Hiring a private investigator for your personal or professional needs is a wise decision.

If you are considering hiring an attorney on retainer, you need to know exactly how retainer agreements work and how your lawyer’s fees will be paid.

Paying a lawyer

Here are multiple different ways that an individual or business can pay for the services of a lawyer.

The payment structure will depend largely on whether you are hiring a lawyer for a one-off service or word with them on an ongoing basis.

For major firms, a lawyer may be hired on a full time-basis solely to work on their behalf but for the majority of businesses, having a lawyer on retainer is the most cost-effective way forward.

Attorney fees will be determined using a number of different factors including the time taken and the nature of the service that needs to be done.

Some of the main factors which contribute to deciding an attorney’s fee include:

– The standard billing rates in the area for the legal services you required

– The complexity of the case

– The number of hours required

– The result expected and the result achieved

– Whether or not the lawyer is on retainer

There are not only a number of factors which go into determining the exact amount a lawyer will charge but also a number of different ways that these fees can be paid.

The most common methods of paying an attorney include:

– Contingency fees – this involves your lawyer taking a percentage of what you receive should a case be found in your favour. This percentage is negotiable, and this payment arrangement is only possible in dispute cases.

– Hourly rates – You pay your lawyer a flat rate for every hour they work on your behalf. Be wary of hiring a lawyer based solely on a low hourly rate as they may do the same work in double the time of a more experienced lawyer. Get an estimate of the hours expected before entering into an agreement.

– Flat fees – For simple one off tasks such as examining a contract or a bankruptcy filing, attorneys may offer a flat fee for the completion of the task.

– ‘On Retainer’ – If an attorney is ‘on retainer’ they are paid a certain fee on an ongoing basis in return for being available at a moment’s notice if required by the client needs them. They will then be paid additional fees for the services they carry out.

Types of Retainers

A retainer is a fee paid to an attorney in advance for legal aid that they will provide in the future.

There are several different types of retainers that an attorney may discuss with you.

General Retainers

General retainers are paid to attorneys in return for their availability over a specific period of time. Any questions or concerns you have regarding legal matters during this period, your lawyer will be on hand to assist.

Special Retainers

Special retainers refer to a flat fee that is paid for the completion of a legal service or project.

Retaining fee

Paid in advance, a retaining fee is a lump-sum given to an attorney that they will put into a trust fund and draw from as the case progresses.

Any money left over at the end will be returned.

Retainer Agreements

No matter which type of retainer is paid to a lawyer, a retainer agreement will be signed detailing what was paid and what services will be provided in return.

A retainer agreement will ensure that both lawyer and client have an understanding of the fees involved in arrangement and the period over which they will be paid.

It will also detail every aspect of the working relationship in depth including:

– The type of payment that will be made, how much the compensation will be, and details of how the fee has been calculated

– The work that the attorney will do

– Any additional costs that will occur throughout the process, including ones which are dependent on certain outcomes.

– The schedule of payment

What happens upon failure of payment?

Should you fail to pay your lawyer according to the fee schedule detailed in the retainer agreement the lawyer will likely charge you significant interest or take out a lien on the documents that you have provided them with.

Basically, your property that you provided your attorney in order to help them build your case will be kept until such time as the money you owe has been paid.

The consequences of a missed payment will vary from lawyer to lawyer but the retainer agreement should specify this in more detail so there is no confusion.

Burglar alarms are a mainstay of many home security systems across the UK but there are some who believe they are not that effective in preventing crime.

It is undeniable however, that burglar alarm systems are crucial to those looking to maximise their home security deterring burglars from approaching your property and give homeowners peace of mind that no-one will be able to gain access to your home without attracting attention.

Central FS is one of Scotland’s leading providers of security services and has several years of experience in burglar alarm installation.

We have used this expertise to put together this guide to both the advantages and disadvantages of installing a burglar alarm to allow you to make the most informed decision possible for your home.

Pros

There are many different reasons that installing a burglar alarm system is viewed as one of the most effective crime prevention measures available to Scottish homeowners.

Just a few of the biggest benefits of burglar alarm installation include:

Deterring Criminals

One benefit of a burglar alarm that cannot be measured but is hugely significant is the role of the system as a deterrent against potential criminals.

Just the sight alone of an alarm box installed on the front of a house, visible from the road outside, is enough to prevent the vast majority of opportunistic criminals from targeting your property and they will instead move on to look for an easier target.

This deterrent can be amplified by the installation of further highly visible security measures such as CCTV cameras as the very last thing that any burglar wants is to either be caught in the act or identified afterwards.

Reduce insurance

The better your home security measures are, the lower the risk of being the victim of theft or property damage.

This not only gives you peace of mind, but it also reassures your insurance company that they are unlikely to have to fork out to cover such incidents.

For this reason, a burglar alarm installation can actually result in your insurance premiums falling in the months and years following.

Increase House Value

Many property seekers will view a burglar alarm as a major asset to any new home, who want to feel confident that they are moving into a safe and secure environment.

It is estimated that installing a burglar alarm system with a professional security firm such as Central FS can increase the value of your property by as much as £5000, more than paying for your initial installation investment.

Cons

Overall, a burglar alarm is unquestionably a worthwhile investment to make, but there are still some negatives to consider.

False Alarms

Dealing with false activations can become tedious at times, and if this happens too often, the correct response may not occur if a real situation arises.

What is worse in this regard is that if you use an alarm response service from an accredited security firm they will notify the police of any potential security breaches and a response team will be deployed to your site.

Whilst this is one of the major benefits of a burglar alarm system, if the police are called to too many false alarms you may lose this privilege and the situation may not be taken seriously in the future if a real emergency takes place.

Luckily, all of the systems provided by Central FS are powered by the latest AI technology so your system will adapt to your environment and only activate if something is out of place.

This prevents repeat instances of alarms going off due to routine movement in your home or garden.

Ongoing Costs

It is not cheap to have an alarm system installed and even less effective DIY systems found in hardware stores can cost well upwards of £200.

Other expenses associated with a monitored alarm system include ongoing maintenance checks, a subscription to a security monitoring service.

Whilst it may be tempting to avoid these costs by not having an alarm system put in place, the cost of theft or burglary would be much higher, and if the system stops a single instance of crime on your property it will more than pay for itself.

The reduction in your insurance premium that may come as a result of burglar alarm installation will also offset these costs significantly.

 Tampering

It is possible that a criminal will attempt to steal or tamper with your burglar alarm Glasgow.

As security industry experts, at Central FS we will recommend the perfect spot for installation, usually high up on the front of your property out of reach, so that the possibility of this is much reduced.

Contact Us

Central FS are one of the UK’s leading providers of burglar alarm systems.

For more information on our products or any of the other bespoke security services that we offer, call us today on 0141 530 1244, or by email at info@centralfs.co.uk.

You’ve spotted wood-fired ovens whilst relishing your trips in Europe and you may even indulge in the food theatre that cooking food with a hardwood oven creates in your local pizzeria, but how does a wood fired pizza oven function? Talk to us at Valoriani about commercial wood fired ovens

Pizza ovens operate on the foundation of employing three types of heat energy for grilling:

1. Direct heat from the combustion and flames

2. Radiated heat coming down from the dome, which is at its best when the fire has burned for a while until the dome has turned white and is soot-free

3. Convected heat, which comes up from the floor and the ambient air

Grilling with a wood-fired pizza oven is in reality much simpler than you may believe. All you need to do is to light a fantastic fire in the centre of the oven and then allow it to heat both the hearth of the oven and the inner dome. The heat you produce from your fire will be absorbed by the oven and that heat will then be radiated or convected, to allow food to cook.

Once you have your oven dome and floor up to temperature, you just push the fire to one side, utilizing a metal peel, and start to cook, employing real wood as the heat source, rather than the gas or electricity you may usually rely on.

Of course, there are no temperature dials or controls, other than the fire, so the addition of solid wood is the equivalent of whacking up the temp dial. If you don’t feed the fire, you let the temp to drop.

How hot you let your oven become depends on what you wish to cook in your wood-fired oven. For pizza, you need a temp of around 400-450 ° C; if you wish to utilize another cooking food technique, such as roasting, you need to do that at a temp of around 200-300 ° C. There are different ways to do this.

You could primarily get the oven up to 450 ° C and then let the temperature go down to that which you require, or As an alternative, you could just bring the oven up to the required temperature by making use of less real wood.

As you are making use of convected rather than radiated heat for roasting, it is not as essential to get the stones as hot. Another way to affect the amount of heat reaching the food in a very hot oven is to use tin foil, to reflect some of the heat away.

The heat produced within a wood-fired oven should be well-retained if your oven is built of refractory brick and has great insulation. To cook the perfect pizza, you need to have an even temperature in your oven, both top and bottom. The style of the Valoriani makes this easy, but this is also an area where the quality of the oven will have a big impact.

Some ovens may require you to leave embers on the oven floor, to try to heat it adequately. Others have very little or no insulation, so you will have to feed the fire much more. But that means it will then have too much direct heat and won’t cook top and bottom evenly.

One more thing to watch is, if the floor of the oven isn’t storing heat, you may need to reheat it before grilling every single pizza– a real irritation. The message here is to always look for an oven built from the very best refractory materials and designed by artisans, like a Valoriani oven.

So, taking that into account, we’re going to change the title of this blog. The guidance above isn’t so much about how real wood-fired pizza ovens operate, but how the best wood-fired ovens operate.