Years Old 13 Million Dollar Legal Bill - Gets Paid?

Well sort of.

Most lawyers try to get at least part of the fee up front. While most people will pay, a few clients simply won't pay their bills, and most of the time it is impossible to know which clients will and which clients won't. So everyone has to pay upfront. Well almost everyone.

It seems, from an account in The Age that "FLAMBOYANT socialite Rose Porteous has agreed to hand over more than $13 million in unpaid legal fees to settle a court battle with Melbourne law firm Slater and Gordon." The paper says the fees date back to work on a string of cases one from as early as 2001.

The thinking here at Rominger Legal is that 4 years of work without pay is unconscionable, as none of our staff have gone longer than 6 months. So you can imagine we were relieved to learn, as we read farther that, "Mr Grech said the debt had been allowed to run so high only because Mrs Porteous had given Slater and Gordon a first mortgage over her $30 million Perth mansion, Prix D'Amour."

The morale of the story is get the retainer up front, or at least get a first mortgage on the client's home. Of course not every client comes with a Perth mansion (with no first mortgage nonetheless).