Enhancement of By Lawyers costs agreements
All By Lawyers costs agreements have been reviewed, consolidated, and reformatted to ensure they are in strict compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements in each state and territory, and to improve presentation and readability.
A good cost agreement precedent provides transparency, reduces disputes with clients over fees, and ensures that firms get paid. It is important these documents are correct, however, the increasing complexity of cost disclosure requirements makes this difficult. By Lawyers precedents provide firms with accurate and effective costs agreements for all matter types in all jurisdictions.
Summary of key changes
- A key enhancement is the inclusion of a Terms and Conditions section, which consolidates general information that applies across all matters.
- All related information has been grouped together to assist with readability and comprehension.
- A Next steps section has been added, outlining the steps required to be taken by the client to move the engagement forward.
- The automation in relation to fees, disbursements, and internal expenses has been improved for LEAP users.
- The scopes of work, now available under each cost agreement on the matter plans, have been enhanced. For LEAP users, scopes of work can be added to a costs agreement via the Insert Clause feature. See Inserting a Clause on the LEAP Community page. Alternatively, all users can simply cut and paste the scope into the precedent.
New categories of costs agreements
The By Lawyers costs agreements have been simplified into 4 categories in most states and territories:
- Costs agreement: suitable for most matters.
- Costs agreement – Estate administration: specific to applications for probate and letters of administration and administering the estate.
- Conditional costs agreement: suitable for litigation such as personal injury claims where the firm agrees to act on a no win no fee basis.
- Conditional costs agreement – Uplift fee: suitable for litigation in jurisdictions where the relevant legislation permits an uplift to be applied to the total costs for a successful outcome.
The new costs agreements and scopes of work have been added, as appropriate, to folder A. Getting the matter underway on all matter plans.