• Will you be charged right away just for talking to a solicitor?

Under current New Zealand law before we can provide you with legal advice you will need to enter into our Terms of Engagement and there is certain information that by law we need to provide you before we can carry out any instructions. 

If you need urgent legal advice we may need to ask you to come into the office, or to fax or email you the information before we can give you legal advice however please feel free to telephone us to initiate your query.

Estimates are provided free of charge.
 

• How will I be billed?

Once you instruct a solicitor Corban Revell has two main ways of billing.

If you instruct us on a conveyancing matter, we generally ask for a part prepayment of costs at the commencement of the instruction with the balance payable on settlement.  At the commencement of a conveyancing instruction we will provide you with an estimate which we would hope to be an all inclusive figure for our costs and disbursements on the matter. From time to time complications arise and the need for additional time attendances and/or the need to incur additional disbursements may arise. We will discuss that with you if and when that occurs.

For all other types of work such as family or civil litigation or commercial instructions you will be charged for our time spent on taking instructions, researching, carrying out instructions. This is charged by the hour plus GST, disbursements and office charges. We may bill you as frequently as each month or alternatively at the end of the instruction if the matter is completed within a month. In any event we are happy to make arrangements with you which suit your finances.
 

• What are our Terms of Engagement?

You will be provided with a copy of an Agreement for Legal Services and you will be asked to read through it and sign before we start work for you. If you have any questions or concerns about the agreement we are more than happy to sit down and discuss these with you.

Broadly the terms of engagement set out among other things how we bill you and why, what you can expect from us, what we can expect from you, a Privacy Act authorization, our complaints procedure and assurances of confidentiality of your information.
 

• How do we set our fees?

Our lawyers and legal executives each have an hourly rate (GST exclusive). You are welcome to ask about the charge out rate for any of our authors.  Generally we will attempt to provide you with a cost effective solution and will match your circumstances to a person with appropriate seniority and with an hourly rate that produces the most cost efficient result for you. From time to time more senior staff may need to become involved on your file and in our terms of engagement we provide you with indicative hourly rates for those more senior staff.

Fees are based on many things, time and labour, complexity of the instruction, urgency under which you need us to carry out the service, experience of the person advising you, reasonable costs and market fee for similar service.

This will be discussed with you at your initial appointment and detailed in the Terms of Engagement.
 

• What is a retainer?

Depending on the instruction you may be asked to pay money as a form of a deposit before we begin work.  A retainer is calculated by projecting what we believe the disbursements will be for the work.

1.     Professional Indemnity Insurance:

We hold professional indemnity insurance that meets or exceeds the minimum standards specified by the Law Society.  We will provide you with particulars of the minimum standards upon request.
 

2.     Lawyers Fidelity Fund:

The Law Society maintains the Lawyers Fidelity Fund for the purposes of providing clients of lawyers with protection against pecuniary loss arising from theft by lawyers.  The maximum amount payable by the Fidelity Fund by way of compensation to an individual claimant is limited to $100,000.  Except in certain circumstances specified in the Lawyers & Conveyancers Act 2006 the Fidelity Fund does not cover a client for any loss relating to money that a lawyer is instructed to invest on behalf of the client.

Complaint Procedure

We maintain a procedure for handling any complaints by clients, designed to ensure that a complaint is dealt with promptly and fairly.
If you have a complaint about our services or charges, you may refer your complaint to the person in our firm who has overall responsibility for your work.
If you do not wish to refer your complaint to that person, or you are not satisfied with the person’s response to your complaint, you may refer your complaint to Lawrence Ponniah.

He may be contacted as follows:

• By letter;
• By email at lponniah@corbanrevell.co.nz
• By telephoning him at 837-3504

The Law Society also maintains a complaints service and you are able to make a complaint to that service.  To do so you should contact the Law Society as follows.

3.     Persons Responsible for the Work:

The names and status of the person or persons who will have the general carriage of or overall responsibility for the services we provide for you are set out in our letter of engagement.

4.     Limitations on extent of our Obligations or Liability:

Any limitations on the extent of our obligations to you or to any limitation or exclusion of liability are set out in our letter of engagement.