Under s. 95 the Legal Practice Act, 1996, interest was chargeable on bills of costs from the period from 30 days after payment is demanded until the bill is paid.  But what does it mean?  Does interest start to run 3o days after (i) the date of the bill, (ii) the day it was posted, [...]

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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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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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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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Slobodan Catovic did not want to pay his solicitor’s bill. He misconceivedly invoked the Legal Profession Act, 2004 provision which allows clients to apply to set aside costs agreements, but that is not what he wanted to do. Senior Member Howell satisfied himself that Mr Catovic had intended to bring an application under [...]

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Chakera v Kuzamanovic [2003] VSC 92 is a decision of the Supreme Court of Victoria’s Justice Nettle in relation to the effect of a default under the costs disclosure regime under the Legal Practice Act, 1996. It stands for the proposition that in the case of complete non-compliance with the costs disclosure regime, the [...]

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I was drinking beer at The Peacock the other afternoon, and a VCAT member was muttering about the Supreme Court overturning VCAT decisions on the basis that applications for adjournment were not granted when they could have been cured by an order for costs. The suggestion was that the Court may have overlooked the [...]

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Praag v W & T Lawyers [2008] VCAT 307 was a rare thing: a case in VCAT’s Legal Practice List actually prosecuted pursuant to the Legal Profession Act, 2004. Mr Praag was his late mother’s executor. Before her death, she lived in Canberra. Her assets were a house in Canberra and [...]

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The Sydney Morning Herald reports plans by the NSW Attorney General to cap fees proportionately to the amount at stake. The article is a bit light on what that means exactly, but the Law Society of NSW President purported to welcome the changes.

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Update, February 2008: the rate has increased from 8.75% to 9%.  For more, see this post.
Original post: Since 6 December 2007, the maximum interest chargeable on bills has dropped from 12% (the penalty interest rate) to 8.75% (the Reserve Bank Target Rate +2%), and the period of non-payment after which you can begin charging [...]

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