Our Fees
At CLT Family Law for most matters we will offer fixed fees. With our fixed fees you are provided with an obligation free fixed fee quote. If you accept the quote, you will know exactly what fee you will be charged (up to the quote stage) and when you will need to pay those charges.
Our fixed fee includes our incidental office expenses such as telephone calls, postage charges, printing and copying. Outgoing payments made by CLT Family Law on your behalf (disbursements) are excluded from the fee and are payable at cost by you (these include filing fees, stamp duty, process server/bailiff fees).
The advantages of fixed fee include:
- You will know exactly what your costs will be before you incur them;
- The fee is agreed between us and you based upon the work to be undertaken not the time it will take;
- CLT Family Law has an incentive to get work done in a prompt and efficient manner;
- As your fees to perform the agreed work or to reach a certain stage of your proceedings are agreed, there are no nasty surprises with your bill and you have certainty and peace of mind with regards to you bill;
- You have better communication with us as you are not charged for each telephone conversation or emails that are exchanged. You can ask those important questions without fear of increasing your costs. You are charged only the agreed fee for the stage of work that is being done.
How our fixed fees work:
For some matters such an initial consultation and preparation of a simple Will we can advise you of our cost upfront before your appointment.
To arrive at a fixed fee agreement, the lawyer and the client have to carefully consider:
- the facts and the legal issues involved in your matter;
- are the legal issues complex or unique;
- what action is going to be taken (ie. how the matter is going to be handled);
- what level of difficulty is there in achieving the outcome you are seeking;
- the work that will be required to be carried out;
- the risks for both yourself and us;
- urgency of your matter.
We will then provide you with a verbal quote and if you wish to consider it further we will then prepare our Cost Agreement for our fixed legal fee that sets out the work that is to be included (and what might be excluded) and the fee which is to be paid.
The fixed fee quote may be for the entirety of the work you are engaging us to do (such as advice and preparation for an Application for Consent Orders) or it might be for only part of the matter.
It is sometimes not possible to quote a fixed fee to the completion of such matter as earlier stages may need to be completed before a later stage can be quoted. For instance, we don’t quote for a family law matter to go to hearing before you start proceedings, we only quote up to the first Court attendance.
We will discuss with you and quoted further stages as and when it is practicable (and necessary) to do so.