Terms of Service

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What this document contains

Securator Legal Pty Ltd ABN 99 675 619 682 (‘we / us / our’) sets out in this document:

  • Information that we are required to disclose pursuant to s 308(5) of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld);
  • Information that we are required to disclose pursuant to s 123 of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld);
  • The basis that we offer to provide legal services; and
  • Our offer to enter into a Costs Agreement for the work set out below on our proposed terms and conditions.

Disclosure

Your rights

You have the right to:

  • negotiate a costs agreement with us
  • receive a bill of costs from us
  • request an itemised bill of costs after you receive a lump sum bill from us
  • request written reports about the progress of your matter and the costs incurred in your matter
  • apply for costs to be assessed within 12 months if you are unhappy with our costs
  • apply for the costs agreement to be set aside
  • accept or reject any offer we make for an interstate costs law to apply to your matter
  • notify us that you require an interstate costs law to apply to your matter

For more information about your rights, please read the fact sheet titled Legal Costs — your right to know. You can ask us for a copy or obtain it from your local law society or law institute (or download it from their website).

Basis of calculating legal costs

In this document, ‘legal costs’ means our fees and outlays (if any) inclusive of GST.

The Scale of costs—Supreme Court and District applies to any of the legal costs for the work.

Our fees will be calculated on an hourly rate and charged in six-minute increments (or part thereof). The estimated time for the work will be provided along with an estimated of total costs.

In addition, we will provide an estimate the amount of the outlays as disbursements.

We will advise you as soon as practicable of any substantial changes to our estimate of legal costs.

Incorporated Legal Practice

We are an incorporated legal practice, and we advise that all legal services offered under this agreement will be provided by an Australian Legal Practitioner or by a paralegal, law clerk, or administrative staff, under the supervision of an Australian Legal Practitioner.

The provision of legal services is regulated by the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) however the provision of non-legal services under the proposed agreement (if any) is not regulated by that legislation.

The information in this clause is provided to you regarding all matters that you may instruct us on.

Basis of our offer

Our offer to provide the above legal services is on the following terms in addition to the basis for calculating legal costs set out above.

Billing and authorisation

You consent to us delivering your bills either electronically or as agreed when substantial completion of your matter has been performed. Our bills are due and payable within seven days after your receipt of a bill.

Where we hold money in our trust account on your behalf, you authorise us to withdraw and apply that money to pay our costs and outlays stated in an invoice, regarding this matter or any other matter where we act for you and costs and outlays are so owing.

You authorise us to include in our bill, legal costs due from you to us including such outlays incurred by us on your behalf but which we have not already paid, if the relevant procedures and requirements under the Legal Profession Regulation 2017 (Qld) are complied with.

An estimate of your costs is set out in the Disclosure above. These estimates are made on the information available at this time and the estimates may change when more information is available to us. If the scope of your work changes, we will send you a revised scope of work and update your costs estimate accordingly.

Expenses, disbursements and outlays are sums of money which this firm pays, or becomes liable to pay, to others on your behalf. These may include, for example:

  • Court & other filing fees;
  • Advertising fees;
  • Search/enquiry fees;
  • Witness fees & expenses;
  • Medical & other expert reports;
  • Other law practice fees;
  • Barrister/Counsel fees;
  • Process servers/investigators; or
  • Postage/couriers fees.

We will inform you of these expenses, disbursements and outlays as well as any other payments required to be made, as soon as is reasonably practical. You will be informed if we engage another law practice, including a barrister, to provide specialist advice or services on your behalf.

Where necessary, we will recommend that you seek the advice of other professionals in fields outside our expertise, for example: accountants, surveyors, town planners, financial advisors or insurance brokers.

If you fail to pay our accounts, this agreement entitles us to exercise a solicitor’s lien. The lien allows us to retain all your documents, funds in trust, property in our possession and settlement proceeds/awards of later litigation until the account is paid. We may also charge interest at a benchmark rate being the rate prescribed under section 59(3) of the Civil Proceedings Act 2011 (Qld) as at the date of the bill, compounding monthly, on any amount that remains unpaid for 7 days after becoming due for payment.

Although you may expect to be reimbursed by a third party for our fees and expenses, we do not have any recourse against third parties for that payment. Therefore, you must pay us as set out in this agreement even if payment to you by a third party is delayed or not received.

Trust money

  • You will be asked to pay money in advance.
  • Money paid in advance will be held in our trust account until payment of our legal costs is required.
  • You authorise us to draw on all trust money held by us on your behalf to pay legal costs due from you to us including such disbursements incurred by us on your behalf but which we have not already paid, if the relevant procedures and requirements under the Legal Profession Regulation 2017 (Qld) are complied with.

Costs in Court proceedings

If Court proceedings are taken on your behalf:

  • The Court may order that you pay another party’s costs, for example if you lose the case;
  • The Court may order the other party to pay your costs of the proceedings and, generally, this will not be the whole of the legal costs you are liable to pay us; and
  • If the Court orders you to pay costs, the Court ordered costs are payable by you to the other party in addition to the costs liable to be paid pursuant to the proposed costs agreement.
  • If you are successful in the litigation, you might recover some of your fees and costs from the unsuccessful party being an amount between approximately 60% and 70% of the fees and expenses that you pay us.

If you are unsuccessful in the litigation, you may be required to pay the successful party’s fees. These may be as much as or more than the fees you paid us, depending upon the successful party’s solicitors charge out rates and, in addition, the outlays they incurred, for example regarding expert reports.

If settlement of your claim is being resolved by alternate dispute resolution, prior to any agreement resolving the matter this firm will provide you with a reasonable estimate of its costs payable by you on settlement, a reasonable estimate of the costs you would obtain from the other party on settlement if the settlement is favourable to you, or a reasonable estimate of the costs you may have to pay the other party.

Working with you

Your obligations are to:

  • give us accurate, timely and full information and instructions upon our request;
  • keep us informed of any changes to your email, telephone or address;
  • transfer funds promptly to our trust account when requested;
  • pay our bills when they are due (except where a bill is disputed by you, in which case you may call (07) 3181 5584 to raise your concerns or dispute the amount under the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld); and
  • comply with any reasonable cyber-security obligations notified by us to you, and otherwise take all reasonable measures to prevent attacks or the misuse of our or your information, including telephoning us and third parties (i.e. real estate agents, insurers, medical providers etcetera) to confirm both our and your bank details before performing any transfer of funds, and not acting on emailed requests for payment.

You consent to providing information electronically, and to acceptance of this agreement by electronic signing.

Our office hours are Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Our contact points and the persons carrying out the work are set out in this agreement.

If you urgently need assistance, please call rather than email, and indicate the urgency to the person.

We welcome feedback – good and bad. We would rather have the opportunity to rectify a problem than have a dissatisfied client.  So please let us know if there is an issue, and we will do our best to provide a solution.

Ending this Costs Agreement

You may end this Costs Agreement and withdraw instructions at any time by giving us notice in writing before we complete the work and without any stated reason.

We may end this Costs Agreement with your consent or for a good reason and on reasonable prior notice. Good reasons may include but are not limited to:

  • failing to satisfy your obligations set out under this Costs Agreement;
  • not paying our bills under with this Costs Agreement;
  • being unable to properly verify your identity or your authority to give instructions;
  • unreasonably refusing to follow our advice;
  • requiring us to act unlawfully or unethically;
  • reasonable evidence that you have lost confidence in our services, such that we are unable to continue providing our services to you in an acceptable manner; or
  • failing to provide us with adequate instructions.

If we cease to act for you:

  • we will remove our name from the court record in any court proceedings;
  • you will receive a final bill for all outstanding legal costs;
  • subject to any dispute of a bill in accordance with this Costs Agreement, you must pay our legal costs up until the date when we cease to act.

If our engagement ends or your matter concludes before we complete the scope of work, you must pay that part of the fixed fee that reasonably reflects the value of the work performed to the date of the termination or conclusion of the matter, plus any expenses and disbursements which are not included in the fixed fee but have been reasonably incurred in order for us to complete the work.

Copyright and file retention

We may use precedents and other tools in providing our services to you. You have a right to use the documents we prepare for you only for the purposes for which they are supplied. Unless otherwise agreed, we retain the copyright in any documents that we prepare for you.

You consent to:

  • your documents being held in electronic form;
  • us destroying any paper duplicates at any time;
  • us sending documents to you in electronic format.


At the completion of this matter and if all outstanding legal costs are paid:

  • we may write to you to seek instructions about the collection or transfer of your documents without charge, or the destruction of your documents; and
  • if you do not collect or provide instructions to transfer or destroy your documents, please note the relevant legislation provides that we may destroy a client document relating to a matter if—
    • it is at least seven years since the completion of the matter; and
    • we have been unable, despite making reasonable efforts, to obtain instructions from you about the destruction of the document; and
    • it is reasonable in the circumstances, having regard to the nature and content of the document, to destroy the document.

Privacy

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and other privacy legislation may apply when we collect personal information from you. Except for your name and address, this information is also confidential and may be protected by legal professional privilege. 

Confidential Information

The information you provide to us will be treated as confidential information. You agree that we may use and disclose any information you provide us (including, where reasonably required, your confidential information) as necessary in order for us to carry out your work, or as otherwise legally required or permitted by law (subject to any claims of confidentiality or privilege you may lawfully instruct us to make) or as authorised by you. This may include, where the engagement of third parties on your behalf is required for your work, the provision of your information to those third parties to enable them to provide ancillary services (e.g. document processing). Any disclosures of your confidential information will be made on a confidential basis.

Artificial Intelligence Chatbots

Notice: Your use of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots on this website is your acceptance of the following terms.

All AI models generate responses and outputs based on complex algorithms and machine learning techniques, and those responses or outputs may be inaccurate, harmful or biased. Do not act on any advice given to you by an AI chatbot without confirming the information with a qualified solicitor.

Please do not upload any confidential information or personal data unless expressly permitted. Your use is logged for security purposes.