Checklist · Costs, billing & litigation funding
Opening costs estimate worksheet
An internal worksheet for the figures that go into the first costs disclosure. It is not the later significant-change letter, and it is not a comparison of a draft bill.
- Kind
- Checklist. Steps or checks to work through and tick off.
- Where it applies
- Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales
- AI use
- Yellow You and the tool draft together, with you directing. You check every statement you rely on.
- Law stated as at
- 23 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 23 October 2026 against the 5 authorities it cites, for Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use before the first costs disclosure is sent, so the estimate, the disbursements and any uplift are written down with their assumptions. Do not send this worksheet to the client in place of the disclosure.
Used for these tasks
- Draft a costs disclosure from the matter scope and the scale or estimate
- Compare a draft bill to the last costs disclosure and any updates
Each task page says how far AI may help with the task and what the lawyer must review.
How AI may be used
The tool may assemble this worksheet from assumptions the lawyer has already written down, and it must not invent a threshold, a rate or an uplift percentage.
AI may
- Set out the statute the lawyer has selected and leave the other state's threshold blank
- Record the estimate, the range and the major variables in the lawyer's words
- Flag that a later bill is compared on the existing bill-comparison worksheet, not on this page
AI must not
- Must not send this worksheet to the client as if it were the disclosure
- Must not treat the Victorian $750 and $3,000 figures as sections of the Act, or copy them into Queensland or New South Wales
- Must not apply the Uniform Law belief test to a Queensland uplift
- Must not calculate the fee from the likely settlement
The lawyer checks
- Every dollar figure was adopted by the lawyer. A blank means it is not yet known
- The Victorian thresholds are re-read in the current Uniform Rules. The Board page used here is marked © 2020
- The New South Wales threshold amounts are inserted from the current Uniform Rules. They were not on the Victorian page
- The Queensland lower threshold is inserted from the current Act or regulation. It was not opened for this worksheet
- An uplift complies with section 182 or section 324, for the statute that applies, and is not a percentage of the outcome
- The worksheet stays in the firm's system
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 available after you log in. It is free. When you log 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.
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- Cooling-off letter for a conditional costs agreement
- Summons for gross sum costs (Supreme Court Costs Court)
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- VCAT legal practice list application (civil disputes)
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All precedents for Costs, billing & litigation funding · Tasks and AI use in this area