New conveyancing charges

Press, 1 November 1984, Page 3

New conveyancing charges

Lawyers will change today to a new, more competitive system of charging for property transactions. They are dropping the fixed scale of fees for conveyancing, which has been used for many years. From today, lawyers will charge clients a rate based on the time taken and other factors such as the value of the property, the complexity of the deal, and the specialised knowledge needed. The old system used a scale of fees related to the value of the transaction. The president of the New Zealand Law Society, Mr Bruce Slane, said the society decided to abolish the scale of fees because it

recognised that consumers wanted to pay only for the work involved in their transaction. It also gave the impression that lawyers were not price-competitive. An advantage of the scale system was that it gave clients a fair measure of certainty about the costs they would face. To overcome that, lawyers would be encouraged to provide written estimates of the cost of the work. The Law Society had issued a new costing manual to all solicitors and had run seminars to help them calculate reasonable charges, Mr Slane said. It had also prepared a form for lawyers to use for writ-

ten estimates. There is no scale of charges for court work and other types of legal work Mr Slane said that the Law Society had also accepted that lawyers should be able to advertise if there was to be real competition within the profession. The society’s council had approved advertising subject to strict guidelines. The rules were expected to be approved at the end of this month, and so advertising would appear early next year. The advertisements could include information about services offered but not prices or “laudatory statements and puffery.”