Costs and Billing: CPD Core Competency Areas
Issues covered include: flat fee billing, Uniform Law, costs recovery
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Description
Protect yourself and your practice by making sure that you have the right skills in your toolkit for this critically important area that is vital to a healthy lawyer/client relationship. Learn how to perfect your costs orders, be fair and transparent and tax and assess costs the right way through a practical and interactive workshop, all while earning your compulsory CPD units at the same time.
Attend and earn 3 CPD points including:
1 point in Competency Area 1: Practice Management
1 point in Competency Area 2: Professional Skills
1 point in Competency Area 3: Ethics & Professional Responsibility
This seminar was recorded in WA on 27 March 2019
Chair: Jacqueline Brown, Legal Practitioner Director, Lynn and Brown Lawyers
Competency Area 1: Practice Management
2.00pm to 3.00pm: How to Make the Transition to a Flat Fee Billing Structure and the Potential Benefits to your Practice
- The benefits of a flat fee structure and why you may want to apply it
- Minimising disputes, attracting clients, greater transparency
- Managing your finances to accommodate a flat fee structure
- How to correctly structure a flat fee
- Using historical data to estimate a fee
Presented by GiGi Visscher, Barrister, Francis Burt Chambers
Competency Area 3: Ethics & Professional Responsibility
3.00pm to 4.00pm: An Eye to the Introduction of the Uniform Law Projected for 1 July 2019 and What it Means for your Practice
- Obligations under the law regarding costs and cost disclosures
- Ethical billing: examples of bad practice
- Clear and transparent billing
- Ethical considerations when a client complains about costs
- What are your options for resolution?
- The law and client complaints
Presented by Sandra Costopoulos, Legal Officer in the Rapid Resolution Team, The Legal Practice Board of WA
4.00pm to 4.15pm Afternoon Tea
Competency Area 2: Professional Skills
4.15pm to 5.15pm: Improving Costs Recovery in Litigation
- Managing the file & making decisions to improve potential for costs recovery
- Keeping effective records with cost recovery in mind
- Efficiencies in running a law practice, to minimise unrecoverable costs
- Different types of cost orders: when to use each type and what are the implications
Presented by Richard Graham, Legal Practitioner Director, Vogt Graham Lawyers