Unsatisfactory conduct: Lawyers to ensure they have clear instructions

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 764, 28 January 2011.

This is a summary of a decision by a Standards Committee under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. 

In a dispute over whether a client had asked for only a “brief overview”, the committee reduced the lawyer’s fee, saying any ambiguity in the instructions given to him had to be resolved in the client’s favour. 

The lawyer had charged $5,700, excluding GST and disbursements, for the relationship property aspects of the client’s dispute with his former partner. The client said he had specifically asked for a brief overview of those matters and had also made it clear he was concerned about costs. He complained that the lawyer had ignored his instructions and overcharged him. A costs assessor advised the committee that an appropriate fee for a brief overview in this case would have been in the $2,000 to $3,000 range.

The lawyer was adamant that what had been discussed was a full opinion, not a brief overview. He said there was no uncertainty about the steps to be taken to implement the client’s instructions. There were significant property issues and also matters that required urgent attention. 

The committee found there had been miscommunication between them. The client’s instructions were not clear, and the lawyer’s interpretation of the word “opinion” might well have been different from the client’s intended meaning. In such cases any ambiguity had to be resolved in favour of the client, with the onus being on the lawyer to ensure that he or she obtained clear instructions. This provided an important protection for both of them, the committee said.

The committee found the lawyer guilty of unsatisfactory conduct, and reduced his fee for the relationship-property work to $2,500. 

© New Zealand Law Society 2008