How Much Does an Immigration Lawyer Cost in Australia?

How much does an immigration lawyer cost in Australia?

An immigration lawyer in Australia charges a professional fee for the legal work on the matter, and that fee is separate from the visa application charge payable to the Department of Home Affairs. Those are two different payments, made to two different recipients, for two different things. Any answer that gives you a single number without separating them is not answering the question.

There is no national scale of fees for migration work. Legal fees are set by each law practice, and the Legal Profession Uniform Law requires only that they be fair and reasonable, proportionately and reasonably incurred, and proportionate and reasonable in amount. That is the standard in section 172 of the Uniform Law. It is a standard about reasonableness, not a price list. Two practices can quote different fees for the same visa and both can be acting properly.

What drives the fee is the work the matter requires. Four things matter most. The first is the visa itself, because a straightforward application with clear evidence is not the same job as one that turns on a contested legal question. The second is whether something has already gone wrong, because a refusal, a cancellation or a lapsed visa adds a layer of law that a first application does not have. The third is the number of people in the application, because each additional applicant brings their own identity documents, health and character requirements. The fourth is the stage you are at, because preparing an application, responding to the Department and running a review at the Administrative Review Tribunal are three separate bodies of work.

That is why a useful quote is expressed as a price for a defined stage, not as a price for a visa. A fee for preparing and lodging a subclass 820 partner visa is a fee for that work. It is not a fee for defending a refusal two years later. A client who does not know where one ends and the other begins is the client who feels ambushed by the second invoice.

### Fixed fees and hourly rates answer different questions

A fixed fee tells you the price of the matter. An hourly rate tells you the price of an hour, which is not the same thing. With an hourly rate, the final cost depends on how many hours the matter takes, and the client carries that risk. With a fixed fee, the practice carries it. Neither model is improper and both are used in migration work, but they should not be compared as though the numbers mean the same thing.

Many migration matters are quoted as a fixed fee per stage, because the scope of a visa application can be defined in advance with reasonable confidence. My Migration Lawyers charges a fixed fee for each matter, set before the work begins, so the client knows the cost of the stage they are engaging. Where a practice quotes an hourly rate instead, the question to ask is not what the rate is. It is what the estimated total is, because that is what section 174 of the Uniform Law obliges the practice to disclose.

Be careful with a quote that is described as a fee "from" a certain point. A starting figure is not an estimate of your matter. It is the lowest price the practice charges anyone, which tells you very little about what your own application will cost.

What is actually included in an immigration lawyer's fee?

An immigration lawyer's fee covers legal work on the matter, and it does not cover government charges, medical examinations, police certificates, translations or courier costs. Those are disbursements and third party charges, and they are paid by the client on top of the legal fee. A clear quote says so in writing.

The legal work itself is more than form filling. On a partner visa, it usually covers assessing whether the relationship meets the definitions in the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994, advising on any barrier such as a Schedule 3 criterion or a sponsorship limitation, deciding which subclass to apply for, preparing the application, working with the applicant on their own statement of the relationship, preparing the sponsor's material, arranging Form 888 statements from people who know the couple, assembling the evidence so that it proves what the law requires, and lodging the application with the appointment recorded on Form 956.

On a protection visa, the work is different in character. It covers taking a detailed account of the claims, advising on whether those claims engage Australia's protection obligations under section 36 of the Migration Act 1958, preparing the applicant's written statement so that it is their own evidence in the form the law requires, gathering country information and supporting material, and preparing the applicant for the departmental interview. The protection visa work is largely evidentiary, and it is where most of the time in the matter is spent.

After lodgement, the matter is not finished. The Department may make a request for further information under section 56 of the Migration Act 1958, and it may give notice of adverse information under section 57 and invite comment. Both carry short response periods that are strictly applied. A quote that covers lodgement but says nothing about what happens after lodgement is an incomplete quote, and it is worth asking about before the costs agreement is signed rather than after the request arrives.

What is the difference between legal fees and the visa application charge?

The legal fee is paid to your lawyer for legal work. The visa application charge is paid to the Commonwealth for the privilege of having an application considered, and it is payable whether or not the application succeeds. Confusing the two is the single most common reason a client believes a quote was misleading.

Liability for the visa application charge arises under section 45A of the Migration Act 1958. The Department of Home Affairs explains that the charge is payable in two instalments, and that either or both of these instalments may be nil. The first instalment is payable at the time the visa application is made. The second instalment, where one applies, is payable before the visa is granted. The Department also states that the second instalment is not payable if the visa application is refused or withdrawn before the second instalment is paid.

The first instalment is not a single item. It is built from components. The base application charge applies to the application. An additional applicant charge applies for each additional person in a combined application, and the Department states that it must be paid for each additional visa applicant when there is more than one visa applicant in a combined visa application. For certain temporary visas, a subsequent temporary application charge also applies, which the Department describes as payable by each person in the application and based on their individual visa history. A family of four therefore does not pay the same charge as a single applicant, and a client who has already held temporary visas in Australia may pay more than one who has not.

The charge is generally not recoverable. The Department's published position is that it does not usually refund the visa application charge, even if the visa application is refused or withdrawn. This is why the decision to lodge matters so much, and why advice given before lodgement is worth more than advice given after it. Lodging a weak application is not a cheap way to test the position. It spends the charge, and on some visas it also spends the applicant's ability to make a further onshore application. An onshore partner visa applicant who does not hold a substantive visa must also satisfy or waive the Schedule 3 criteria, and that is a question to answer before the charge is paid rather than after.

Because the charges change, this article does not quote them. The Department publishes current visa pricing, and the figure that applies is the one published on the day the application is lodged.

What must an Australian lawyer tell you about costs before you engage them?

A law practice must give you a written disclosure of the estimated total legal costs, and the basis on which those costs are calculated, when initial instructions are given or as soon as practicable afterwards. That obligation is in section 174(1)(a) of the Legal Profession Uniform Law, which applies in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. The other states and territories have their own legal profession legislation imposing comparable duties.

The disclosure is not a formality, and it is not satisfied by a rate card. It must include an estimate of the total, which means the practice has to turn its hourly rates into a number for your matter. It must also tell you about your rights, including your right to negotiate a costs agreement, your right to negotiate the billing method, your right to receive a bill and to request an itemised bill, and your right to seek assistance if a costs dispute arises. Those requirements sit in section 174(2).

The duty does not stop at the start. Under section 174(1)(b), if there is a significant change, including a change to the legal costs, the client must be given a further disclosure in writing. A practice that discovers midway through a matter that the work is larger than it estimated is obliged to tell you in writing before the extra costs are run up, not to present them in the final bill. Section 174(3) and section 174(6) go further and require the practice to take all reasonable steps to be satisfied that the client has understood and given consent to the proposed course of action and the proposed costs. For clients reading English as a second language, that obligation has real content.

Two further duties frame everything above. Section 172 requires that legal costs be fair and reasonable, proportionately and reasonably incurred, and proportionate and reasonable in amount. Section 173 requires that a law practice must not act in a way that unnecessarily increases costs, and must act reasonably to avoid unnecessary delay that results in increased costs.

The consequence of getting this wrong is set out in section 178. Contravening the disclosure obligations may constitute unsatisfactory professional conduct or professional misconduct. It also has a practical effect for the client. Where there has been non-compliance, the client is not required to pay the legal costs until they have been assessed, and the costs agreement is void.

What is a costs agreement, and what should you check before signing one?

A costs agreement is the contract that sets the price and the scope of the legal work, and section 184 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law makes it enforceable in the same way as any other contract. It is the document that decides what you are buying, so it repays being read slowly.

Section 179 confirms that a client has the right to a negotiated costs agreement. Section 180 requires the agreement to be written or evidenced in writing. A verbal quote given in a consultation is not a costs agreement, and a figure mentioned in an email thread is a poor substitute for one. If a practice is reluctant to put the scope and the price in a signed document, that is information about the practice.

Read the agreement for four things. Read what stage the fee covers and where that stage ends. Read what happens if the Department makes a request for further information, or gives notice of adverse information, because that work has to sit somewhere. Read which disbursements you pay and whether they are estimated. Read what happens if you terminate the retainer, or the practice does, part way through.

Section 185 provides that a costs agreement contravening the relevant Division is void, and deals with what the practice may recover in that event. That is a protection, not a plan. A client whose agreement is void still has to pursue the point, and it is far better to have a clear agreement at the start than a remedy at the end.

What does it cost to take a visa refusal to the Administrative Review Tribunal?

A review at the Administrative Review Tribunal carries two costs: the Tribunal's application fee, and the legal fee for running the review. They are separate from anything already paid on the original application, and the legal fee for a review is a new piece of work rather than a continuation of the old one.

How the Tribunal fee works depends on the kind of decision under review. For a migration decision reviewable under Part 5 of the Migration Act 1958, the fee must be paid before the deadline for applying for review. The Tribunal publishes reduced fees, including a reduction for financial hardship and concessions for applicants holding certain government concession cards, applicants receiving legal aid, applicants under 18 and applicants in prison. Where the review is decided in the applicant's favour, the Tribunal refunds the difference between the fee paid and a small retained amount. Where the Tribunal sets the decision aside and remits it to the Department of Home Affairs, a partial refund of the fee paid applies.

Protection visa refusals work differently, and this is the point most often stated incorrectly. No fee is payable to the Tribunal when a protection review application is lodged. The Tribunal's published position is that the fee becomes payable if the Tribunal has affirmed the decision under review, or has set aside the decision under review and made a new decision in substitution. An applicant whose protection visa has been refused is therefore not kept out of the Tribunal by the fee, and should never let a belief about the fee cause the deadline to pass.

The deadline is the part that costs people everything. Time limits for applying to the Tribunal are short and they are strictly applied, and the Tribunal generally has no power to accept a late application. A client who spends three weeks comparing quotes and lodges a day late has not saved money. They have lost the right of review, and the legal fee for a matter that can no longer be reviewed is not the relevant loss.

Legal fees for review work are quoted on the same principles as any other stage. Ask whether the fee covers the written submissions, the preparation of the applicant and any witnesses, the hearing itself, and any post hearing response the Tribunal invites. Ask what happens if the Tribunal lists more than one hearing day. Review work is where the difference between a fee for a stage and a fee for a visa becomes obvious, and where clients most often discover which one they bought. If a refusal has already been made, the position on visa refusals and review rights should be established before any fee is agreed, because the deadline governs everything else.

What to ask before you accept a quote from an immigration lawyer

Ask what the fee covers, what it excludes, and what would trigger a further fee. Those three questions expose almost every misunderstanding about legal cost before it becomes a dispute, and a practice that answers them clearly in writing is telling you something useful about how it runs matters.

A short list is enough. Ask which stage the fee covers and at what point that stage ends. Ask whether responding to a request for further information under section 56 of the Migration Act 1958 is inside the fee. Ask whether the fee covers the departmental interview, if the visa involves one. Ask whether the government charges, medical examinations, police certificates and translations are included, and if not, who pays them and when. Ask whether the fee assumes a particular number of applicants. Ask what happens if the application is refused, and what the fee would be to apply to the Tribunal. Ask whether the person quoting is the person doing the work.

Ask for the estimate in writing, because the practice is obliged to give it to you under section 174 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law in any event. An estimate that arrives only after payment has been requested is out of order, and a practice that treats the written estimate as an inconvenience has told you how it will treat the next inconvenient thing.

Be wary of comparing two quotes on price alone. A lower quote with a narrower scope is not cheaper, it is smaller. The honest comparison is between two written scopes, stage by stage, and it usually takes ten minutes. At My Migration Lawyers the fee for each stage is set before the work starts and confirmed in writing, and a client who wants the scope explained before committing can request a consultation and have that conversation first.