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Why Most Law Firms Avoid Pricing
Most Sydney law firms will not put anything about pricing on their website. We understand why. The Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) requires that any estimate we give reflects the facts of your matter, not a generic figure designed to pull in enquiries, and any price list a firm published would either be wrong for most readers or buried under so many exceptions that it told you nothing.
We think there is a better approach, which is to explain plainly how the bill is built before you engage anyone. Lazarus Legal is a Sydney commercial, business, contract, trade mark and intellectual property firm, and the three billing structures below cover how we charge across all of that work.
Fixed Fees
Contracts, agreements, trade mark filings. The price is agreed before the work starts, with one round of amendment included.
Hourly billing
Litigation
Before you read on
Terms you will come across
Some of these appear on legal bills and in engagement letters across the whole profession, not just ours. Worth knowing before you sign anything, with any firm.
Round of amendment
One consolidated set of changes from you to a draft we have sent. You mark up everything in one go, we revise once and return it. Several separate revisions over different days count as several rounds.
Scope creep
Work that was not part of the original job but gets added as it goes along. A new party, extra clauses after a draft is done, or a fresh idea that restarts the drafting.
Blended rate
The average hourly rate when a senior and a junior lawyer work together. The senior sets strategy; the junior does the work that does not need a senior. It keeps cost down without dropping quality.
Monies in trust
Money you pay us in advance that we hold in a separate, regulated account on your behalf. It stays your money until we have done the work and billed for it.
Disbursement
An out-of-pocket cost we pay on your behalf, separate from our fees. Court fees, search fees, expert reports, barristers' fees. Passed on at cost, with nothing added.
Costs disclosure
A written notice we must give you under section 174 before serious work starts. It sets out our estimate, how fees are worked out, and your right to question the bill.
Party-and-party costs
What the losing side in court is ordered to pay the winner. In NSW, usually around 60 to 70 per cent of what you have actually paid your own lawyer, not the full amount.
AML Tranche 2
From 1 July 2026, firms doing certain work must verify client identity. In short: ID documents at the start of some matters. More below.
Fixed fees
Fixed fees suit work with a clear finish line. Most of our commercial work fits here: drafting and reviewing contracts, shareholders agreements, employment agreements, terms and conditions, non-disclosure agreements, and standard structuring tasks. Trade mark applications fit too, because the deliverable is a filing lodged with IP Australia in defined classes.
The advantage of a fixed fee is that you know the cost before the work starts. You can plan around it, and you are not weighing up the cost of every email against the value of the advice. We can scope the job properly at the outset, and neither side is watching the clock.
It would be dishonest to pretend artificial intelligence has not changed how this work gets done. First-pass drafting, comparison against precedent, and clause-by-clause risk review are all much faster than they were three years ago. Our lawyers still review and refine everything as they always have, but the time it takes has decreased, and our fixed fees have come down with it. The saving goes to you, not us.
$1,650
+ GST
To give you a sense of it, a recent standard commercial agreement drafted from instructions, with one round of amendment included, was charged at this. We can’t quote it for your matter without understanding what you need first, but it shows roughly where this kind of work sits.
What one round of amendment means, and why it's limited
When we quote a fixed fee for drafting, the fee assumes we deliver a draft, you mark up your changes in one consolidated pass, and we revise it once before sending the final version. That is one round of amendment.
We limit it to one round to stop scope creep. If we agreed to revise a document over and over, with each version sparking a new thought on your side or a new round of comments from your team, the work would grow without limit while the fee stayed fixed. The same happens when a counterparty starts negotiating clauses, because at that point, we are no longer drafting your document; we are negotiating someone else’s changes into it, which is a bigger job.
Where we can see in advance that the work will involve several decision-makers or a counterparty in active negotiation, we will usually quote the first draft as fixed and the negotiation as hourly, or quote a wider fixed fee that allows for more rounds. Either way, you will know which applies before you sign.
How to prepare so you need fewer rounds
The biggest cause of extra rounds is not knowing exactly what you want the document to do before we draft it. The more clearly you have thought that through, the closer the first draft lands, and the less it costs you. Before our first call, it’s worth sitting with these. They’re less about logistics and more about getting clear on what you actually need.
Making your one round count
When the first draft arrives, read it twice: once for the overall shape, once for the detail. Mark up everything in one pass and send it back as a single set of changes. If several people in your business need to weigh in, collect all their comments before they come to us rather than sending feedback piecemeal.
Worth asking as you review
- Does this reflect the deal we actually agreed?
- Does it cover the situation I'm most worried about?
- What does it say about the other side not holding up their end?
- Is there anything here I don't understand?
STRUCTURE 02
Hourly Billing
Hourly billing is the right structure when the scope cannot be pinned down at the start. Ongoing advice, complex negotiations, regulatory questions that change shape as more facts come out, and disputes that are still forming all fall here. The common thread is that the time required depends on how the matter unfolds, and that cannot honestly be quoted as a fixed price.
Lawyer fees per hour in Australia
Commercial hourly rates in Australia commonly run from around $400 plus GST for a junior solicitor to $700 or more for a senior practitioner, with specialist and senior partners charging higher again. The rate on its own tells you little, though, because what matters is how many hours the work takes and who does them.
The profession has been moving away from rigid six-minute time billing, and that shift has sped up in 2026. The old model rounded every email and short call up into a six-minute unit, so a 90-second call could land on the bill as a quarter of an hour. Clients can see that, and they are right to dislike it. The Law Society of NSW has been pushing firms toward fairer models, and the principle is simple: a bill should match the work that was done, not get rounded up by the clock.
Our approach is simple. Where we bill by time, we record it honestly. A two-minute call is a two-minute call. The time on the bill is the time we worked.
The senior and junior blend
Most matters of any size run on a mix of senior and junior lawyers. The senior sets the strategy, drafts the parts that need experience, and signs off on what goes out. The junior handles the rest: reviewing material, first drafts of routine sections, correspondence, searches. That mix is what keeps a matter affordable without losing quality.
Across a typical commercial matter, our blended rate works out to around $550 plus GST per hour. A heavily senior-led matter sits above that; a mostly junior-led one with senior oversight sits below. Before we start, we tell you who is working on your file and at what rate.
holding your money safely
Holding monies in trust
On hourly matters, and especially on litigation, we will often ask you to pay money into our trust account before work begins. Trust money is governed by the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) and the Uniform General Rules 2015. The rules around it are strict, and they exist to protect you, not us.
Held Separately
Your money sits in a separate, regulated account. We can't use it for our own costs or anyone else's matter.
Billed before drawn
Before we take any of it in payment, we send you a bill first. Disbursements come out against an itemised account.
Refunded on request
Stop using us at any point and whatever we haven't billed against is yours. We have to refund it. That's the law.
AML Tranche 2: what changes from 1 July 2026
From 1 July 2026, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) extends to cover lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and other professional services. This change, known as Tranche 2, is the biggest shift in law firm compliance in a generation. AUSTRAC enrolment opened on 31 March 2026, and the obligations themselves start on 1 July 2026.
For a law firm, Tranche 2 means checking and verifying client identity at the start of a matter, keeping an eye on things as the matter goes on, reporting anything genuinely suspicious, and keeping a written program that sets out how the firm manages money laundering risk.
Not every matter is caught. The law targets what it calls designated services, which are particular kinds of work involving moving money, setting up or transferring companies and structures, or holding client property as part of a deal. Pure litigation that does not involve trust money usually sits outside it. Commercial work involving trust money, structuring or property is almost always inside it.
What this means for you
When you engage us on a matter that’s caught, we’ll ask for identity documents at the start, verify them, and keep a record. It’s not onerous, but it’s now a legal requirement for every firm, not a preference of ours.
Not sure which one fits your matter?
Fifteen minutes on the phone is usually enough to tell you which structure applies and roughly what it costs.
Litigation costs
Litigation is the most expensive work we do, and the trust balance we ask for at the start of a contested matter is much higher than on a commercial file. The reasons are worth understanding before you decide to go to court, because the real cost of running a dispute to a hearing is usually well above what people expect, and we would rather you knew that at the start than found out halfway through.
Why the trust balance is so high
Litigation runs on disbursements, and nearly all of them are paid before the step they relate to, not after. A District Court filing fee is paid the day the claim is filed, not when judgment comes down. An expert’s report is usually paid for at the start, not on delivery. A barrister briefed for a hearing expects fees on the brief, and again for the hearing days. All of it comes out of trust, so the balance has to be enough to keep the matter moving without us coming back to you for a top-up every fortnight.
On top of that, fees in a contested matter build faster than in commercial work, because the court sets the timetable, not you. There are deadlines for pleadings, evidence, mediation and hearings, and if something has to be filed by Friday, it gets filed by Friday no matter how much work that takes. The trust balance has to keep that running.
Why barristers' fees are separate from our fees
The legal profession has two branches. Solicitors run the matter: managing the file, preparing documents, dealing with the other side, everything off the courtroom floor. Barristers are independent specialists in court appearances and in opinions on hard points of law. They are briefed through the solicitor for a specific job, and they are not part of our firm.
Because a barrister is independent of us, their fees are not our fees. We pay the barrister out of trust on your behalf and pass that cost on to you as a disbursement, with nothing added. The figure on your bill for counsel is exactly what the barrister charged us.
There is a practical upside to this for you. Because a barrister is briefed only for the parts of a matter that genuinely need one, you are not paying firm-level overheads on courtroom work. The two branches are built to work together, and the cost structure follows from that.
Court filing fees, lodgement fees and search fees are disbursements as well, not fees of ours. They are set by the court or registry, paid to the court or registry, and recorded against your matter at cost.
What you get at the start of a litigation matter
Before we open a litigation file, we give you a written costs disclosure under section 174. It sets out our estimate of total costs, how our fees are worked out, the main disbursements we expect at this stage, and the trust amount we are asking for upfront. The estimate is our honest read on where the matter is likely to go, based on what we know when we give it. If the matter changes and our view of the cost changes with it, we have to give you an updated estimate in writing, and we do.
Summary
In Short
Fixed Fees
Defined work with a clear deliverable, like contracts, agreements and trade mark filings. Price set before work starts, one round of amendment included.
Hourly billing
Ongoing or open-ended work. Commercial rates commonly $400 to $700 plus GST depending on seniority; our blend averages around $550. Time recorded honestly, not rounded up.
Litigation
Hourly fees plus big disbursements paid from trust. The balance is high because court fees, expert reports and barristers' fees all fall due before the matter ends.
- Ready when you are
Talk to us before you commit to anything
If you have a job in front of you and want to know what it would cost to do properly, the quickest way to find out is to call. Fifteen minutes is usually enough for us to work out which billing structure fits and give you a realistic estimate before you decide whether to go ahead.
No retainer. No commitment. No surprise bill. Lazarus Legal is a Sydney commercial, business, contract, trade mark and intellectual property firm based in Bondi Junction, acting for clients across New South Wales and nationally.
Questions clients ask most
Why do most law firms not publish their prices?
The Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) requires our estimate to reflect the facts of your matter rather than a generic average, and to set out how our fees are worked out before we begin. A published price list would either be wrong for your situation or buried under so many exceptions that it told you nothing. A short conversation gives you a real number tied to what you actually need.
If I win my case, does the other side pay my legal fees?
Sometimes, but rarely all of them. The winning side in NSW litigation is usually awarded party-and-party costs, paid by the loser. In practice these cover around 60 to 70 per cent of what you have actually paid your lawyer, not the full amount. The gap between what you owe us and what the other side has to pay is something we explain at the start of any contested matter, because it affects whether going to court makes sense for you.
Are barristers' fees included in your hourly rate?