When you estimate your costs for an Estate matter how are you doing that? Are you relying on a feel for the matter, and also the accuracy of previous quotes on similar matters? Do you have a list of costs per asset type, or per beneficiary? Are you revisiting costs during your matter?
Estimating your costs is a really important step for a number of reasons, including -
Effective communication with the client from the outset, they will remember the lower figure and word of mouth is an important part of your business;
There is typically a gap between opening a file and getting paid in Estate matters, and so the business is investing months of time based on your estimate;
You are probably working very hard on your matters, but do you know where the delays are occurring, do you know which stages or steps you need to address to speed things up which will make the client and the boss happier;
How do you make decisions about software, automation, processes or precedents if you don’t know what is taking all of your time now?
Having an effective precedent for estimating costs, that you can revisit monthly, will help you to make better decisions in your business. Once you have set up the precedent it won’t take a lot of time to revisit it. In this Webinar I give you a precedent for estimating your costs, including estimating in situations where part of the costs are fixed, and I explain how to use it. The live Webinar has already happened, but you can sign up to get the papers and the recording.
As part of my larger Webinar on Estate Costs, here I am talking about the importance of estimating costs, and why accurate data is important.
What will you get?
When you sign up for the recording and past papers you will get the following documents -
Costs Disclosure precedent - this deals with both fixed and variable costs, along with some exclusions to deal with common issues in Estates. You also get an excel spreadsheet with the list of things that are client specific that you need to put into the precedent so that you can use “Find and Replace” to update the precedent. Alternatively you can handwrite what you want on the excel spreadsheet for your administrative support to handle.
Estate costs spreadsheet - this is the Excel document that you will use to estimate your costs on a matter, which I explain at length in the Webinar.
NSW Probate Fees spreadsheet - a quick way to calculate your legal fees if you have a Probate or LOA matter where you are charging fixed fees, and you can then save a copy to the file in case you need to update that calculation if the Estate value changes.
Covering letter for the Costs Disclosure, and a very basic Tax Invoice precedent
A summary sheet that you can use to record the estimated fees, and the eventual fees total, for all of your matters across your firm. If you take five minutes to fill this out when a matter is closed then you will have centralised data, including the ability to break Estates down into matter types that are relevant for business decisions (like treating Estates where the Widow is inheriting as separate to Estates where it is someone further remove, and there are unlikely to be any joint tenancies).
The slides from the Webinar - so that you can review them, and because they include instructions on how to use the spreadsheet.
These precedents all work for matters that don’t require Probate where you are “just” doing Estate Administration, despite the fact that the earlier Webinar was focused on Probate fixed costs this Webinar is looking at Estates more generally. In the Webinar I also discuss the different approaches to costs between Probate and matters that don’t require Probate.
How are you estimating costs now?
How are you estimating your costs in Estate matters? I suspect most of us are getting there by a combination of experience, and what assets we are going to need to administer in the Estate. As part of this Webinar I have created a spreadsheet for you to use to estimate these Estates, you can change your hourly rate, you can add a step that I have not thought of, you can delete something that won't happen in this particular Estate, and you can change the amount of time for each step to reflect how long this normally takes you, in your practice. Once you have this spreadsheet set up to reflect your practice you will find yourself using it again and again.
You could even give the spreadsheet to your secretary, perhaps with the rates taken out, and ask them to write down how long they estimate each of these steps takes them. You could then use the spreadsheet to add a nominal hourly rate for your support staff, to understand how much time recording would occur in your Estate matters if your support staff did record their time. If you have found a way to get your support staff to record their time (all of their time), well, maybe you should run a Webinar on that because I have never cracked that code.
How are you discussing costs with the client?
Many of our clients come to us already knowing what fixed costs are. How would you talk to them if your practice actually doesn’t charge fixed costs at all? How would you talk to them if your practice charges both fixed costs and the hourly rate?
We will work through some examples of ways that you can address this with your client, so that they don’t panic and think that you are over charging them, or double dipping. We will also work through an example of a Costs Disclosure so that you retain the ability to charge both (fixed and hourly) even if you only intend to charge one, again while making it plain that this is not you charging twice for the same thing. You will get the example that we work through in a word document.
Details for the webinar
If you have missed our previous training on Fixed Costs, then you can purchase the recording and the documents here. This Webinar has already run on Thursday 23 April 2026 but you can purchase the recording of that Webinar and all of the precedents. The cost is $90 per person.
In keeping with previous CPDs, you will get a $50 discount code if you email a requisition from the Supreme Court in relation to an Estate matter and provide enough information for the requisition to make sense. I will bundle them together and they will form part of the subject matter material available to participants. Email it to janis@janisconsults.com and then I will send you the discount code and a survey for you to complete with further questions.
You can find out more about the event by going into the Facebook Group, or you can register for the event by clicking on the button below.
NSW Estate Lawyers EMAIL LIST
Do you know about the email list for the NSW Estate Lawyers Facebook Group? Most emails will include a case summary from a recent case generally from the NSW Supreme Court, though sometimes I cover other states because of course our courts refer to each other’s case law. I will also include a whip around of the topics that were raised in the Facebook Group that week, because I am aware that the algorithm doesn’t always show you what is happening, and some other topics that would be interesting to Estate Planning or Estate lawyers.
If there are any other topics that you would like to see covered I am always happy to hear suggestions.
