In Nicholson v B&S [2000] VLPT 28, the Legal Profession Tribunal’s Registrar Howell considered whether the costs disclosure provisions of the Legal Practice Act, 1996 constituted a code which demonstrated an intention of the parliament to displace the common law. ‘Nope’, he said:
‘I have considered whether the provisions of Division 1 of Part 4 of the Legal Practice Act 1996 created a code for the provision of information to clients and thus relieved legal practitioners from their previous obligations to provide information. I have concluded that Division 1 is not a code because there is nothing in Division 1 which indicates to me that the legislature intended to change the position at common law or to relieve practitioners of their fiduciary obligations.’