Disclosure prior to entry into client services agreement (CSA)
Before providing legal services to you and before you enter into this agreement, we are required to disclose certain information under the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld).
A disclosure notice was provided to you with this CSA and by signing this CSA you acknowledge receipt of the disclosure notice and confirm you have read and understood the information contained in it and agree that its terms form part of this agreement.
Offer and acceptance of CSA
This document is an offer to enter into an agreement with you regarding the legal services to be provided to you. If you accept this offer you will be regarded as having entered into a costs agreement with us. This means you will be bound by the terms and conditions set out in this CSA, including being billed in accordance with it.
Acceptance may be by:
Signing (digitally or wet) and returning a copy of this document; or
Giving us instructions after receiving this document; or
Contacting us and advising of your acceptance; AND
Paying the initial deposit amount in the letter of engagement for anticipated costs and outlays.
Failing to accept this offer within 30 days of the date of the disclosure notice accompanying this CSA may result in the withdrawal of our offer to act on your behalf.
The laws of Queensland will apply to this CSA.
Your instructions
Our letter of engagement sets out our instructions as we understand them. You must contact us immediately if we have misunderstood your instructions.
It is also important that you provide us with full and accurate instructions including all necessary documents and information that we request from you.
Where necessary, we will from time to time 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.
Professional fees
Unless our letter of engagement stipulates a fixed fee for the work we will undertake, our professional fees will be calculated based on the time spent by our professional staff according to their hourly rates. Our current rates are set out in the letter of engagement.
Time spent is recorded in 6-minute units, with time rounded up to the nearest unit of 6 minutes. For example, time spent on a phone call for less than 6 minutes will be charged for 6 minutes whereas time on a phone call exceeding 6 minutes will be charged for 12 minutes. Time spent can include internal conferences discussing your matter, drafting documents, reviewing documents, attending settlements, meetings and telephone attendances with you and with other parties, travelling and research time.
We may review our hourly rates from time to time and increase them depending on market conditions and other factors. We will provide you with reasonable notice of any fee increase and will not increase our rates more than once in any 12-month period.
If, within 14 days of receiving notice from us that our hourly rates are increasing, you do not notify us that the increases are unacceptable to you, you agree that you will be deemed to have accepted the increased rate and that rate will then apply from the date advised in our letter to you.
If you notify us that fee increases are unacceptable, you or we may terminate this CSA; see clause 9.
Other expenses
In addition to our professional fees, you agree to pay all other expenses properly incurred by us.
These expenses will include costs we incur on your behalf including court fees, application fees, report fees, travel and parking expenses.
Other costs incurred on your behalf may consist of fees charged by barristers, couriers, cost assessors, consultants, witnesses, process servers, investigators and agents including other lawyers. Medical reports, transfer duty, postage, parking, accommodation, and transfer fees may also be payable.
Unless otherwise stated, our estimated fees and expenses include GST, to as it is applicable.
Accounts
Accounts will be issued either weekly or on the completion of specific tasks or events, we will render accounts and ask that you authorise us to transfer funds from our trust account to pay them in full. If there are insufficient funds, we will ask you to pay the balance and we may also ask you pay additional sums on account of further costs and disbursements into the Trust Account of our firm.
Our accounts will include a brief narration of work undertaken on your behalf.
Should you require a detailed explanation of our account you should contact us further.
Payment of our accounts or of funds into our trust account may be made using any of the payment options accepted by us either directly or pursuant to the terms of any separate agreement you have entered into with a third-party provider such as RapidPay or Stripe, which may include:
Credit card by Visa, MasterCard (only invoice payments);
Bpay;
Electronic funds transfer (EFT); subject to your compliance with the terms of any such separate agreement.
Our accounts are payable within 7 days of receipt, and thereafter we may charge you interest on the outstanding balance at a benchmark rate as rate prescribed under section 59(3) of the Civil Proceedings Act 2011 (Qld) as at the date of the bill, compounding monthly, until payment is received in full.
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.
For litigation matters, if you are successful in your litigation, you might recover some of your fees and costs from the unsuccessful party. It is estimated that the amount recoverable would be between 60% and 75% of the fees and costs that you pay us.
If you are not successful in your litigation, you may be required to pay the successful party’s fees and costs. 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 the outlays they incurred, for example, regarding expert reports.
We may ask you for an advance payment on account of future fees and outlays to be incurred in the matter. We may decide not to commence or to continue work until the payment is received. If the amount requested is not paid by the required date, we may terminate this agreement under clause 9.
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 expenses stated in an invoice and any accrued interest, regarding this matter or any other matter where we act for you and costs and expenses are so owing.
We can retain your money, property and documents until all money due to us has been paid, including after this agreement terminates, to the extent permitted by law. This right is called a ‘solicitor’s lien’ and survives any bankruptcy or liquidation.
If these payment arrangements do not work for you then please discuss an alternative with us.
To provide maximum protection against fraud, we recommend that you always telephone our office to confirm bank account details before making a transfer.
Conflicts of interest
Upon opening each new file, we undertake internal searches to determine whether we may have a conflict of interest, to determine if we have acted or are currently acting for the other party to your matter.
If we discover a conflict, we may need to terminate this agreement under clause 9.
You agree that we do not need to disclose to you any information that we acquire while acting for our other clients, including information contained in conflict searches conducted on behalf of those clients.
Engagement of another law practice
We will inform you and, where practical, consider your wishes if we engage another law practice to provide specialist advice, for example a barrister, expert witness, or other agent to provide services on your behalf. You must pay upon demand all agents, experts or other third-party fees that are billed to us. If the advocate, expert, or agent provides us with fee disclosures or the basis of fee calculation, we will pass this information on to you. If we become liable to pay interest on any third party’s fees as a consequence of delay on your part, we will pass that charge on to you.
As a matter of public policy, the law provides immunity from suit regarding advocacy. Nothing in this agreement affects an advocate’s immunity from suit regarding any advocacy conducted on your behalf.
You may terminate this agreement at any time and for any reason by giving us written notice.
We may terminate this agreement by giving you written notice for just cause or if you:
Do not provide us with adequate instructions; or
Refuse to act according to our advice; or
Breach this agreement; or
Instruct us to act unlawfully or unethically; or
Fail to co-operate fully in the conduct of your matter; or
Indicate that you have lost confidence in us; or
Act in a way that is abusive or aggressive towards our staff; or
Fail to respond to correspondence in a timely manner; or
Fail to pay any accounts or to provide money to be paid into trust as required under this agreement regarding this matter or any other matters we are conducting on your behalf; or
Lose legal capacity to instruct us; or
Do not accept any increase in fees advised to you; or
Are informed by us that we have a conflict of interest and can no longer act on your behalf.
We will give you written notice of our intention to terminate this agreement.
Upon termination of this CSA for any reason we are entitled to payment of all outstanding fees and costs up to the termination and any interest accrued and to a solicitor’s lien, described above, on all documents and trust money where there is money owing to us after the CSA is terminated.
Your documents
Not all documents on our file will belong to you, including file notes, working papers, accounts or internal emails, which will belong to us.
On completion of your work, or following termination of our services by either party, we will retain your documents for 7 years. Your agreement to these terms constitutes your authority for us to destroy the file after those 7 years. The authority does not relate to any documents that are deposited in safe custody which will, subject to agreement, be retained on your behalf indefinitely.
We are entitled to retain your documents while there is money owing to us for our costs.
Your agreement to these terms constitutes your authority for us to charge you for providing documents upon your request. You will also be liable for the cost of storing and retrieving documents in storage.
Where permitted by law, we may hold some or all of your documents solely in electronic form. Where your documents are held by us in electronic form, only electronic copies of them will be provided to you. Those copies will be provided in a reasonable electronic format, usually the existing format.
No software or equipment will be provided to you to enable you to view or access your electronic documents and may be provided to you solely in a ‘read only’ format, unless it was part of our engagement that they be provided in a form which permits editing or modification by you. While we take reasonable measures against malware, viruses or other harmful code, to the extent the law permits, no warranty is given that the electronic documents will be free from these.
You agree that we may also retain copies of your documents, for our own regulatory, insurance and other reasonable internal purposes.
Privacy and direct marketing
Personal information about you is protected under the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000 (Cth). Disclosure of such information may be compelled by law, for example under the Social Security Act1991 (Cth). You authorise us to collect information about you and to disclose that information to others, if necessary, in furtherance of your matter, for example within the law practice, to the court, to the other party to any litigation, or to barristers.
You consent to our use of your contact details to maintain a professional relationship with you and to provide legal updates and other information that we think may be of interest to you by telephone, facsimile, email, or direct mail. You may ask us not to send direct marketing materials by contacting us on (07) 3181 5584 or by email at info@securatorlegal.com.au.
Complaints
Please raise any concern or problem with the lawyer handling your matter. If your concern is not resolved at that level, you should immediately direct the complaint to the Legal Practitioner Director.
If we are unable to resolve your complaint, you may obtain the assistance of the Queensland Law Society by telephone on (07) 3842 5888.
Trust account authority
Under the requirements of section 249(1)(b) of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), you authorise Securator Legal Pty Ltd to transfer from our trust account to our general account or to any other trust account, held on your behalf, any money regarding professional fees, statutory charges, and other outlays incurred on your behalf regarding the file the subject of this CSA, or any other matter where Securator Legal Pty Ltd act on your behalf.
