Letter · In-House / General Counsel
Instruction letter and terms of engagement for external lawyers (in-house client, including AI use and billing rules)
A letter from an in-house legal team instructing an external law firm on one matter: scope, who gives instructions, team, estimate and cap, billing rules, privilege handling, data security, the firm’s use of AI and reporting.
- Kind
- Letter. A letter or email you adapt and send.
- Where it applies
- Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 18 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 18 October 2026 against the 2 authorities it cites, for 4 jurisdictions.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use for each new matter sent to a panel or other external firm, alongside any panel deed. It sets the organisation’s own terms; it does not replace the firm’s costs disclosure where the organisation is not a commercial or government client under the Legal Profession Uniform Law.
How AI may be used
AI may assemble the letter from the matter request and panel terms and later check invoices against it, but the in-house lawyer settles the scope, estimate and instructions and sends the letter.
AI may
- Fill the matter details, team, rates and estimate into the approved letter from the request form and the panel rate card
- Check each invoice against the scope, rates, cap and billing rules in the letter and list the lines to query
- Track spend against the estimate and remind the matter owner when the notification threshold is reached
AI must not
- Must not decide the scope of instructions, the estimate or whether to approve work beyond the cap
- Must not put privileged or confidential matter material into a tool that retains or trains on inputs
- Must not reject or approve an invoice; it lists queries for the matter owner to decide
The lawyer checks
- Scope and out-of-scope items are specific enough to measure invoices against
- Whether the organisation is a commercial or government client under s 170 of the Uniform Law, and so whether the firm must still give costs disclosure, has been considered
- The AI-use terms match the organisation’s AI policy and any court practice note that will apply if the matter is litigated
- Named people authorised to instruct the firm are current, and privileged communications go only to legal
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 In-House / General Counsel
- Compulsory regulator notice response checklist (ASIC s 33 and ACCC s 155 notices)
- Legal services request and triage form (in-house legal team)
- Delegation of authority and contract signing policy (with board delegation resolution)
- Legal professional privilege protocol for in-house teams (including AI tools and meeting transcription)
- Notice to a person interviewed in an internal investigation (who the lawyers act for, privilege and confidentiality)
- Whistleblower policy (Corporations Act Part 9.4AAA and tax whistleblowers), with rules for AI and case-management tools
- Board legal and regulatory risk report (memo template, including AI risk and how the paper was prepared)
- Litigation hold (document preservation) notice, covering chat, AI prompts, outputs and meeting transcripts
- AI tool approval request, risk assessment and register entry (legal team and business use)
- Organisational AI use policy: completion guide for the National AI Centre template (legal team additions)
All precedents for In-House / General Counsel · Tasks and AI use in this area