An English case has considered when instructions to put hopeless cases, or advance hopeless claims, may justify a solicitor terminating the retainer: Richard Buxton (Solicitors) v Mills-Owens [2010] EWCA Civ 122. And here’s a useful case note from Barlow Lyde & Gilbert. Of course this is the position in England; the position in Australia is [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Retainers'
Can a solicitor terminate her retainer if client demands putting of hopeless arguments?
August 19th, 2010 · No Comments
Tags: Ethics · Retainers · litigation ethics
Solicitors’ retainers have implied term of efficiency
July 30th, 2010 · No Comments
In Michaels v Daley [2010] VCAT 1205, Senior Member Howell advised that: ’12 It usually is an implied term of the engagement of a legal practitioner, at hourly rates, that the work will be performed efficiently. It is an implied term of the kind that “goes without saying”, to adopt the phrase used by the [...]
Tags: Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · Taxations · The suit for fees · costs disputes
Reminder: you need very clear instructions before commencing proceedings on a person’s behalf
May 17th, 2010 · No Comments
Bray v Dye (No 2) [2010] VSC 152, a decision of Justice Judd, is a salutary reminder of the importance of solicitors getting very clear instructions from anyone on whose behalf they intend to commence or defend legal proceedings, and checking that they have capacity to engage in litigation (i.e. that they are of sound [...]
Tags: Party party costs · Retainers · Solicitor as agent · Wasted costs
Solicitor’s equitable charge to secure fees declared void
October 19th, 2009 · No Comments
The plaintiff in Brott v Shtrambrandt [2009] VSC 467 is not having much luck. First of all, he cut what he thought was a plea bargain in a professional misconduct prosecution only to have VCAT’s Legal Practice List increase by 50% the penalty he and the Law Insitute had agreed jointly to contend was appropriate, [...]
Tags: Costs agreements · No win no fee · Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · setting aside costs agreements
The consequences of substituting lawyers responsible for client matters
August 14th, 2009 · No Comments
My experience of working in and representing big firms is that they consider they have an entitlement to swap lawyers in and out of files, even if that involves the loss of accumulated knowledge and a need to spend time on (and therefore charge fees for) the newbie coming up to speed. One of the [...]
Tags: Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · costs disclosure defaults
Another case about one of Schapelle Corby’s lawyers
May 5th, 2009 · 3 Comments
I have previously expressed my disquiet about the Western Australian QC who told the Australian media that Schapelle Corby’s lawyers were trying to bribe the judges hearing her case. It seems the Bureau de Spanque de l’Australie de l’Ouest had in fact got right onto it, initiating an own motion investigation. The resultant prosecution has [...]
Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Professional regulation · Retainers · duties of confidentiality
The preconditions to a confidentiality obligation by a barrister
April 18th, 2009 · No Comments
In Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee v Mark T QC [2009] WASAT 42 the prosecutor, the Committee, framed its case on the existence of a retainer, or on a prospective retainer. The Tribunal did not allow it to morph into an allegation of breach of an equitable duty of confidence. So the question arose as to [...]
Tags: Retainers
More on the solicitor’s ‘penumbral’ duty of care (or lack of it)
April 15th, 2009 · No Comments
Ever since Heydon v NRMA Ltd [2000] NSWCA 374; (2000) 51 NSWLR 1, the solicitor’s penumbral duty of care, orthodoxy since Hawkins v Clayton (1988) 164 CLR 539, has been looking shaky. The reference to the penumbral duty of care is a reference to the proposition that lawyers may owe duties in tort to take [...]
Tags: Negligence · Retainers · defences
Costs agreement read contra proferentem
March 27th, 2009 · No Comments
Justice Byrne construed a no-win no-fee costs agreement in Maurice B Pty Ltd v Burmingham [2009] VSC 20. It was drafted by the solicitors and presented as a printed document for signature. His Honour construed it so as to resolve any ambiguities in favour of the client, invoking Clare v Joseph to reiterate the courts’ [...]
Tags: Retainers
The disgruntled beneficiary and the executor’s lawyer
March 15th, 2009 · 4 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 [...]
Tags: Duties to third parties · Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · costs disputes

