How does Northside Lawyers keep your costs down?

We are constantly on the lookout for ways to lower your legal costs.

We have a commitment to providing legal services that are affordable – this is not just a catchphrase, we really mean it. We pride ourselves on providing a first-class service, without a first-class price.

• Bill Morris was a Magistrate in South Australia for about 8 years and he has seen firsthand how expensive access to justice really is. In his view legal costs need to be actively considered and reviewed by the lawyer at all material times to see how they can be reduced or costs avoided.
• The many years of experience of our lawyers enables us to identify the most cost-effective way to achieve the outcome you are seeking. We pass that cost saving onto you.
• We do all that we can to ensure that our clients’ matters are resolved at the earliest possible opportunity which saves on unnecessary time and expense in legal fees.
• You will not see Northside Lawyers advertising on late night TV, or huge billboards on the side of the road displaying cute dogs and cats. This is because we are determined to run our office on a low advertising costs and low overheads basis. That way, we can keep our charges to our clients lower.
• Our best advertising is that we get about 60% of our new clients coming to us on the recommendation of past clients who we have worked for or people who already know us for other reasons. You can’t ask for a better recommendation than that.
• We do not use credit card facilities like many other lawyers and businesses. This is because of the simple fact that we do not have to pass onto you in our hourly rate the credit card charges imposed on us for using the card facilities. This keeps our hourly rate low as we do not have to recover the additional expense.
• We utilise the best workplace software and computer equipment to make our tasks more efficient. Amongst other thing we deploy software, including speech to text software that reduces the time taken to administer your file. By creating documents using a high level of automation we pass those cost savings in our time on to our clients. It is in no small part due to technological innovation that we have not had to increase our current hourly rate for the last 6 years.
• Whenever possible we consider the internal use of para-legal or law clerks to do the routine work on clients’ files which is work that does not require any special legal skill and we charge that routine work at the lower rate, not at the lawyer’s rate. In this way we pass this cost saving onto you.
• We ask our clients to deposit funds into our trust account for the estimated cost of the work to be done and we ask for those funds to be deposited in advance of the work being done.
• That money is held in trust your name and used to pay our invoices, but only after you have approved the invoice for payment. Any unused funds are returned to you at the end of your matter.
• This means that unlike other lawyers we do not have to increase our hourly rate to take into account losses from unpaid accounts and further, we do not need to pay extra office staff to send out reminders to clients to pay their accounts. This keeps our office running costs down and lower running costs means we can charge a lower rate to our clients.
• You will find that when you call us, our front of house staff will try to assist you with the reasons that you have called as it may be a matter that does not require legal skill or knowledge. They are experienced staff – most of them are trainee lawyers. It costs less for the front of house staff to resolve your enquiry than engaging the lawyer. This lessens your legal costs.
• We don’t have many permanent office staff. We employ our office staff as part-timers and casuals so that we have the flexibility to cater for busy periods without having paid staff sitting around idle when there is less administrative work required. Our staff like this arrangement too, especially those who have commitments for the care of children.