By Christopher Bevan -
Snapshot
- This is the first part of a two-part article which identifies four pitfalls in the Legal Profession Uniform Law 2014 regime for costs assessment.
- The first pitfall is the Supreme Court’s limited jurisdiction to review a decision of the District Court in an appeal from a Review Panel under s 89(1)(a) of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (NSW).
- The second pitfall is that costs assessors and Review Panels are ‘voiding’ costs agreements ab initio under ss 178(1)(a) and 185(1) of the Uniform Law for failure to give accurate costs estimates in the first instance and failure to update costs estimates at any stage of the retainer.
This is the first part of a two-part article which identifies four pitfalls in the Legal Profession Uniform Law 2014 regime for costs assessment.
Pitfall No. 1 – Judicial review of a decision of the District Court
Pitfall No. 1 is the limited jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to review a decision of the District Court in an appeal from a Review Panel under s 89(1)(a) of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (NSW) (‘Application Act’).
There is a statutory right of appeal, involving a rehearing on facts and law, to the District Court for disputed costs of $25,000 or more. If the disputed costs are under that threshold, appeal is available only with the leave of the Court. There is no upper threshold on the amount of disputed costs the District Court can entertain by way of appeal, because ‘the District Court … has all the functions of the review panel’ (s 89(2) of the Application Act) and there is no jurisdictional limit on the amount of disputed costs which any costs assessor or any Review Panel can assess.
