WEALTH GUARD COST AGREEMENT AND DISCLOSURE

This document, together with our General Terms of Business (as set out below in paragraph 4), sets out the terms of our offer to provide legal services to you and constitutes our costs agreement and disclosure pursuant to the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) (“the Uniform Law”).


Scope of Work

    • You have instructed us to implement an asset protection system & an estate planning plan.


Professional Fees

    1. We will charge you professional fees for all the work we do on a fixed fee basis in accordance with your preferred option in “payment options” overleaf (“the fixed fee”).
    2. The solicitor with principal responsibility for assisting you in this matter are:
      • Solicitor Responsible                 James Lyons
      • Paralegal Assisting                    Janine Accurso

If you have any concerns about our costs or your matter, please speak to the Senior Solicitor.


Disbursement and Internal Expenses

    • We may incur disbursements (being money which we pay or are liable to pay to others on your behalf). Disbursements may include such items as search fees and lodgement fees.

If applicable these will be in addition to the flat fee as set out in paragraph 2.1.


General Terms of Business

    • Billing Arrangements

We will issue one tax invoice in respect of all work performed for the fixed fee.


Acceptance of Offer

You may accept the Costs Disclosure and Costs Agreement by:

  • Signing ad returning this document to us or;
  • continuing to instruct us.

Upon acceptance you agree to pay for our services on these terms.


Recovery of Costs

The Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) (“the Uniform Law”) provides that we cannot take action for recovery of legal costs until 30 days after a tax invoice (which complies with the Uniform Law) has been given to you.


Your Rights in Relation to a Dispute Concerning Costs

If you have a dispute in relation to any aspect of our legal costs you have the following avenues of redress:

  1. in the first instance we encourage you to discuss your concerns with us so that any issue can be identified, and we can have the opportunity of resolving the matter promptly and without it adversely impacting on our business relationship;
  2. you may apply to the Manager, Costs Assessment located at the Supreme Court of NSW for an assessment of our costs. This application must be made within 12 months after the bill was provided or request for payment made or after the costs were paid.


Payment Methods

It is our policy that, when acting for new clients, we do one or more of the following:

  1. approve credit;
  2. ask the client to pay monies into our trust account;
  3. ask the client for their credit card details.

Unless otherwise agreed with you, we may determine not to incur fees or expenses in excess of the amount that we hold in trust on your behalf or for which credit is approved.


Authorisation to Transfer Money from Trust Account

You authorise us to receive directly into our trust account money received from any source in furtherance of your work, and to pay our professional fees, internal expenses and disbursements in accordance with the provisions of Rule 42 of the Uniform General Rules. A trust statement will be forwarded to you upon completion of the matter.


Retention of Your Documents

On completion of your work, 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 which 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.

You will be liable for the cost of storing and retrieving documents in storage and our professional fees in connection with this.


Termination by Us

We may cease to act for you or refuse to perform further work, including:

  1. while any of our tax invoices remain unpaid;
  2. if you do not within 7 days comply with any ​request to pay an amount in respect of disbursements or future costs;
  3. if you fail to provide us with clear and timely ​instructions to enable us to advance your ​matter, for example, compromising our ability ​to comply with Court directions, orders or ​practice notes;
  4. if you refuse to accept our advice;
  5. if you indicate to us or we form the view that ​you have lost confidence in us;
  6. if there are any ethical grounds which we ​consider require us to cease acting for you, ​for example a conflict of interest;
  7. ​for any other reason outside our control ​which has the effect of compromising our ​ability to perform the work required within ​the required timeframe; or
  8. if in our sole discretion we consider it is no ​longer appropriate to act for you; or
  9. for just cause.

We will give you reasonable written notice of termination of our services.

You will be required to pay our costs incurred up to the date of termination.


Termination by You

You may terminate our services by written notice at any time. However, if you do so you will be required to pay our costs incurred up to the date of termination (including if the matter is litigious, any cancellation fees or other fees such as hearing allocation fees for which we remain responsible).


Lien

Without affecting any lien to which we are otherwise entitled at law over funds, papers and other property of yours:

  • we shall be entitled to retain by way of lien any funds, property or papers of yours, which are from time to time in our possession or control, until all costs, disbursements, interest and other moneys due to the firm have been paid; and our lien will continue notwithstanding that we cease to act for you.


Privacy

We will collect personal information from you in the course of providing our legal services.  We may also obtain personal information from third party searches, other investigations and, sometimes, from adverse parties.

We are required to collect the full name and address of our clients by Rule 93 of the Uniform General Rules. Accurate name and address information must also be collected in order to comply with the trust account record keeping requirements of Rule 47 of the Uniform General Rules and to comply with our duty to the courts.

Your personal information will only be used for the purposes for which it is collected or in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). For example, we may use your personal information to provide advice and recommendations that take into account your personal circumstances.

If you do not provide us with the full name and address information required by law we cannot act for you. If you do not provide us with the other personal information that we request our advice may be wrong for you or misleading.

Depending on the nature of your matter the types of bodies to whom we may disclose your personal information include the courts, the other party or parties to litigation, experts and barristers, the Office of State Revenue, PEXA Limited, the Land and Property Information Division of the Department of Lands, the Registrar General and third parties involved in the completion or processing of a transaction.

We do not disclose your information overseas unless your instructions involve dealing with parties located overseas. If your matter involves parties overseas, we may disclose select personal information to overseas recipients associated with that matter in order to carry out your instructions.

We manage and protect your personal information in accordance with our privacy policy [which can be found on our firm website or a copy of which we shall provide at your request]. Our privacy policy contains information about how you can access and correct the personal information we hold about you and how you can raise any concerns about our personal information handling practices. For more information, please contact us in writing.


Sending Material Electronically

We are able to send and receive documents electronically. However, as such transmission is not secure it may be copied, recorded, read or interfered with by third parties while in transit. If you ask us to transmit any document electronically, you release us from any claim you may have as a result of any unauthorised copying, recording, reading or interference with that document, for any delay or non-delivery of any document and for any damage caused to your system or any files.


GST

Where applicable, GST is payable on our professional fees and expenses and will be clearly shown on our tax invoices. By accepting these terms, you agree to pay us an amount equivalent to the GST imposed on these charges.


Governing Law

The law of New South Wales applies in relation to any disputes pertaining to this agreement.


Assure Lawyers Pty Ltd
Tel: 1300 256 078
Email: enquries@assurelawyers.com
Alternatively, please make use of our Contact Us page.