Your rights
You have the right to:
- negotiate any aspect of this agreement with us, including the price and the invoicing method
- be notified of significant changes to the basis upon which your legal costs are calculated or the current estimate of costs
- request an itemised bill
- request a written report at reasonable intervals on the progress of legal costs incurred on your matter
- make a complaint to the Legal Services Commissioner about our legal costs or the quality of our service. The Commissioner may accept complaints where the legal costs do not exceed $10,000 on any one single matter.
How we protect your privacy
We may collect personal information from you in the course of providing services to you. We will use this information to provide legal services, maintain contact with you and keep you informed of developments. We may also use this information for internal management purposes and to meet our professional obligations, such as conflict checks.
We will respect the confidentiality of the information you provide. Please click here to access our detailed privacy policy.
How we retain confidentiality
We will maintain the confidentiality of all information we receive from you in the course of undertaking work for you, except where:
- permitted or required to disclose your confidential information by law
- such information is in the public domain (except for as a result of a break of confidentiality).
To enable us to perform our work effectively, we may disclose your confidential information to:
- our partners, principals, employees, agents and contractors
- third party service providers that assist us in providing legal services.
How we store your information
We use cloud storage to securely store email, documents and other information we receive from you. These cloud storage servers may be located outside Australia.
How we will invoice you
Unless specified otherwise in our agreement, we will invoice you in arrears at the end of every month. We will do this by email. Our invoices are payable within 7 days of receipt.
We will remind you if an invoice remains unpaid after 14 days. If you are unable to pay your invoice within 14 days, please discuss the situation with us.
If your invoice remains unpaid after 30 days and you have not previously contacted us about payment, we may charge interest at the current Cash Interest Rate Target plus 2%.
Help us to help you
Achieving the best possible outcome is a joint effort. Please help us to achieve the best possible result for you by:
- providing us with as much detail as possible
- letting us know what you want to achieve from our work with you
- providing us with relevant documents and other information as soon as possible
- responding as quickly as possible to our questions and requests
- letting us know if there is anything you are unsure of, do not understand or disagree with.
- letting us know as soon as possible if the scope of our work with you will, or is likely to change
- providing us with feedback on what we’re doing well and what we can improve.
Trust money
We may ask you to provide us with money on account. We will pay this money into our trust account and can draw on it to pay your invoices.
Termination of services
Our lawyer-client relationship will come to an end:
- when we have completed the scope of work you engaged us to perform, or
- if we provide open-ended services, when more than 6 months have elapsed from the last time we provided services.
You may also end our agreement at any time by notifying us in writing. We will be entitled to invoice you for all fees that remain unpaid at the point at which you provide notice.
We may end our agreement with you if:
- any of our invoices remain unpaid 30 days or more after issue
- you fail to work with us in a way that enables us to advance your matter
- there are ethical grounds which we consider require us to cease acting for you, for example, a conflict of interest.
Your papers after completion of the work
Once our work with you has been concluded and you have paid our final invoice, we will return all papers and property that you have provided to us, if you ask us to.
Our drafts and work product, which includes the advice we provide to you, continue to belong to us.
To remain efficient and help save the environment, we make an electronic copy of key documents and shred papers, advice and any other property that remains. This happens a reasonable time after your matter with us has ended.
Applicable law
The law of Victoria applies to our agreement with you.
Governing terms
This document, together with our engagement letter, contains the terms for our engagement as your lawyers. Unless modified in writing by mutual agreement, these terms will be an integral part of our agreement with you.