You’re weighing up whether to run a commercial dispute through the courts. The legal merits matter, sure. But before you instruct your lawyers to issue proceedings, you need to understand what you’re really signing up for financially.
Litigation isn’t just expensive. It’s unpredictable. And the cost isn’t just what you pay your own lawyers. It’s the risk that you might pay a portion of the other side’s costs if things don’t go your way.
Most businesses go into litigation with their eyes half-closed on cost. They know lawyers charge by the hour, they’ve heard vague figures, but they don’t grasp what a dispute will actually cost from start to finish. By the time they’re six months in, they’re shocked at the spend and locked into a fight that’s haemorrhaging cash.
This article breaks down what litigation actually costs in Australia, how lawyers charge, what drives fees up or down, and how to use cost as a strategic tool, not just something that happens to you.
Key Takeaways
- Hourly rates vary widely by experience: Junior lawyers might charge $300–$450 per hour, senior associates $500–$650, partners $650–$900+, and barristers $3,000–$10,000+ per day depending on seniority and complexity
- Total dispute costs compound across stages: A straightforward commercial dispute might cost $50,000–$100,000 to get through pleadings and mediation, but $200,000–$400,000+ if you push to a full trial
- Adverse costs risk is real: If you lose, you’ll typically pay 60–75% of the other side’s legal costs on top of your own full bill, which can double your total exposure
- Costs rarely get fully recovered: Even if you win and get a costs order, you’ll usually only recover about 60–70% of what you actually paid your lawyers, leaving a significant gap
- Fixed fees in litigation are limited: Most litigation is still hourly, but you can negotiate staged budgets, capped fees for specific phases, or fixed fees for discrete tasks like drafting pleadings or attending mediation
- Cost is a strategic lever: The threat of escalating costs drives settlement behaviour, and formal offers can shift who pays costs from a certain point forward
Why Understanding the Cost of Litigation Matters Before You Start
Litigation is an investment decision dressed up as a legal problem.
You’re not just deciding whether you have a good case. You’re deciding whether the potential recovery (or the business benefit of winning) justifies the cost, time, and management distraction of going to court.
Most business owners focus on the merits. They fixate on who’s right, who’s wrong, what the contract says. All important. But if you can’t answer the question “What will this cost me, win or lose?” you’re making that decision blind.
And here’s what most people miss: the cost of litigation isn’t static. It escalates. Every month you stay in, costs compound. Interlocutory skirmishes, document discovery, expert reports, pre-trial preparation, each stage adds tens of thousands of dollars.
You need to understand the financial commitment up front. Not just so you can budget for it. So you can make clear-eyed decisions about when to push forward, when to offer settlement, and when to walk away.
Can you articulate the total likely spend if this dispute runs all the way to judgment? Can you explain to your board or your co-founders what the downside cost exposure is if you lose?
If you can’t, you’re not ready to litigate.
The decision to litigate isn’t just about whether you’ll win. It’s about whether the cost and risk profile makes commercial sense for your business at this point in time.
How Litigation Lawyers Charge in Australia
Most litigation lawyers charge by the hour. That’s the default model, and it’s likely what you’ll encounter.
Hourly rates vary based on seniority, location, firm size, and the complexity of your matter. Here’s what you’re looking at in broad terms for commercial litigation in metro areas (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane):
- Junior lawyers and paralegals: $200–$350 per hour (document review, procedural tasks, basic drafting)
- Mid-level lawyers (3–6 years’ experience): $350–$500 per hour (more complex drafting, interlocutory applications, some advocacy)
- Senior associates: $500–$650 per hour (significant responsibility, running large parts of the case, more strategic input)
- Partners: $650–$900+ per hour (strategy, high-stakes advocacy, settlement negotiations, trial work)
- Barristers: Typically briefed separately from your solicitors. Junior barristers might charge $2,500–$5,000 per day; senior counsel $5,000–$10,000+ per day; top silks can exceed $15,000–$20,000 per day for complex commercial trials
Regional rates are often lower, sometimes 20–30% less, but the structure is similar.
How billing actually works
When you engage a litigation lawyer, they’ll usually ask for a retainer upfront. This is money held in their trust account to cover your initial legal fees. Think of it as a deposit. As they work, they draw down from that retainer. When it runs low, they’ll ask you to top it up.
You’ll receive invoices monthly (or sometimes more frequently for fast-moving disputes). The invoice breaks down the time each lawyer spent, what they did, and at what rate. It will also include disbursements, third-party costs like court filing fees, barrister’s fees, expert reports, photocopying, travel.
Disbursements can be substantial. A single expert report might cost $10,000–$30,000. Barristers brief for a two-day trial could easily be $20,000–$40,000. These sit on top of your solicitor’s fees.
Are fixed fees possible in litigation?
Fixed fees are rare for an entire dispute, but they’re sometimes available for discrete stages or tasks:
- Fixed fee for initial advice and pre-action correspondence
- Capped fee for drafting your statement of claim or defence
- Fixed fee for attending a one-day mediation
- Staged budgets where you agree a cap for each phase (pleadings, discovery, trial prep)
Some firms offer blended fee arrangements: a lower hourly rate plus a success uplift if you win. But pure contingency fees (no win, no fee) are heavily restricted in most Australian commercial litigation. You’ll almost always be on the hook for your own legal costs regardless of outcome.
If you want cost certainty, ask your lawyer upfront: “Can we fix or cap the fee for this stage?” For straightforward tasks, the answer might be yes. For a full trial with unpredictable procedural twists, probably not. But the question is worth asking.
Ask your lawyer to quote you a range for each major stage (e.g. pleadings, mediation, trial prep) rather than just a total figure. That lets you make go/no-go decisions at checkpoints, rather than committing to the full cost upfront.
What a Court Case Can Cost From Start to Finish
This is the section most articles dodge. They’ll give you hourly rates, but they won’t tell you what a dispute actually costs end to end.
The truth: it depends. But here’s a framework to help you think about order of magnitude.
Stage 1: Initial advice and pre-action steps
Before you even file in court, there’s work to be done. Reviewing documents, assessing your legal position, drafting a letter of demand or responding to one, considering alternative dispute resolution.
Typical cost range: $5,000–$15,000.
For straightforward matters (debt recovery, simple contract dispute), this might be on the lower end. For complex commercial disputes with multiple parties or tricky legal issues, it can push higher.
Stage 2: Issuing proceedings and pleadings
You’ve decided to file. Your lawyer drafts the statement of claim (or defence if you’re the respondent). The other side responds. There might be a reply, or amendments, or an application to strike out parts of the pleadings.
Typical cost range: $15,000–$50,000.
This stage sets the boundaries of the dispute. It’s where your lawyers crystallise the legal issues. Good pleadings drafted early can save you money later. Poor pleadings lead to costly amendments and interlocutory fights.
Stage 3: Interlocutory applications
Litigation isn’t a straight line from pleadings to trial. There are procedural skirmishes along the way. Applications for security for costs. Applications to compel further discovery. Applications for summary judgment or to strike out parts of the other side’s case.
Each application costs money. A straightforward interlocutory application might cost $5,000–$15,000 in legal fees. A contested, complex application with multiple affidavits and a half-day hearing could easily be $20,000–$40,000.
Typical cumulative cost for this stage: $10,000–$80,000+ depending on how litigious the parties are.
Stage 4: Discovery and evidence gathering
This is often where costs explode.
Discovery (called “disclosure” in Federal Court) is the process of identifying, reviewing, and producing relevant documents. If your case involves ten years of emails, contracts, and financial records, this can be a monumental task.
Your lawyers will need to review thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of documents. They’ll draft lists of documents, produce them to the other side, and review what the other side produces.
You’ll also prepare witness statements, brief experts, and gather evidence to prove your case.
Typical cost range for discovery and evidence: $30,000–$150,000+.
The cost depends on:
- Volume of documents
- Number of witnesses
- Whether you need expert reports (and how many)
- How organised your records are
If you can narrow the scope of discovery early, by agreeing time periods, key individuals, or categories of documents, you can significantly reduce this cost.
Stage 5: Mediation and settlement negotiations
Most disputes settle before trial. Courts actively encourage mediation, and for good reason: it’s faster, cheaper, and gives you control over the outcome.
A one-day mediation might cost $10,000–$25,000 in legal fees (preparation, attendance, follow-up). Add the mediator’s fee (often split between the parties): $5,000–$10,000 per party.
If you settle at mediation, this is where your cost story ends. You’ve spent, say, $80,000–$150,000 getting to this point, and you walk away with a commercial resolution.
If mediation fails, you push on to trial.
Stage 6: Trial preparation and hearing
This is the most expensive stage.
Preparing for trial involves finalising evidence, drafting outlines of argument, briefing barristers, preparing cross-examination strategies, and coordinating witnesses. It’s intensive, senior-lawyer work.
A typical commercial trial runs 3–10 days (sometimes longer for complex matters). You’ll brief a barrister for the full trial, and your solicitors will be there throughout.
Typical cost range for trial prep and hearing: $100,000–$300,000+.
For a straightforward two-day trial with one senior associate and a mid-level barrister, you might be at the lower end. For a complex five-day trial with a senior silk and a full legal team, you could be well over $250,000 just for this stage.
Putting it together: total cost from start to finish
Let’s take a realistic example. You’re running a $500,000 commercial dispute. It’s moderately complex: contract breach, some factual disputes, one or two experts.
- Initial advice and pre-action: $10,000
- Pleadings: $25,000
- Interlocutory skirmishes: $30,000
- Discovery and evidence: $80,000
- Mediation (which fails): $20,000
- Trial prep and 4-day hearing: $180,000
Total: $345,000.
You’ve spent nearly 70% of the claim value on legal fees. And that’s before you factor in the risk of paying the other side’s costs if you lose.
Now imagine the dispute is only worth $200,000. Same cost profile. You can see the problem.
The cost of litigation often has little relationship to the amount in dispute. A $200,000 claim can cost $150,000 to litigate. A $2 million claim might cost $300,000. Always stress-test whether the numbers make sense before you commit.
Understanding Costs Orders and the Risk of Paying the Other Side
Here’s the part most people don’t fully grasp until it’s too late: if you lose, you don’t just pay your own lawyers. You usually pay a portion of the other side’s legal costs as well.
This is called an adverse costs order, and it’s a standard feature of Australian litigation.
The general rule: costs follow the event
In most Australian courts, the losing party pays the winning party’s costs. Not all of them, usually around 60–75% of the winner’s actual legal spend, but enough to hurt.
So if you lose a case and the other side spent $300,000 on legal fees, the court might order you to pay $180,000–$225,000 of their costs, on top of the $300,000 you’ve already paid your own lawyers.
Total exposure if you lose: $480,000–$525,000.
That’s the downside you need to understand before you file.
Standard costs vs indemnity costs
There are two main bases for costs orders:
Standard (party-party) costs: This is the default. You pay a reasonable portion of the winner’s costs, typically assessed at 60–75% of what they actually paid their lawyers.
Indemnity costs: A higher rate of recovery, often 80–90% or more. Indemnity costs are only ordered in specific circumstances: where a party has acted unreasonably, rejected a reasonable settlement offer (more on that below), or engaged in serious misconduct.
Most cases result in standard costs. But the threat of indemnity costs is a powerful settlement tool.
What about if you win?
Good news: you’ll get a costs order in your favour. The other side will be ordered to pay your costs.
Bad news: you won’t get it all back.
Even if you win, the costs you recover from the other side are usually assessed at the standard (party-party) rate. That means you’ll recover about 60–70% of what you actually paid your lawyers.
Let’s say you win your case. You’ve spent $400,000 on legal fees. The court orders the other side to pay your costs. Those costs are later assessed (often by a costs assessor or registrar) at $260,000.
You’re still $140,000 out of pocket.
That’s a significant gap. And it doesn’t include your time, the management distraction, or the opportunity cost of capital tied up in the dispute.
A good litigation lawyer will explain this up front. Winning doesn’t mean you get made whole on costs. It means you get most of it back.
How costs orders actually work in practice
After judgment, the winning party prepares a bill of costs and serves it on the losing party. If the parties can’t agree on the amount, the bill goes to formal assessment (called “taxation” in some jurisdictions).
The assessment process itself can take months and cost several thousand dollars in legal fees. It’s not automatic, and it’s not fast.
In the meantime, you’ve already paid your own lawyers in full. You’re waiting to recover costs from the other side, and they might appeal or drag their feet on payment.
This is why commercial litigation is a cashflow issue, not just a legal one.
Before you litigate, model two scenarios: one where you win and recover 65% of your costs, and one where you lose and pay 70% of the other side’s costs on top of your own. If both scenarios are financially tolerable, proceed. If not, rethink your strategy.
Factors That Drive Litigation Costs Up or Down
Not all disputes cost the same. Some cases settle quickly for $30,000 in legal fees. Others drag on for years and cost $500,000+.
What makes the difference?
Complexity of the facts and law
Straightforward debt recovery: relatively cheap. You’re chasing an unpaid invoice, the facts are simple, the law is settled.
Complex shareholder oppression claim involving ten years of company records, allegations of fraud, and novel legal arguments: expensive.
The more factual disputes there are, the more evidence you need. The more novel or contentious the legal issues, the more research and senior lawyer time you’ll need.
The amount in dispute
In theory, higher-value claims justify higher legal spend. In practice, there’s often a mismatch.
A $100,000 claim can cost $80,000 to litigate if it’s factually complex. A $2 million claim might cost $250,000 if the issues are narrow and the parties are reasonable.
But generally, the bigger the stakes, the more both sides are willing to spend. High-value disputes tend to attract more interlocutory warfare, more experts, and longer trials.
Number of parties, documents, and witnesses
More parties = more complexity. Each party has its own lawyers, its own interests, and its own procedural applications.
More documents = more time spent reviewing, cataloguing, and producing them. Discovery in a dispute involving five employees over three years is manageable. Discovery involving fifty employees over ten years is a cost disaster.
More witnesses = more statements to draft, more cross-examination to prepare, more hearing time.
If you can narrow the cast of characters and the volume of evidence early, you’ll save a fortune.
How reasonable (or unreasonable) the other side is
This is huge.
If the other side is pragmatic, willing to engage in genuine settlement discussions, and not running unnecessary applications, costs stay contained.
If the other side is litigious, refuses to concede anything, and fights every procedural step, costs explode. You’ll spend tens of thousands responding to applications that should never have been brought.
You can’t control the other side’s behaviour. But you can recognise it early and factor it into your cost planning.
Court and procedural intensity
Federal Court tends to be more expensive than Magistrates Court, simply because Federal Court cases are usually more complex and involve more senior lawyers.
Some courts actively case-manage disputes, setting tight timetables and discouraging unnecessary interlocutory applications. Others are more hands-off.
Arbitration can sometimes be cheaper than court (fewer procedural steps, faster resolution), but not always. Arbitrators’ fees can be substantial, and there’s no automatic right to costs recovery in many arbitrations.
The tribunal or forum you choose affects cost. Ask your lawyer which venue makes sense for your dispute, not just legally but commercially.
The single biggest cost driver in litigation is volume: volume of documents, volume of issues, volume of interlocutory skirmishes. If you can narrow scope early, you’ll cut costs dramatically.
How to Manage and Budget for Litigation Costs
Litigation costs don’t have to spiral out of control. But you need to manage them actively, not just receive invoices and pay them.
Here’s how.
Get a realistic cost estimate upfront
When you first instruct your lawyer, ask for a written cost estimate. Not a vague range (“it could be anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000”), but a staged breakdown:
- Cost to draft and file your claim: $X
- Cost to get through pleadings and initial interlocutory steps: $Y
- Cost to reach mediation: $Z
- Cost to trial if mediation fails: $W
Your lawyer can’t predict the future, but they can give you ballparks based on experience.
And critically: ask them to update the estimate every few months. Litigation is dynamic. New issues emerge, the other side behaves unexpectedly, procedural steps take longer than anticipated.
If your estimate was $100,000 and you’re six months in having spent $90,000 with no end in sight, that’s a red flag. You need to recalibrate.
Set a budget linked to the claim size and your business priorities
How much are you willing to spend to win this dispute? Not “however much it takes”, that’s not a strategy, it’s a recipe for haemorrhaging cash.
Think in terms of spend-to-claim ratio. If you’re chasing $200,000, are you willing to spend $150,000 in legal fees? Probably not. Maybe you cap it at $80,000 and reassess if you hit that threshold.
Or maybe this isn’t about the money. Maybe it’s about protecting your business reputation, or setting a precedent with a difficult customer. In that case, the spend-to-claim ratio matters less, but you still need a number in mind.
Set a budget. Share it with your lawyer. Review it regularly.
Ask for options: staged work and fixed fees where possible
Most litigation is billed hourly, but you can still structure the engagement to give yourself cost control.
Ask your lawyer:
- “Can we fix or cap the fee for drafting the defence?”
- “Can you give me a staged budget: $X to get to mediation, then we reassess?”
- “Can we use a junior lawyer for document review and save partner time for strategy and advocacy?”
Good lawyers will work with you on this. They want you to make informed decisions, not run out of budget halfway through.
Use your own resources to reduce billable time
The less time your lawyers spend on tasks you can do yourself, the less you’ll pay.
You can:
- Organise and index documents before handing them to your lawyers (rather than paying them $350/hour to sort through unsorted files)
- Prepare a chronology of key events
- Identify relevant witnesses and flag key evidence
- Handle routine correspondence directly where appropriate
Your lawyers should be doing high-value work: strategy, drafting, advocacy, negotiation. Not administrative tasks that you or your internal team can handle.
Review invoices and query anything unclear
Don’t just pay invoices without reading them.
If you see charges that seem excessive, or descriptions that are vague (“correspondence re matter”), ask for clarification. A good lawyer will explain. An unreasonable lawyer will bristle. That tells you something.
Costs disputes between lawyers and clients are surprisingly common. If you genuinely believe you’ve been overcharged, you have rights: you can apply for a costs assessment, negotiate a reduction, or in extreme cases, complain to the legal regulator.
But the best approach is to stay on top of invoices from the start, so problems don’t fester.
Set a budget threshold where you pause and reassess. For example: “If we hit $100,000 in costs, we stop and have a hard conversation about whether to continue, settle, or walk away.” That threshold forces discipline and prevents runaway spend.
Using Cost as Part of Your Litigation Strategy
Here’s something most business owners don’t realise: cost isn’t just a burden. It’s a strategic tool.
The threat of escalating costs influences settlement behaviour. Both sides know that pushing to trial is expensive. That knowledge creates leverage.
How costs drive settlement negotiations
Imagine you’re six months into a dispute. You’ve each spent $80,000. Your lawyer tells you that pushing to trial will cost another $150,000 per side.
Suddenly, a settlement that looked unattractive a few months ago starts to make sense. Why spend $150,000 more (and risk paying the other side’s costs if you lose) when you can settle now, recover something, and move on?
This dynamic plays out in almost every dispute. As costs mount, the pain of continuing increases, and the attraction of settlement grows.
A smart litigant uses this. You can:
- Make an early, reasonable settlement offer to cap your opponent’s costs (and yours)
- Use formal cost-shifting offers (see below) to increase pressure
- Time settlement discussions strategically: just before a major cost escalation (like trial) when both sides feel the financial pinch
Formal offers and cost-shifting mechanisms
Australian courts recognise formal offers that affect who pays costs from a certain point forward. The most common is the Calderbank offer (named after a UK case, but widely used in Australia).
Here’s how it works in plain language:
You make a written offer to settle. You mark it “without prejudice except as to costs”. The other side rejects it. The case continues. At trial, you achieve a result that’s better than (or equal to) your offer.
The court can then order the other side to pay your costs on an indemnity basis from the date of your offer. That’s a much higher rate of recovery, sometimes 80–90% instead of the usual 60–70%.
This puts enormous pressure on the other side. If they reject a reasonable offer and do worse at trial, they’re exposed to a punitive costs order.
Different courts have specific rules for formal offers (e.g. offers of compromise under the Federal Court Rules, or equivalent state court rules). The details vary, but the principle is the same: make a reasonable offer, and if the other side unreasonably rejects it, they face increased costs risk.
Your lawyer should be using this tool strategically. If they’re not talking to you about formal offers, ask why not.
When to walk away from a cost perspective
Not every dispute is worth fighting.
If you’re three months in, you’ve spent $50,000, and your lawyer tells you the case is weak and trial will cost another $200,000, the smart play might be to cut your losses.
That’s not giving up. It’s business.
Litigation is not about pride. It’s about whether the investment makes sense. Sometimes the best decision is to settle for less than you think you deserve, or to walk away entirely, because the alternative, spending $250,000 to vindicate a $150,000 claim, is commercial madness.
Ask yourself regularly: “If I were making this decision today, knowing what I now know about the merits, the cost, and the other side’s behaviour, would I still litigate?”
If the answer is no, it’s time to rethink.
The most expensive litigation mistakes happen when parties treat cost as something that just happens, rather than something they can manage and use strategically. Treat it as a lever, not a burden.
Questions to Ask Your Litigation Lawyer Before You Commit
Before you instruct a lawyer to run your dispute, have this conversation. These questions separate lawyers who are transparent and strategic from those who just want billable hours.
1. What will this cost from start to finish, in realistic terms?
Not “it depends”, that’s a cop-out. Push for staged estimates. What does it cost to get to mediation? What does trial add?
2. What’s the likely range of costs if I win vs if I lose?
You need both scenarios. Winning costs you $X and you recover $Y. Losing costs you $X plus $Z in adverse costs. Model the downside.
3. What are the key cost drivers in my case, and can we control them?
Is it the volume of documents? The number of experts? Interlocutory skirmishes? Identify the cost drivers and ask whether they’re negotiable or manageable.
4. Can we cap or fix fees for specific stages?
Maybe not for the whole case, but for drafting, or mediation, or a specific application? Ask.
5. How often will you update me on costs, and what triggers a review?
Monthly updates? When you hit 80% of the estimate? Make it explicit.
6. What’s your view on settlement, and when should we revisit that conversation?
Good lawyers talk about settlement early and often. If your lawyer is only focused on winning at trial, that’s a red flag.
7. What’s the realistic recovery rate if I win, and what am I likely left paying out of pocket?
Don’t assume you’ll get everything back. Ask what the gap looks like in practice.
8. What cost-shifting mechanisms (like formal offers) should we be using, and when?
If your lawyer isn’t proactively discussing Calderbank offers or formal offers of compromise, they’re not thinking strategically about costs.
9. How do you bill, and can I see a sample invoice from a similar matter?
Transparency builds trust. If they won’t show you what an invoice looks like, walk away.
10. What happens if this case costs more than I can afford halfway through?
You need an exit plan. Can you pause and settle? Can you walk away? What are the consequences?
The quality of your lawyer’s answers to these questions tells you more about how they’ll run your case than their technical expertise. If they’re vague, defensive, or dismissive, find someone else.
What Happens to Costs if You Settle Before Trial
Settlement changes the cost picture dramatically.
If you settle at mediation, say, six months in, you’ve capped your cost exposure. You’ve spent $80,000, but you’re not on the hook for the additional $150,000–$250,000 that trial would cost. And critically, you’ve avoided the risk of paying the other side’s costs if you lose.
Most settlements include a costs agreement. The most common approach: each party bears its own costs. You walk away having spent $80,000, they walk away having spent $80,000, and you both move on.
Sometimes, as part of the settlement, one side agrees to pay a contribution to the other side’s costs. For example, the defendant might pay $200,000 in settlement, plus $30,000 towards the plaintiff’s legal costs.
The costs component is negotiable. Everything is negotiable in settlement. But the default in most commercial settlements is “no order as to costs”, each side wears their own.
From a cost perspective, settling early is almost always the smart play. Even if you settle for less than you think you deserve, you’ve saved yourself the additional cost, time, and risk of pushing to trial.
Settlement is not failure. It’s pragmatism.
Most disputes settle, and most settle because both sides realise the cost and risk of continuing outweigh the benefit of a contested hearing. The parties who settle early generally spend less and move on faster.
The Bottom Line: Litigation Costs Are Manageable If You’re Disciplined
Litigation in Australia is expensive. There’s no getting around that.
But it doesn’t have to be a black box. You can understand the cost structure, set budgets, manage scope, and use cost strategically to drive better outcomes.
The businesses that control litigation costs well do a few things consistently:
- They get realistic cost estimates up front and update them regularly
- They set spending thresholds and reassess at those checkpoints
- They use their own resources where appropriate to reduce billable time
- They ask hard questions about settlement early and often
- They treat litigation as an investment decision, not a moral crusade
The businesses that lose control of costs do the opposite. They assume their lawyers will “sort it out”, they don’t review invoices, they let the case drift without cost discipline, and they wake up two years in having spent $400,000 on a $250,000 claim.
Which camp you’re in is largely up to you.
The right litigation lawyer won’t just run your case. They’ll help you understand what it costs, manage that cost actively, and use it as part of your strategy. If your lawyer isn’t having those conversations with you, find one who will.
Litigation is complex, yes. But the cost pathway shouldn’t be a mystery. With the right approach, you can make informed, disciplined decisions that give you the best chance of a good outcome, without bankrupting yourself in the process.
Disclaimer:
This article provides general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Litigation costs vary significantly depending on the nature of the dispute, the court or tribunal, the parties’ conduct, and many other factors. You should obtain specific advice from a qualified litigation lawyer about your circumstances before making any decisions. Aptum Legal is a litigation-only commercial and tax disputes firm with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. If you’d like to discuss your dispute and understand the likely cost profile, get in touch.
