Unsatisfactory conduct: Lawyers and experts’ fees
This is a summary of a decision by a Lawyers Standards Committee under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. This summary was published in LawTalk 781, 23 September 2011.
A lawyer who refused to pay a portion of an expert’s bill was found guilty of unsatisfactory conduct by a Lawyers Standards Committee and was ordered to pay the outstanding amount.
The committee found the lawyer breached Rule 12.2 of the Conduct and Client Care Rules. Rule 12.2 states that lawyers who instruct experts or other third parties on their client’s behalf are personally responsible for the third party’s fees, costs and expenses, unless there’s an agreement to the contrary.
The complainant was a Wellington-based expert document examiner whom the lawyer had instructed to give evidence at a hearing in Whangarei. The expert finished giving her evidence at 1:15 pm, and then flew back to Wellington on a 4:20 pm flight. The only other return flight that afternoon had been at 1:25 pm.
When the expert submitted her invoice, she billed for all her travelling and waiting time. The client, however, refused to pay for the time spent waiting in Whangarei for the return flight, which amounted to $1,015.80 out of a total bill of $3,913.80.
Responding to the complaint, the lawyer accepted that under Rule 12.2 she was personally responsible for the bill, but she claimed there was a legitimate dispute over the amount. She told the committee the expert had chosen to remain in Whangarei that afternoon at her leisure.
The committee was satisfied, however, that the lawyer had agreed to the expert billing for all her travel and waiting time. It noted that the expert had booked her 4:20 pm return flight on the basis of an email exchange with the lawyer six days before the hearing. In one of those emails the expert had said: “I trust that you will secure sufficient funds for flights etc and my time.”
The committee said the lawyer could not rely on her client’s refusal to pay for all of the expert’s time as justification for not fulfilling her own obligations under the fee arrangement with the expert. It said the lawyer could have made an alternative arrangement at the earlier stage when the expert was arranging flights.
This is a summary of a decision by a Lawyers Standards Committee under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006.