Checklist · Costs, billing & litigation funding
Litigation funding agreement review checklist (including class actions)
Checklist for reviewing a third-party litigation funding agreement and the related costs agreement: commission, control, termination, adverse costs, conflicts, court disclosure and the contingency fee prohibition.
- Kind
- Checklist. Steps or checks to work through and tick off.
- Where it applies
- Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia
- AI use
- Red Keep AI out of the decisive steps. A lawyer does the work.
- Law stated as at
- 17 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked against the cited sources on 17 October 2026.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use before advising a client or representative applicant to sign a funding agreement, and again before any settlement approval. Not a substitute for advice on the funder's regulatory status or on foreign-law terms.
How AI may be used
This is lawyer-led work. AI may extract and tabulate commission, control, termination and recovery terms for comparison, but every conflict, fairness and enforceability judgment is made by the lawyer.
AI may
- Extract fees, commission, multiples, waterfall, control, termination and recovery terms into a table with clause references.
- Compare the agreement with the firm's standard negotiation positions and list departures.
- Model the client's net return under settlement scenarios the lawyer specifies, showing the formula used.
AI must not
- Must not express a view on whether the commission is fair, reasonable or likely to be approved.
- Must not summarise conflict-of-interest provisions as adequate.
- Must not receive the agreement in a tool that is not approved for privileged and commercially sensitive material.
The lawyer checks
- Every extracted figure and clause reference has been checked against the signed version.
- The legal costs arrangement does not breach s 183, and any uplift complies with s 182.
- Court disclosure obligations under GPN-CA para 6 are diarised.
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
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 Costs, billing & litigation funding
- Uniform Law standard costs disclosure form (matters likely to cost $750 to $3,000): completion guide
- Costs disclosure and costs agreement letter (Uniform Law ss 174 and 180)
- Engagement and costs agreement clauses: AI use, client consent and charging for AI-assisted work
- Billing and time-recording policy for AI-assisted work
- Notice to client of a significant change in legal costs (Uniform Law s 174(1)(b))
All precedents for Costs, billing & litigation funding · Tasks and AI use in this area