to revenge its coming ...

From 2013 the spanish courts have been repeteadly considering null and void the mortgage floor clauses. You can see our note on our blog in 2013. This clauses were designed to protect banks from negative interest rates.

http://javierherrerallamas.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/mortgage-floor-interest-abolished-take.html

Last week a Spanish court ruled that the country's banks leaders can no longer sell mortgages with so-called floor clauses. All main banks are involved, including Caixabank, Barclays, Bankia, and Banco Santander. Caixabank and Bankia.

The court said banks had to repay customers what they had lost since May 2013, when Spain's Supreme Court declared these mortgages, whose rates cannot fall below a benchmark, were invalid if they had not been presented clearly. This means the ruling is only retrospective to May 2013.

This ruling by a local court in Madrid followed class action suits by customers alleging that banks had not properly explained the clauses to them, which prevented them from benefiting from the euro zone's record low interest rates.

Most of the estimated 4m mortgages affected were sold during the 1997-2007 property boom when buyers were paying top prices for their homes. When the bubble burst they were unable to benefit from falling interest rates.

It is estimated that those affected pay from €179 (Euribor +0.5%) to €213 (Euribor +1%) more on a €150,000 mortgage than they would if they didn’t have a fixed minimum rate mortgage.

As the recession set in and people were unable to meet their mortgage repayments, they were evicted in growing numbers, peaking at an average of 500 a day in 2012. Under Spanish law homeowners cannot claim bankruptcy over a mortgage as it is regarded as personal debt.

So even after the banks foreclose and repossess a property the former owner still has to pay off the mortgage, as well as associated legal charges.

Some Spanish banks  have already removed the mortgage floor . Since the third quarter of 2015, Caixabank has eliminated most of its mortgage floor clauses. Banco Sabadell, the fifth-largest in Spain which has so far refused to get rid of the clauses, said they would analyse the ruling and take a decision later.

Banks including Barclays and Santander face a €5bn (£4bn) bill after a Spanish court ruled that millions of fixed minimum rate mortgages were null and void because of the “lack of transparency” in the way they were sold during the property boom.

Last October the European Commission asked Spanish banks to remove the clauses and even repay customers over the whole life of the loan, beyond the May 2013 limit. The European court in Strasbourg is expected to rule on 26 April whether the banks’ liability should extend beyond that date. The European commission has already said it believes the payments should be backdated to the date the mortgage was signed, on the grounds that if a clause is declared null, it’s null from the beginning.

So, it is clearly time to press your bank to get some of your money back. 

Javier Herrera Llamas