Litigation

Bransgroves has developed a reputation for efficiency and effectiveness in dealing with highly complex, sophisticated commercial litigation involving large volumes of documentation. Supreme Court and Federal Court litigation constitutes 90% of our fee income and we use our track record as our number one marketing tool.

Our approach to litigation

We act for small to medium sized companies who can ill afford triple figure legal costs to dispose of nuisance or even critical litigation. Ours is a frugal approach to litigation, we utilise advanced technology and a minimalist approach to get the job done at the least cost to our clients. Our focus is always on winning the case, rather than going through the motions. This has endeared us to our clients and given us a formidable reputation amongst our opponents.

We constantly review our practises and procedures to give our clients more value for their money. This includes:

1. Declining instructions from clients who do not use email. We like to keep costs and aggravation to a minimum which is impossible unless the client is copied in on every piece of correspondence. Email is the only practical way to do this.
2. We never write letters to our client commenting on letters received from others. This is does nothing but rack-up fees. Instead we rely on our client’s ability to read.
3. We run a paperless office. This allows us to email our file to our client or our client's accountant or auditor, without charging money or taking any time. If our clients ask for a document they get it instantly at no charge because for us it is only a few clicks away at most.
4. Instead of keeping our clients in the dark we encourage the truism that more heads are better than one by copying our clients in on all internal emails regarding their matter. This keeps them in the loop, and allows them to arrest any misconceptions we have, before our time and their money is wasted.
5. We have dropped the traditional practice of faxing documents, then stamping them with 'faxed', and then posting them. Instead, we send all letters as pdf files attached to email, unless proof of receipt is required.
6. We use electronic discovery and always fight for informal discovery (without the need to prepare lengthy useless lists, that no one will ever read) in order to keep the costs down.
7. Avoiding lengthy and expensive conferences with clients. Instead when we prepare pleadings and affidavits we have our clients remotely log into our system so that the work can be done over the telephone (with both the solicitor and client seeing the words on the screen as they are typed). This allows extensive work to be broken into more manageable chunks and reduces waste brought about by fatigue;
8. All our paralegal staff are all high-scoring law students, so there is a desire to learn and improve, and the intellectual capacity to avoid making mistakes.
9. All our solicitors are extensively cross-trained to ensure resources can be re-deployed to address peaks in work flow and to allow for absences. Together with our technology, this allows a seamless and stress free take-up of the fluctuating demands of our clients.

Barristers

Even with the best solicitors in the world a client can still be aggravated, over-charged, and poorly represented if the barrister, is not up to scratch. Accordingly:

1. We never use a barrister who is of unknown quality. Most of our barristers have been with us for years. Our stable of barristers only grows when we have found ourselves up against an outstanding barrister whose legal knowledge, case preparation and acute reasoning over a lengthy trial convince us he is a valuable acquisition. We never accept referrals from our existing barristers. We learned long ago that the best of barristers will refer the worst (if they happen to share chambers).  
2.  We do not conference with barristers. Conferences are a waste of our clients’ money. There is nothing that can be said by a solicitor to a barrister that is not more efficiently and comprehensively said in an email. Moreover, by putting it in writing the client can be kept in the loop. We have found that barristers tend to be lazy and careless in their oral speculation, but diligent and well-researched in their written advices. Written advices force barristers to structure, research, and fully consider their advice.
3. We only use barristers for contested hearings. For all interlocutory mentions and appearances we use our solicitors. For return of subpoena and directions by consent we use our law student paralegals;
4. We brief barristers simply by sending a short email attaching the documents they need. We do not write 20 pages of elaborate “observations”, nor do we put together tabbed folders and other redundant material.

Billing
Our billing practices unquestionably result in lower bills and less aggravation for our clients. In this regard we:

1. Never fail to bill at least monthly. If an intense period is afoot we bill even more frequently, sometimes even daily, so that our clients receive no nasty surprises;
2. We do not charge for copying or forwarding incoming emails to our clients;
3. We do not charge clients for brief telephone calls;
4. We do not charge clients for photocopying or faxing fees;
5. When we attend a directions list we divide the bill between the matters we have in that list;
6. Every item we bill is evidenced by a document that the client has seen. We never charge for “reviewing the file” or “researching” or other intangible items that lawyers use to pad bills;
7. If a client disputes an item or items on our bill we generally concede the point and move on.