Professional fees in family and civil law matters

The grants of aid issued in family and civil law matters are maximum fee grants of aid practitioners may claim for the actual professional time spent on a matter, up to the maximum allowable.

Professional time is not claimable for:

• work undertaken beyond that provided for by the grant of aid
• work of a merely administrative, secretarial or clerical nature, such as data entry, diarising appointments, typing letters, making travel arrangements, searching for documents or files etc.
• the completion of legal aid application or extension requests
• the drafting of requests for the review of legal aid decisions
• correspondence with Legal Aid Queensland

The hourly rates and maximum fees payable for each stage of a matter are detailed in Legal Aid Queensland’s scale of fees.

The maximum fees have been set with consideration given to the appropriate number of hours Legal Aid Queensland regards as necessary to complete each stage of proceedings and applying the applicable hourly rate for each jurisdiction.

As the grants of aid that issue in family and civil law matters are based on hourly fees practitioners are required to time record all professional attendances so that their claims can be substantiated by Legal Aid Queensland auditors. The audit team will cost files in line with Legal Aid Queensland’s costing guidelines for family and civil law matters(PDF, 85KB) .

Last updated 16 June 2017