Checklist · Class Actions / Representative Proceedings
Litigation funding agreement and costs review checklist (including common fund orders and Victorian group costs orders)
A checklist for reviewing a class action litigation funding agreement and costs agreement: commission and fees, control, conflicts, security and adverse costs, disclosure to group members and the court, common fund orders after Kain, and Victorian group costs orders.
- Kind
- Checklist. Steps or checks to work through and tick off.
- Where it applies
- Australia, Victoria, New South Wales
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 17 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 17 October 2026 against the 7 authorities it cites, for Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use when advising a representative applicant, a funder or a law practice on funding and costs arrangements for a class action, before the agreements are signed and again before the first case management hearing and any settlement approval. Not a substitute for advice on the regulatory status of a particular funding scheme.
How AI may be used
AI may extract the commercial terms of funding and costs agreements into this checklist and compare them with market terms the lawyer supplies, but the reasonableness of commission and costs, and any regulatory characterisation, are lawyer judgments.
AI may
- Extract commission, fees, caps, termination, control and conflict clauses into a comparison table with clause references
- Model the waterfall of a hypothetical settlement using figures the lawyer provides
- Flag clauses that the checklist identifies as requiring disclosure to group members or the court
AI must not
- Must not decide whether a commission or legal costs are fair and reasonable
- Must not characterise the scheme for Corporations Act purposes
- Must not be given privileged case assessments shared with the funder in a tool that retains or trains on inputs
The lawyer checks
- Commission, fees and costs are disclosed clearly and early, and changes are notified
- Conflict management provisions are adequate and operating
- Any proposed common fund order or group costs order is within power after Kain
- The confidential disclosure to the court and the Notice of Disclosure are filed on time
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Official form
Open the official form. Always use the current version from the issuer.
Read the full text
The full text is for signed-in accounts. It is free. When you sign in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
More in Class Actions / Representative Proceedings
- Opt-out notice, notice distribution plan and settlement-notice checklist (Federal Court class action)
- Settlement distribution scheme (with safeguards for technology-assisted claims assessment)
- Periodic update letter to group members (clients and registered group members)
- Group member registration and intake protocol (including AI triage of registrations)
- Prompt template with guardrails: reconciling registrations to the class definition
All precedents for Class Actions / Representative Proceedings · Tasks and AI use in this area