Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world

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Entries Tagged as 'Professional fees and disbursements'

Termination of a no-win no-fee retainer

May 18th, 2009 · No Comments

Mr Burmingham is the subject of three posts already.  They dealt with three discrete aspects of his case, Maurice B Pty Ltd v Burmingham [2009] VSC 20: a titillating detail, advocates’ immunity, and the nature of the suit for fees.  But his case was really mostly about what happens when a no-win no-fee costs agreement [...]

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Tags: No win no fee · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · Taxations · The suit for fees · costs disputes

The suit for fees

May 18th, 2009 · No Comments

One might imagine the suit for fees to be the simplest legal claim there is.  But there seems to be great confusion about what the elements of the claim are,  what defences are available, and the relationship of the suit with a taxation, or the failure to exercise a right of taxation. If anyone has [...]

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Tags: Professional fees and disbursements · Taxations · The suit for fees

The disgruntled beneficiary and the executor’s lawyer

March 15th, 2009 · 7 Comments

Imagine this.  A beneficiary thinks a trustee is diminshing the trust estate by spending too much on lawyers. They have no standing to seek a taxation of the trustee’s solicitor’s bill, and the trustee’s solicitor’s file is unavailable to them by virtue of legal professional privilege enjoyed by the trustee.  The beneficiary has no contractual [...]

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Tags: Duties to third parties · Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · costs disputes

Beak bribe boast bars barro

February 4th, 2009 · No Comments

Legal Services Commissioner v JDG [2008] LPT 17 is a shocking case in which a Queensland barrister was struck off after he lied when confronted by investigators with the true proposition that he had offered to pay a $50,000 bribe to a Magistrate or Crown prosecutor on behalf of a client.  He also took $59,000 [...]

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Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Legal Profession Act · Misconduct · Negligence · Professional fees and disbursements · Striking off · Trust money · common law · trust monies

The lien and the solicitor who finds himself practising certificateless

November 27th, 2008 · No Comments

Update: More solicitors’ lien cases: Magnamain Investments Pty Ltd v Baker Johnson Lawyers [2008] QSC 245, and Stark v Dennett [2007] QSC 171, a case about who should be taken to have terminated the retainer and which sets out the law thoroughly.

Original post: As I have already noted in these pages, Issac B was [...]

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Tags: Liens · Practising certificates · Professional fees and disbursements

Applications to set aside costs agreements

September 24th, 2008 · No Comments

This post has been sitting around as a draft waiting to be finished.  There is little chance of that for a long time.  So here is my incomplete annotation to s. 103 of the Legal Practice Act, 1996.  That is the provision which gives VCAT (formerly the Legal Profession Tribunal) jurisdiction to set aside costs [...]

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Tags: Legal Practice Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · costs disclosure defaults · setting aside costs agreements

Nicholson v B&S — the first important Victorian decision about setting aside costs agreements

September 23rd, 2008 · No Comments

Nicholson v B&S [2000] VLPT 28 was the first decision to deal in detail with the principles which govern the extremely wide discretions granted by s. 103 of the old Legal Practice Act, 1996. Registrar Howell cancelled a costs agreement, and ordered that one of the bills the client challenged — the only one she [...]

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Tags: Professional fees and disbursements · costs disclosure defaults · setting aside costs agreements

Lawyers and the criminal law

September 16th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Reproduced below is a blog post about ‘bill padding’ from the US site, Legal Blog Watch. That is where lawyers say work took them longer than it really did, and so charge commensurately more, or even make up the fact that they did work, and charge for it. Sometimes I read articles like this and [...]

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Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Criminal liability · Discipline · Law Blogs · Misconduct · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · Taxations · conflicts · duty and interest · gross overcharging

Is interest a form of relief VCAT can grant?

August 14th, 2008 · No Comments

In a long-wnded way, I tentatively suggest that, so long as the applicant has the sense to invoke s. 108 of the Fair Trading Act, 1999, then penalty interest is available under the Supreme Court Act, 1986, just like in the Supreme Court, so long as the dispute is a consumer-trader dispute. That is, a [...]

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Tags: Fair Trading Act · Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · VCAT · VCAT Act · costs disputes

Solicitor litigants’ entitlement to costs

July 31st, 2008 · No Comments

Solicitors who are parties to litigation and don’t hire other solicitors to represent them are the only people who are generally entitled to claim legal costs from the losing party even though they don’t have to pay lawyers anything. Engaging in litigation involving themselves is therefore a profitable activity if they win. The [...]

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Tags: Misconduct · Professional fees and disbursements