Briefed like counsel.
You already know this model. You brief counsel at defined moments in a matter, against a fee estimate you can disclose to your client. Legal engineering works the same way: retained on a matter, priced per stage, quoted before the stage begins.
No consulting blocks. No software subscription. No committee. A brief is accepted with an email and a fee estimate, and your client sees the cost up front, in the costs agreement, the same way they see counsel's.
- You brief us on a matter. Conflicts checked, intake done, the matter's knowledge system stood up. One fixed brief fee.
- Each stage is quoted before it starts. A fixed fee, a defined deliverable, a date. Disclosed to your client like a counsel's fee estimate.
- Everything we produce is a working draft for you to settle. We engineer; you exercise the judgment. Every output carries its status on its face.
- When the stage ends, so does the fee. No lock-in, no minimum term. Brief us again when the matter needs us.
Some matters won't need us. The complex ones will, usually at the moments you'd also be thinking about counsel: evidence, discovery, interlocutory fights, and the run-up to trial.
Fixed fees, quoted up front.
Fixed fees, quoted within these ranges once we've seen the matter. GST exclusive.
Conflicts check, matter intake, and the governed case knowledge system every later stage runs on: verified chronology spine, exhibit and issues registers, the working rules of the matter encoded as system behaviour. Charged once per matter. Every stage after this gets faster and cheaper because of it.
| Stage | Fee | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Pleadings map | $2,500 – $4,000 | A living map from allegation → response → element → evidence. What's admitted, denied, and still unanswered. |
| Affidavit / reply engineering | $4,000 – $6,500 per affidavit set | Opposing evidence decomposed into an issues matrix; every allegation classified; a counsel-ready reply skeleton with every theme answered once and every gap flagged. |
| Exhibit register | $2,500 – $4,000 | A locked, machine-checked register: label collisions and broken cross-references caught at drafting, not at filing. |
| Discovery / forensic review | $5,000 – $15,000+ (scoped by volume) | The record made queryable, every result anchored to its source. Quoted after we see the size and shape of the record. |
| Interlocutory application support | $2,500 – $5,000 per application | Evidence mapping, chronology extracts and document support for the application, engineered against the matter system. |
| Mediation / settlement prep | $3,000 – $5,000 | The evidence position, contradiction map and issues summary that let you walk in knowing the record cold. |
| Trial preparation | $8,000 – $15,000 | Full issues matrix, evidence map, cross-reference audit, witness-posture summaries: the matter, engineered for hearing. |
| Hearing support | $1,500 – $2,500 per day | On call during trial: overnight queries against the record, exhibit verification, same-day turnarounds. |
Hourly: for the genuinely ad-hoc
Principal, one-hour minimum. Working sessions with you or counsel, urgent turnarounds between stages, one-off questions against the matter system. Urgent work (under 48 hours' notice) at 1.25×. Production work is built into the stage fees. You will never see a padded timesheet from us, because we mostly don't sell time.
Practice retainer: for owner-operators
For the principal who won't need us on every matter but wants us on call for the ones that count: priority access (48-hour response), three hours of ad-hoc queries included each month, 10% off all stage fees, and your practice-level systems (precedents, registers, workflows) maintained between matters. Month to month, no minimum term.
- Quoted before, not after. Every stage fee is confirmed in writing before the stage begins. If scope changes mid-stage, the fee is re-quoted before we continue, never after.
- Disclosable. Fee estimates are written so you can pass them straight into your client costs agreement, the way you already handle counsel's fees.
- Vacated stages. If a booked stage is vacated within 7 days of its scheduled start, 50% of the stage fee is payable, the same courtesy you'd extend counsel.
- Payment per stage. Invoice on delivery, 14 days. The next stage starts when the last is settled.
- No outcome fees, ever. No uplifts, no conditional arrangements, no share in results. We're not running your case. We're engineering it.
- Confidentiality and privilege as engineering requirements. Australian-hosted, no client data used to train third-party models, and our confidentiality obligations survive the engagement.
We are not lawyers and we do not give legal advice. We work for you, with you: every substantive output is a working draft for the legal team to settle, every judgment call stays with the practitioner, and every determination carries an audit trail you could defend in front of a judge. That discipline isn't a disclaimer; it's the product.
Brief us the way you'd brief counsel.
Send the shape of the matter (jurisdiction, stage, what's bleeding time) and we'll come back with a fee estimate for the stage you're facing. If we're not the right fit for the matter, we'll say so in the first conversation.