Time & Billing

Costs disclosure

How Do We Bill?

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Before we begin work on your matter, we provide you with a written Costs Disclosure and a written Costs Agreement. These set out:

• The lawyers who will work on your matter and their hourly rates
• Our best estimate of total legal costs, either as a single figure or as a reasoned range where a single figure is not reasonably practicable
• The major factors that may cause your costs to change
• The disbursements (third-party costs) we expect to incur on your behalf
• Your rights, including your right to negotiate the costs agreement, negotiate the billing method, request an itemised bill, and seek a costs assessment if you are unhappy with a bill

Should anything significant change during the course of your matter — the scope changes, or new issues emerge that were not foreseeable when we provided our initial estimate — we will update our costs and provide them to you in writing as soon as practicable, so that you are never working from an outdated estimate.

All rates exclude GST and are reviewed annually on 1 July.

OUR REPUTATION

REGULATORY STANDING AND DISCIPLINARY RECORD

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Our legal practice is regulated under the Legal Profession Uniform Law (Victoria).

Like every incorporated legal practice in Victoria, we also hold compulsory professional indemnity insurance through the Legal Practitioners’ Liability Committee (LPLC). KPA Lawyers operates under the Limited Liability Scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Every lawyer practicing at KPA Lawyers holds a current Australian practising certificate issued by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner (VLSB+C). As a matter of good practice, we encourage any prospective client to check this for themselves prior to engaging any lawyer (whether at KPA or another firm).

WHAT IS THE VLSB AND WHAT DOES IT DO?

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The Victorian Legal Services Board (VLSB) is part of the combined regulator known as the VLSB+C, comprising the Board and the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner. They are independent statutory authorities, accountable to the Victorian Parliament, with functions including licensing lawyers, overseeing professional standards, managing trust accounts, handling complaints, and administering the Public Purpose Fund.

The VLSB+C maintains several public registers relevant to lawyers, law practices and related disciplinary matters.

• Register of Lawyers – a searchable public register listing Victorian lawyers, including practising certificate status, firm details and, via search options, whether disciplinary action is recorded.
• Register of Disciplinary Action (RODA) – a public register listing disciplinary action taken against Australian lawyers under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, including suspensions, cancellations and striking off from the Roll of Australian Lawyers.
• Non‑lawyer Disciplinary Action / disqualified persons register – a page/register listing people disqualified under the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (Vic) and earlier Victorian legislation.

The registers can be found at www.lsbc.vig.gov.au.

As of 12 August 2026 (the date of writing this notice) no lawyer at KPA Lawyers appears on the Register of Disciplinary Action, and no adverse disciplinary finding has been made against the firm.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST TRANSPARENCY

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Lawyers as part of their professional obligations owe a duty of care to look after their clients’ best interests. As such, lawyers and law firms are prohibited from acting where a conflict of interest arises, exists or where there is a perception of a conflict.

A conflict of interest can be any situation where our duty to you may be compromised by a duty we owe to another client, a duty we owe to a former client, or even by our own interests. Some common scenarios can include:

• representing one client against a former client;
• representing two or more individual clients with differing interests, except in the limited circumstances which the Solicitors’ Conduct Rules (the Rules) permit, and only where each affected client has given their informed consent; or
• where our own business or personal interests differ from those of their client.

HOW DOES KPA LAWYERS MANAGE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST?

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It sounds simple, but before we act for you and open a file, we check if there are any apparent conflicts. We do this by:

• running a conflict check across our client data base and matter records against every party we know to be involved in your matter. This can include you, the other side, and any related individuals or entities; and
• re-running our conflict check whenever a new party is joined to your matter.  So, what does this look like in practice?
  • if we identify a conflict before we act, we will inform you and decline the engagement. Where we can, we will refer you to another law firm.
  • if a conflict emerges partway through your matter, we will tell you promptly and in writing. If the Rules require us to stop acting for one or both parties, we will.
  • we do not act for both sides of a dispute.
  • where we act for two or more people together, i.e. joint purchasers, co-executors, business partners selling a company, we explain at the beginning of the engagement what happens if your interests begin to no longer align, with the possible need for either of you to obtain independent legal advice and record your consent in writing.
  • we do not pay or receive referral fees, commissions or spotter’s fees for referring you to conveyancers, brokers, or agents.
  • where a director or owner of the firm is named as executor in a will we prepare, we disclose in writing before the will is signed any entitlement to executor’s commission and any provision authorising the firm to charge for legal services to the estate.
  • we do not take a margin on disbursements with third-party costs being passed through at cost.
  • if we ever hold a financial interest in a service we recommend to you, this is disclosed in writing prior to you deciding.

If you think a conflict might exist, or you know something we do not that may cause a conflict in us acting or continuing to act for you, tell us straight away. A potential conflict is far easier to deal with at the outset. Never worry that you are raising it unnecessarily, we would much rather check and find nothing.

ALIGNMENT WITH COURT SET SCALES

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Victorian and Federal courts publish their own scales of costs. These are set by the courts, and they govern the amount a successful party can recover from an unsuccessful party, i.e. what you can claim back if you win, or what you may be ordered to pay the other side if you lose.

Some important things for you to understand:

• The scale governs what you can recover and not what we charge you. Your Costs Agreement with KPA governs what we charge you, whereas the court scale governs what a court can order the parties to pay. It is unlikely those figures will ever be the same number.
• Where your matter is in a court with a scale, we will tell you at the beginning of our matter how our rates compare to that scale and what any shortfall means for you. We tell you this so you can make the assessment at the beginning of your matter, so you can determine whether the case is even worth running.
• Not every forum has a scale. VCAT, like most tribunals and most alternative dispute resolution processes do not operate on a scale, and in many matters in the jurisdictions, costs are unrecoverable.

COST RECOVERY AWARENESS

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Clients will frequently ask us: “If I win, does the other side pay my legal costs?”

The general rule in civil litigation is that costs “follow the event”, with the unsuccessful party paying the successful party’s costs. An order for costs is normally assessed on the standard basis, which covers only those costs that were reasonably incurred and are of a reasonable amount. In our experience, a successful party with a standard costs order recovers somewhere in the range of 50–70% of what they paid their own lawyers.

The alternative is an award of indemnity costs, which comes closer to full recovery but is made far less often. An order for indemnity costs most commonly arises where the other side has conducted the proceeding improperly or has unreasonably rejected an offer to settle (whether a Calderbank offer or a formal Offer of Compromise made under the court rules). Even then, indemnity costs rarely allow you to recover 100% of what you have spent.

Not every jurisdiction works this way, with some jurisdictions requiring each side to pay for their own lawyers, win or lose, unless a specific exception applies. Lawyers will commonly refer to these jurisdictions as “no cost jurisdictions”.

• VCAT: under section 109 of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998, each party bears their own costs unless the Tribunal is satisfied it is fair to order otherwise.
• Family law matters: under section 117 of the Family Law Act 1975, the same starting point applies, and a costs order is made only where the court is satisfied the circumstances justify it.
• • Employment law matters: costs orders are the exception rather than the rule, both in the Fair Work Commission (section 611 of the Fair Work Act 2009) and in court proceedings under that Act (section 570).

What to consider when it comes to recovering costs?

• Cost recovery isn’t always glamorous and is often a job in itself. Work included during the cost recovery stage can involve preparing a bill of costs, negotiation, and if agreement cannot be reached, an assessment by the Court or Tribunal known as ‘Taxation of Costs’. This is a formal process and requires a bill of costs to be prepared in a set form. This is both a process which takes time and costs money.
• Getting a costs order against someone with little or no money isn’t useful. As part of our advice to you, we will raise the other side’s likely capacity to pay before you spend resources and time on unlikely enforcement.
• There are no guarantees with litigation, and if you lose, you will usually be ordered to pay a proportion of the other side’s costs on top of your own, which can be an expensive exercise.

USE OF A REGISTERED TRUST ACCOUNT

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Any money we receive and hold on your behalf is trust money. It includes funds you pay us in advance, deposits on property transactions, settlement funds and money held for an estate.

Importantly, trust money is not our money, and there are strict rules that we are required to follow when holding it. Trust money is held in a dedicated trust account, entirely separate from the firm’s own trading account, so that money held on trust is never mixed with the firm’s funds.

KPA Lawyers maintains a general trust account with an authorised deposit-taking institution in Victoria, operated in accordance with Chapter 4 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act (Victoria) and the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015. 

How is your trust money protected?

• Trust money is held in a separate account and recorded against your matter in our trust ledger. It is never mixed with the firm’s own operating funds.
• We can only draw money from trust to pay our fees after we have provided you with an invoice and:
  • the time allowed for you to object the invoice has passed; or
  • you have specifically authorised the withdrawal from your trust funds
• Every trust transaction is recorded in trust records that we are required to keep and retain by law.
• An approved external examiner who reports to the VLSB+C examines our trust account annually. Our reporting is required to be lodged to the VLSB+C by 30 April each year.
• The VLSB+C can inspect our trust records and investigate our trust account at any time.
• Trust money is backed by the Fidelity Fund established under the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (Victoria) and administratively the Victorian Legal Services Board Victoria. It protects against loss of trust money or trust property caused by a dishonest misuse of trust money by a law practice.

AN IMPORTANT NOTICE ON PAYMENT FRAUD

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Cyber fraud targeting property settlements, estate distributions and litigation payouts is real and increasing. We take the risk of cyberfraud seriously and so should you. Hackers have impersonated law firms and requested payment via email using their own account details. It is important you take the extra step to verify any bank account details you receive in an email from our firm by speaking to us before transferring money. Best practice is to use a search engine to find our website and verify our phone number and call us. Do not reply to any emails asking for payment before verifying its authenticity with us. To verify authenticity please call our offices on +61 3 9599 8800 (KPA Lawyers – Sandringham) or +61 3 5975 2044 (KPA Lawyers + Land Transfer Services).