Disclaimer

1. Purpose and Application of This Disclaimer

1.1 This disclaimer is published by The First Counsel, Advocates & Corporate Advisors, a law firm constituted under the laws of Pakistan with its principal office at 8th Floor, Askari Corporate Towers, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan (the "firm", "we", "us"). The firm can be reached at [email protected]. Particulars of the firm's constitution and bar-council registration are [TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM].

1.2 This document states, at length, what the footer of every page states in a line: this website is information, not advice; reading it does not make you a client; and what you read here must be verified before it is relied upon. The footer notice is a summary. This document is the full text, and where the two differ, this document prevails.

1.3 This disclaimer applies to the whole of the website published at thefirstcounsel.com (the "Site") and to everything distributed through it or from it, including without limitation:

• (a) every page and subpage of the Site, in every version and on every device;
• (b) every publication in the Insights section, including briefings, client alerts, perspectives, and each edition of The First Reading;
• (c) the legislation tracker, the decisions notes, the regulatory circulars digest, the compliance calendars, the guides (including Doing Business in Pakistan and The White-Collar Handbook), and the glossary;
• (d) the profiles of the courts and the biographical pages of the firm's lawyers;
• (e) every feed, syndication, email alert, or subscription distribution generated from the Site;
• (f) every document, form, checklist, or other file downloaded from the Site, whether or not the file itself repeats this disclaimer; and
• (g) any copy, extract, or forward of any of the above, however it reaches the reader.

1.4 In this document, "content" means all text, data, compilations, summaries, translations, and other material appearing on or distributed through the Site, and "reader" and "you" mean any person who accesses or receives content, directly or indirectly.

1.5 By accessing the Site or using any content, you accept this disclaimer. If you do not accept it, do not use the Site. Your continued use after any revision of this disclaimer is acceptance of the revised text.

1.6 This disclaimer speaks as of the date it carries. The firm may revise it at any time by publishing a revised version at this address. The version published at the time of your use governs that use.

2. No Legal Advice

2.1 Information, not advice

2.1.1 Nothing on the Site is legal advice. All content — every insight, alert, tracker entry, decision note, guide, glossary definition, court profile, practice description, and answer implied by any of them — is general information about the law and legal practice in Pakistan, published for clients, contacts, and the profession.

2.1.2 The distinction matters and is not a formality. Legal advice is an opinion given by a lawyer who has been engaged, who has taken instructions, who has examined the relevant documents and facts, who has considered the applicable law as it stands on the day the advice is given, and who accepts professional responsibility for the opinion. Content on this Site has none of those characteristics. It is written for no particular reader, on no particular facts, with no particular deadline in view, and with no acceptance of responsibility to any reader.

2.1.3 Content that is practical in tone — a guide that sets out steps, a handbook chapter that describes what to do in the first forty-eight hours of an investigation, a calendar that lists filing dates — is still general information. The steps described are typical, not universal. Whether they are right for you depends on facts the Site does not know.

2.2 Facts change outcomes

2.2.1 In law, small factual differences produce different outcomes. The date on which you learned of a wrong can determine whether your claim is alive or dead. The precise wording of a clause can determine whether a dispute goes to arbitration or to court. The forum in which a proceeding is pending can determine which remedies exist at all. The identity of the parties, the province in which events occurred, the sequence of correspondence — each of these can reverse a conclusion that seemed settled in the abstract.

2.2.2 No page of this Site knows your facts. A statement on the Site that is accurate as a general proposition may be wrong, or dangerously incomplete, as applied to your situation. The Site cannot warn you when that is so. Only a lawyer instructed on your facts can.

2.3 The reader's obligation

2.3.1 If a matter is or may be important to you — a transaction, a dispute, an investigation, a notice, a deadline, a right you may hold or may be losing — obtain advice from an advocate entitled to practice in the relevant jurisdiction, instructed on your actual facts and documents, before you act.

2.3.2 Do not act, and do not refrain from acting, on the basis of anything on this Site. Do not treat the Site as a substitute for advice, and do not use it to delay seeking advice. Section 12 explains why delay itself can be the most expensive decision you make.

2.3.3 Any reliance you place on content is at your own risk. The firm accepts no responsibility to any reader for the consequences of acting, or not acting, on anything published here (see Section 11).

3. No Lawyer–Client Relationship

3.1 How an engagement actually forms

3.1.1 A lawyer–client relationship with The First Counsel is formed in one way only. All of the following must occur:

• (a) you ask the firm to act, and identify the parties and the substance of the matter sufficiently for the firm to assess it;
• (b) the firm completes a conflicts check against its existing and former clients and its own interests;
• (c) the firm agrees to act, and the engagement — its scope, the responsible lawyers, and the fee basis — is recorded in a written engagement letter or, where court proceedings require it, a signed vakalatnama; and
• (d) the firm's acceptance is confirmed to you in writing by a partner of the firm.

3.1.2 Until each of those steps is complete, the firm is not your lawyer, owes you none of the duties a lawyer owes a client, and is not acting for you — whatever else may have passed between you and the firm.

3.2 What does not create an engagement

3.2.1 For the avoidance of doubt, none of the following creates, or contributes to creating, a lawyer–client relationship, a retainer, or any duty of care to you:

• (a) reading, downloading, printing, or forwarding any content;
• (b) subscribing to any alert, feed, or publication of the firm;
• (c) writing to the firm by email, including to [email protected] or to any lawyer's individual address;
• (d) submitting the contact form on the Site, whether or not the firm replies;
• (e) calling the firm, including on the 24-hour line described in Section 12;
• (f) attending an event, seminar, or webinar held or addressed by the firm;
• (g) connecting with the firm or its lawyers on any social or professional network; or
• (h) receiving a reply from the firm to any of the above, unless that reply is itself the written confirmation described in paragraph 3.1.1(d).

3.2.2 There is no deemed retainer. A reply to an enquiry is a courtesy, not an acceptance. An exchange of messages, however extended, is not an engagement. If you are in doubt about whether the firm is acting for you, the answer is that it is not, unless you hold the firm's written confirmation.

3.3 Unsolicited information

3.3.1 If you send the firm information it has not asked for — by form, by email, by post, or by any other route — you do so at your own risk. Sending unsolicited information does not make you a client, does not oblige the firm to respond, to advise, or to act, and does not impose on the firm the duties it owes to clients.

3.3.2 In particular, sending unsolicited information to the firm does not prevent the firm from acting, now or later, for another party whose interests are adverse to yours, to the extent the applicable rules of professional conduct permit. Do not send information in the hope of conflicting the firm out of a matter; the attempt will not succeed and the information will not be protected as a client confidence.

3.3.3 The firm handles all correspondence with ordinary professional care, but the protections of an engagement — confidentiality as a client confidence, privilege as a client communication, the duty of loyalty — attach only once an engagement is confirmed under paragraph 3.1.1. Section 4 explains what this means for anything sensitive.

3.3.4 The firm is free to decline any matter, before or after a conflicts check, without giving reasons.

4. Confidentiality and Privilege Warnings

4.1 Communications between an advocate and a client are protected under the law of Pakistan, including the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984, and under the rules of professional conduct. Those protections are built for the lawyer–client relationship. Before that relationship exists, what you send the firm may not be privileged, may not be a client confidence, and may be compellable in later proceedings. Assume the weaker position until the firm confirms otherwise in writing.

4.2 Therefore: do not send the firm confidential, commercially sensitive, or potentially privileged material — documents, account details, draft agreements, descriptions of conduct under investigation, names of counterparties in contemplated transactions — until the firm has confirmed the engagement in writing and has asked you for the material. A general description of the matter is enough for the firm to run a conflicts check; that is all the firm needs, and all you should send, at first contact.

4.3 The contact form on the Site asks for limited information deliberately. Use it the same way. State the nature of the matter in general terms. Do not paste documents into it. Do not attach anything you would not want an opposing party to read.

4.4 Email and web forms travel over networks the firm does not control. Internet transmission can be intercepted, misdirected, delayed, or altered, and the firm does not warrant the security, encryption, or integrity of any message in transit to or from it. If a matter is sensitive enough that interception would harm you, do not put its substance in a first email. Call, or ask the firm to propose a secure channel.

4.5 If, despite this Section, you send the firm confidential material before an engagement is confirmed, the firm will treat it with the care it applies to unsolicited correspondence generally, but it accepts no duty of confidence beyond what the general law imposes, and paragraph 3.3.2 applies to it in full.

5. Currency of Content

5.1 As-of dates

5.1.1 Every substantive entry on the Site — each insight, tracker entry, decision note, guide chapter, circular digest, court profile, and calendar — carries a date: the date of publication, an express "as of" date, or a date of last update. Each entry speaks as of that date and no later. An entry is a photograph of the law on a stated day, not a live feed.

5.1.2 The older the date, the greater the caution required. An entry that was accurate when published may have been overtaken the following week.

5.2 The law changes

5.2.1 Pakistani law changes constantly, through more channels than most readers expect. Statutes are amended and repealed. Ordinances are promulgated with a limited life and lapse, are re-promulgated, or are enacted with changes. Bills pending before a legislature are revised between the version an entry describes and the version enacted. Judgments are appealed, suspended, distinguished, and overruled; a decision under challenge may bind no one by the time you read a note about it. Statutory rules, notifications, SROs, and regulatory circulars — the instruments through which much of Pakistani regulation actually operates — are issued, superseded, and withdrawn at a pace no periodic publication fully tracks.

5.2.2 The legislation tracker assigns each instrument a status — "In force", "Amended", or "Pending". That status reflects the firm's understanding as of the date the entry carries, and nothing more. It is not a warranty that the status is correct today.

5.3 Verification

5.3.1 Before anything on this Site is acted upon, the current state of the law must be verified: the statute checked in its presently amended form against the official text, the judgment checked for subsequent history, the notification or circular checked against the regulator's current issue. This verification is the reader's responsibility, or the responsibility of the lawyer the reader instructs.

5.3.2 The firm reviews the Site's resources on a periodic cycle and corrects and updates entries as part of its ordinary editorial work. But the firm does not undertake to update any entry, assumes no duty — to any reader — to do so, and may leave superseded entries visible with their original dates for archival value. The presence of an entry is not a representation that it remains current.

5.4 Draft-flagged content

5.4.1 Some publications on the Site are flagged as drafts pending review by the firm's lawyers. A draft flag means the text has not completed the firm's internal review and may contain errors of law, of citation, or of emphasis that review would remove. Draft-flagged content carries even less assurance than the rest of the Site — which, as this Section makes plain, is itself offered without warranty — and should not be relied upon for any purpose.

5.4.2 Citations on the Site that appear in brackets marked "to be verified" are exactly that: unverified. Do not cite them onward.

6. Jurisdictional Limits

6.1 The content of this Site addresses the law of Pakistan — federal law and, where an entry says so, the law of a province, principally Punjab. Where an entry discusses foreign law, an international instrument, or comparative practice, it does so descriptively and at second hand, not as advice on that law.

6.2 The firm's lawyers are advocates enrolled in Pakistan. They are not admitted to practice in any other jurisdiction unless a lawyer's individual profile expressly states a foreign admission [FOREIGN ADMISSIONS, IF ANY — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM]. Nothing on this Site is an offer to practice law, and nothing on it constitutes the practice of law, in any jurisdiction where the firm's lawyers are not admitted or where the Site would not comply with local rules.

6.3 The Site is published from Pakistan and is directed at readers interested in Pakistani law. It is not directed at any jurisdiction where its publication or availability would be contrary to local law or local rules of professional conduct. Readers who access the Site from outside Pakistan do so on their own initiative and are responsible for compliance with their own local law.

6.4 Even within Pakistan, the law is not uniform. Provincial statutes differ; procedural practice differs between High Courts and between benches; special forums — accountability courts, banking courts, tax tribunals, company benches — follow regimes of their own. A statement true in one forum or province may be inaccurate in another. Content should not be assumed to travel.

7. Representative Matters and Experience Statements

7.1 The representative matters described on this Site — on the matters page, within practice and sector descriptions, and in the experience sections of individual lawyer profiles — are anonymized. Party names, identifying transaction details, and other confidential particulars have been removed or generalized, because the firm's duty of confidence to its clients survives the end of every engagement and takes priority over the firm's interest in describing its work.

7.2 Pending publication of the firm's verified matter record, the representative matters shown are illustrative: they describe the kinds of work the firm's practices cover, in the form the firm uses to describe completed matters. They should be read as descriptions of practice scope, not as a published record of concluded engagements, until the firm states otherwise [PUBLICATION OF THE MATTER RECORD — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM].

7.3 Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. No result in any matter — described on this Site or anywhere else — predicts the result of yours. Every matter turns on its own facts, its own documents, its own forum, its own timing, and on decisions made by courts, regulators, and counterparties whom no lawyer controls. A firm that promises an outcome should be doubted; this firm promises none.

7.4 Experience statements in lawyer profiles are subject to this Section in full. Profiles that are placeholders pending completion are marked as such, with bracketed fields, and describe no actual experience until the brackets are resolved.

8. Court Profiles and Judicial Information

8.1 The Courts section of this Site profiles the superior courts of Pakistan and lists sitting judges, benches, and jurisdictional information. This material is compiled from public sources: the courts' own websites and published lists, gazette notifications, and reported decisions. The firm exercises care in compilation, but it does not warrant that any list is complete or current.

8.2 The composition of a court changes: judges are elevated, transferred, and confirmed; they retire and resign; benches are reconstituted; rosters change from term to term. Each court profile carries an as-of date and speaks only as of that date. Before relying on the composition of any court or bench — for listing, for argument, or for any other purpose — verify it against the court's current official information.

8.3 The First Counsel has no affiliation with any court, tribunal, judge, or judicial office. No court and no judge has endorsed, approved, or reviewed this Site or anything on it. The appearance of a judge's name or a court's profile here signifies nothing beyond the fact that the information is public. Nothing on this Site claims, implies, or should be read to imply that the firm has influence with, special access to, or any relationship with any judge or court beyond the ordinary professional standing of advocates who appear before them. Any reading to the contrary is wrong and is disclaimed.

8.4 The court profiles are descriptive. They set out structure, jurisdiction, and publicly available facts. They do not comment on any judge personally, and they express no view on any pending matter.

8.5 Corrections are invited. If any entry in the Courts section is out of date or inaccurate — a judge listed who has retired, a bench described incorrectly — the firm asks to be told, at [email protected], and will correct the entry with reasonable promptness (see Section 15).

9. Third-Party Content, Links, and Citations

9.1 The Site quotes and summarizes statutes, ordinances, rules, notifications, circulars, and judgments. These texts are taken from public sources. Reproduction and summary introduce risk: transcription errors, omitted provisos, superseded versions, and the inevitable loss that accompanies compression. In every case the official text prevails — the text published in the official Gazette for legislation and subordinate instruments, the certified copy or official law report for judgments, and the regulator's own current issue for circulars and notifications. Where this Site and an official text differ, this Site is wrong.

9.2 Links to external websites — courts, regulators, legislatures, publishers — are provided for convenience only. The firm does not control external sites, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for their content, their accuracy, their availability, or their treatment of your data. A link is a signpost, not a warranty.

9.3 Material on the Site attributed to third parties — quoted passages, cited commentary — remains the responsibility of its authors and is reproduced for reference. Attribution is not endorsement.

9.4 Citations that the firm has not yet verified are bracketed and flagged on their face. Paragraph 5.4.2 applies to them: do not rely on them and do not cite them onward.

10. Attorney Advertising and Professional-Conduct Statement

10.1 The First Counsel practices under the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973 and the Canons of Professional Conduct and Etiquette framed thereunder by the Pakistan Bar Council, and its advocates are subject to the disciplinary jurisdiction of the bar councils with which they are enrolled. Enrollment particulars of the firm's lawyers are stated on their profiles or are [TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM].

10.2 This Site is published as information for clients, contacts, and the profession. It is not a solicitation of professional employment, it is not touting, and nothing on it is intended to solicit work in a manner contrary to the Canons or to any other rule of professional conduct applicable to the firm. The Site describes what the firm does; it invites no one to litigate, and it makes no promise to anyone.

10.3 Some jurisdictions outside Pakistan apply their advertising rules to any lawyer website their residents can reach. To the extent the rules of any such jurisdiction treat this Site as lawyer advertising, the Site is hereby identified as ATTORNEY ADVERTISING in and for that jurisdiction, and the following statement is made for that purpose: prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

10.4 Where the rules of any jurisdiction restrict claims of specialism or expert status, no such claim is made. References on this Site to practice areas describe the fields in which the firm works, not certified specialization. Titles such as "partner", "counsel", and "associate" describe roles within the firm [FIRM STRUCTURE AND USE OF TITLES — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM].

10.5 Nothing in this disclaimer excludes or limits any duty the firm owes under the Canons or under any other rule of professional conduct that cannot be excluded. If any statement on this Site is found to conflict with those rules, the rules prevail and the statement is to be read down accordingly.

11. No Warranties; Limitation of Liability

11.1 The basis on which the Site is offered

11.1.1 The Site is a free informational resource. No reader pays for it, no reader is asked to rely on it, and every reader is told — here and in the footer of every page — not to rely on it without verification and advice. The exclusions in this Section reflect that basis, and the reader accepts them as fair in exchange for free access.

11.2 No warranties

11.2.1 The Site and all content are provided "as is" and "as available". To the maximum extent permitted by law, the firm makes no representation and gives no warranty or condition of any kind, express or implied, including as to: accuracy, completeness, currency, or reliability of any content; fitness of any content for any purpose; uninterrupted or error-free availability of the Site; freedom of the Site or any download from viruses or other harmful components; and the security of any transmission to or from the Site (as to which see paragraph 4.4).

11.3 Exclusion of liability

11.3.1 To the maximum extent permitted by law, the firm — together with its partners, counsel, associates, of counsel, employees, consultants, and agents (each a "firm person") — excludes all liability to any reader for any loss or damage of any kind arising out of or in connection with the Site or any content, or out of any reliance on either, however the loss arises and whatever its legal basis, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise.

11.3.2 The exclusion in paragraph 11.3.1 covers, without limitation: direct loss; indirect and consequential loss; loss of profit, revenue, business, or opportunity; loss or corruption of data; loss arising from action taken, or not taken, on the strength of any content; loss arising from an error, omission, or delay in any content; loss arising from the unavailability of the Site; and loss arising from reliance on content that was accurate when published and later overtaken (see Section 5).

11.3.3 No firm person assumes any duty of care to any reader by reason of the publication of the Site or of anything on it. If, notwithstanding this Section, any liability to a reader is established against the firm or a firm person in connection with the Site, that liability shall not exceed the amount the reader paid the firm for the content concerned — which, the Site being free, is nil — or such minimum amount as the law does not permit to be excluded, whichever is higher.

11.4 Carve-outs

11.4.1 Nothing in this disclaimer excludes or limits: liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, to the extent applicable law does not permit that exclusion; any duty owed under the rules of professional conduct that the law does not permit to be excluded (see paragraph 10.5); or any other liability that applicable law does not permit to be excluded or limited. This disclaimer is to be read subject to those limits, and each exclusion in it applies only to the fullest extent the law allows.

11.4.2 This Section governs the firm's position toward readers of a free website. It does not apply to the firm's clients in respect of engaged work: the duties the firm owes a client under a confirmed engagement are governed by the engagement letter and by law, and nothing in this disclaimer reduces them.

11.4.3 Each paragraph of this Section operates separately. If any part of it is held invalid or unenforceable, the remainder continues in full effect.

12. Urgent Matters

12.1 This Site is not an emergency channel. The contact form and the firm's email are not monitored continuously, and no deadline, hearing, arrest, or other urgent event can be protected by submitting a form or sending a message and waiting. A message sent through the Site may not be read the same day.

12.2 For urgent matters — an arrest or detention, a raid or search in progress, a remand hearing, a freezing or attachment order, a look-out or travel restriction, a deadline expiring within days — the firm maintains a 24-hour line: [NUMBER — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM]. Call it. Do not email about an emergency; call about it. Calling the line does not create an engagement (Section 3 applies), but it puts your matter in front of a lawyer at the speed the matter requires.

12.3 A specific warning about time, because it is the most common and least forgiving mistake:

12.3.1 Limitation periods in Pakistan are fixed by statute — principally the Limitation Act, 1908, and a range of special laws that set their own, often shorter, periods. Many are brief. Periods for appeals, revisions, and applications to set aside orders are in many cases measured in days, not months. Constitutional petitions, though not always governed by a fixed period, can be defeated by delay alone.

12.3.2 A limitation period does not pause while you research your position on this Site or anywhere else, seek a second opinion, negotiate, or wait for a more convenient moment. It runs continuously, and when it expires, the remedy is ordinarily lost — not weakened, lost. Condonation of delay exists, but it is discretionary, it must be earned with sufficient cause, and it is never assured. A limitation period can expire, quietly and irreversibly, while a reader who knows they have a problem hesitates over what to do about it.

12.3.3 If you believe you may have a claim, a defense, an appeal, or any right that depends on a date — or if you have received any notice, order, or summons that mentions one — treat the date itself as the emergency. Take advice immediately, from this firm or any other, and let the lawyer tell you how much time you actually have. Do not attempt to compute a limitation period from this Site; the computation depends on facts and provisions this Site does not know.

12.4 Nothing in this Section obliges the firm to accept an urgent matter. Paragraph 3.3.4 applies to urgent matters as to all others.

13. Translations

13.1 The Site is published in English. An Urdu edition is forthcoming [TIMING — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM]. Until then, any translation of the Site's content that a reader encounters — machine-generated or otherwise — is not the firm's work and carries no assurance from the firm at all.

13.2 When the firm publishes translations, they will be provided for convenience. If there is any difference in meaning between the English text and any translation, the English text prevails, except where the law applicable to a particular document requires otherwise.

13.3 Urdu glosses in the glossary are transliterated orientation aids, not authoritative legal equivalents. Statutory and judicial terms have precise meanings in their source language and instrument; the gloss is a starting point, not a definition to be relied on.

14. Interaction with the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy

14.1 This disclaimer forms part of the Site's Terms of Use and must be read together with them and with the Privacy Policy. Use of the Site is acceptance of all three documents.

14.2 The three documents divide the ground as follows: the Terms of Use govern the use of the Site as a website — intellectual property, permitted use, and general conditions; the Privacy Policy governs the handling of information the Site collects and receives; and this disclaimer governs the status of the Site's content and the limits of the firm's responsibility for it. On any question concerning the status of content, the existence of a lawyer–client relationship, or the firm's liability to readers, this disclaimer prevails over any more general statement elsewhere on the Site.

14.3 The confidentiality warnings in Section 4 of this disclaimer supplement, and do not replace, the Privacy Policy. The Privacy Policy describes what the firm does with information it receives; Section 4 warns you what not to send in the first place.

14.4 This disclaimer, and any dispute arising out of or in connection with the Site or its content, are governed by the laws of Pakistan, and the courts of Pakistan have exclusive jurisdiction, as the Terms of Use provide.

14.5 For clients of the firm, the engagement letter governs the engagement. Where an engagement letter and this disclaimer address the same subject, the engagement letter prevails for the engaged work (see paragraph 11.4.2).

15. Contact and Corrections

15.1 The firm takes accuracy seriously and invites correction. If anything on this Site is wrong — a misstated provision, an outdated status in the legislation tracker, an error in a court profile, a broken citation — please say so.

15.2 Corrections, questions about this disclaimer, and requests concerning the Site may be sent:

• (a) by email, to [email protected], marked "Correction" or "Disclaimer" in the subject line; or
• (b) by post, to The First Counsel, 8th Floor, Askari Corporate Towers, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.

15.3 The firm will review every correction received in good faith. Errors of substance will be corrected with reasonable promptness; the firm does not undertake a fixed response time, and paragraph 5.3.2 continues to apply. A correction to an entry will ordinarily be reflected in the entry's as-of or updated date.

15.4 Please observe Section 4 when writing: a correction or query needs no confidential information, and none should be sent with it.

15.5 This disclaimer speaks as of the date stated at its head. Earlier versions are superseded. [WHETHER A VERSION HISTORY WILL BE MAINTAINED — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FIRM.]