We comply with the legal fee requirements of the ACT Law Society.
We know that costs are a key factor in your decision to choose a family law firm so we will do whatever we can to explain our fees and charges. We will help minimise your costs by making sure the appropriate people work on your matter, by giving you the opportunity to undertake some work yourself, and by keeping meetings to a minimum.
We use the latest legal support software to help make sure we are efficient, and we can hold meetings by phone or video which can reduce meeting time and keep your costs down. One of our innovations to keep legal fees to a minimum is to give our clients access to a client portal. This can be used to complete some court forms, edit letters and affidavits, and generally stay in touch and communicate. We also use separate portals for external experts and witnesses (e.g. accountants, barristers etc) to download and upload evidence in a streamlined manner.
The amount you pay for a lawyer generally depends on their experience and qualifications. Our family lawyers charge between $500 and $600 per hour plus GST. As you make your inquiries you will find other family lawyers in Canberra will normally charge between $480 and $850 per hour plus GST, depending on seniority. Our paralegal charge is $200 per hour plus GST. Other family law firm paralegals are charged at between $220 and $350 per hour.
We can do this because we manage our overheads well and because we use cloud-based systems to help us to be efficient. We are close to Parliament House and the nearby government office, in Deakin’s medical and legal precinct.
We suggest you ask for details of the experience and qualifications of the lawyers who will work on your matter. We are happy to provide you with this information.
It’s not just the hourly rate that affects your costs but also the efficiency of your lawyer. Our aim is to be cost-efficient in all our activities. We run a largely paperless office which means lower overheads and less time spent on filing, printing, and dictation. We don’t allocate lawyers to your job just to keep them busy, and we don’t ask you to sign forms at our first meeting – which many firms do. We don’t have formalised cross-referral deals, and you won’t get a call from a financial planner after meeting us because we won’t share your contact details.
We also minimise the cost to clients by ensuring that non-legal information (not advice) is sent by our administration staff, paralegals, or by our systems so that you receive information where appropriate at a lower cost.
