I also had a Brisbane Lawyer attempting to charge me over $200 following an email in which I explained my situation in regards to a land boundary matter and asked if he had the background to represent me.
Following advice from consumer affairs and Law society I sent him $10 as he then could not take me to court for not paying him, but if he went to court would have to justify the costs between my $10 and his bill. I learned then to state in my preliminary email that “I am not seeking advice at this present point…”
Had similar some years ago with some blow-in from Darwin who told me if I didn’t want to be charged for his time to make an appointment I should have called his secretary - I guess I was lucky as my reaction was nowhere near as well researched or polite as yours. Never heard from him again. It beggars belief that someone should even momentarily consider it appropriate to bill for that kind of thing, let alone at $550 an hour!
Also in terms of competence, I had a period working in a court setting in which lawyers were appearing. While some were excellent in their representation there was a number of them (mostly from country) which were so incompetent they did not do even the most basic work to inform themselves before appearing to represent their clients - So my view is they are like any other profession. Some are good, some are lazy, some are crooks - buyer beware
A few years ago I had a lawyer make a few simple changes to a will he had drawn up a some years previously. I was charged $1,150 for the privilege. I have not used lawyers since.
I recently got quotes from the local legals to read and comment on some minor changes I made to my simple, straight forward 2-page will, and my partner’s mirror version, so technically 2 wills. $750 +/- including execution and notarisation. My opinion is @clubman got ripped $1,150 to do simple changes to the lawyers own work but considering, I did not ask them to do any word processing or data entry, just reading but they took it a bit further.
When I got the $750 quotes one office stated they used the Victoria standard schedules of fees. google will find them for you and best read with too much alcohol or at least a great sense of humour.
This schedule could be entertaining for some. The first item that really caught my eye was receiving documents by emails, billed at $13.50 per first page and $2.60 per subsequent pages. The fees on page 7 are precious as are most others.
Will they do it for that price if you don’t list them as the executor?
I was billed for making an appointment via email … at least they tried. No such thing as ‘admin’ or ‘business development’. All I can suggest is that if a lawyer needs to charge $750 for 4 pages of will with slight mods, my guess would be they are either hopeless, dishonest or both. I’d probably run with both
First page of an email $13.50, subsequent pages $2.50 each? Does this include the legal disclaimers that most companies automatically include on all outgoing emails? Does it include the email to which you are responding?
Absolutely egregious charges! Formal acknowledgement of a communication (i.e. a form email saying yep, got your message): $34.00!!!
Why is it that the legal profession is held in such disrepute, again?
