Client intake for an Australian law firm: costs disclosure, conflicts and the first hour of a matter

Australian law firm intake has five fixed steps: capture the enquiry, run and record a conflict check, verify identity where required, make costs disclosure in the form the estimate dictates, and open the matter. Under the Legal Profession Uniform Law the thresholds are $750 and $3,000, excluding GST and disbursements. MatterFirst converts a qualified lead into a triggered matter workflow.

Most firms treat intake as administration and buy software on how the matter runs after it opens. That is backwards. Costs disputes, conflict problems and arguments about scope almost always trace back to something that did not happen in the first hour, or happened and was never written down. Intake is the part of a matter where the obligations are fixed, dated and auditable, which makes it the part most worth automating.

What follows is what the first hour has to produce, what the costs disclosure rules require in each jurisdiction, and how to structure intake so the evidence exists without anyone having to remember to create it.

The five things the first hour has to produce

1. A captured enquiry with its source. Not a note in someone's inbox. A record with a channel, a referrer where there is one, a practice area and a jurisdiction. Source attribution is the only way to work out later which marketing spend and which referral relationships are worth keeping.
2. A conflict check you can evidence. Run against current and former clients, other parties and related entities. The check matters less than the record of it: a date, a searcher, a search term and a result.
3. Verification of identity where the transaction calls for it. In electronic conveyancing the evidence has to survive a compliance examination years later. The Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council Model Participation Rules set out what a subscriber holds on file, including client authorisation, verification of identity and right to deal evidence.
4. Costs disclosure in the correct form. Where the rules are most specific and most often mishandled. See below.
5. An opened matter with the intake data already in it. If a fee earner retypes the client's name, the property address or the other side's solicitor, intake has failed.

Costs disclosure: the estimate decides the form

Three jurisdictions now operate under the Legal Profession Uniform Law: Victoria and New South Wales since 1 July 2015, and Western Australia since 1 July 2022. The rest run their own legal profession Acts.

Under the Uniform Law, section 174(1) requires a practice, when or as soon as reasonably practicable after instructions are given, to disclose the basis on which legal costs will be calculated and give an estimate of the total. Two dollar thresholds then decide the form disclosure takes. Both exclude GST and disbursements, the detail firms most often miss when running the estimate.

All figures exclude GST and disbursements.

The Uniform Law thresholds sit in clause 18(3) and 18(4) of Schedule 4. Below $750, no disclosure is required. Between $750 and $3,000, a practice may either make full disclosure or provide the completed uniform standard disclosure form in Schedule 1 of the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015. Above $3,000, full disclosure applies. The Law Society of NSW guidance on costs disclosure under the Legal Profession Uniform Law sets this out, and records the consequence under section 178(1): the costs agreement is void, the client is not required to pay the legal costs, the practice cannot commence or maintain recovery proceedings until the costs are assessed or the dispute determined, and the contravention may result in disciplinary action.

That is the commercial case for automating this step: a disclosure obligation missed on a $4,000 matter costs the fee, plus the assessment.

Queensland moved on 1 March 2024. The Queensland Law Society reported an increase in the full disclosure threshold from $1,500 to $3,000, "with abbreviated costs disclosure required for those matters from $1500 to $3000". The Legal Services Commission states detailed disclosure is not required where total legal costs excluding disbursements are not likely to exceed $1,500.

The Uniform Law thresholds are under review

Write your intake procedure so the numbers are a setting rather than a sentence. The Legal Services Council has a consultation open on a Costs Disclosure Amendment Rule proposing to raise the upper threshold to $10,000 excluding GST and disbursements, to expand the classes of commercial and government client exempt from disclosure, and to replace the disclosure forms. Submissions closed on 16 July 2026.

The Council's May 2023 consultation paper explains where the current figures came from: the $750 and $3,000 amounts were set by transitional provisions when the Uniform Law commenced in 2015, and $750 had applied in Victoria since 1 January 1997 and in New South Wales since 1 October 2005. Applying CPI, the paper records, the value of the 1997 figure had risen to $1,484 by March 2023.

As at the date of this article no amending rule has been made. The Council's record of recent changes lists no change to the disclosure thresholds, so $750 and $3,000 still apply. Check it before you rely on a figure, because a change here alters the form of disclosure on every small matter a firm opens.

Structure intake so the evidence creates itself

The failure mode is always the same: the obligation is met, and the evidence of it ends up scattered across an inbox, a signed PDF in a downloads folder and a paralegal's memory. Four structural decisions fix that.

Capture the estimate as a field, not as prose. If the fee estimate lives only inside a Word document, nothing can act on it. As a number on the lead record, it can decide which disclosure form applies and flag the matter when a revised estimate crosses a threshold. Section 174(7) and (8) of the Uniform Law require a practice to inform the client in writing once it becomes aware costs are likely to exceed a threshold it disclosed against, and that is a rule a system can watch and a person cannot.

Generate the engagement documents from matter data. A costs agreement, a disclosure notice and a client authorisation are the most template-shaped documents a firm produces. Client name, matter description, scope, rates, estimate and jurisdiction are merge fields. The scope description is often the only part needing a human or a model.

Make the conflict check an artefact. A recorded search with a timestamp and a result answers a complaint. An assurance that "we always check" does not.

Set the key dates at conversion, not later. A limitation date, a cooling off period or a settlement date entered a week after the file opened is a week of exposure. Calculate them at creation, from the matter type and the jurisdiction.

How the products compare on intake

Verified against each vendor's own public pages in August 2026.

Clio's Australian pricing page did not return content to an automated request during this session, so its cells are left unverified rather than filled with a figure that might be out of date. Check it yourself before comparing.

The column that matters most here is the pricing unit, not the feature list. Every product on the table can capture a lead. What differs is what happens to the bill when the receptionist, the bookkeeper and the two paralegals who do the intake all need a login.

How MatterFirst handles intake

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by North Cape Technology, a Melbourne software company.

Intake runs through lead workflows. Enquiries arrive from public intake forms on the firm's own site, from referral partners over their own API credential, from direct entry by whoever answered the phone, or through the API, and each carries its source. Leads sit on a kanban board with custom stages, and every lead records priority, source, jurisdiction and follow-up date. Pipeline analytics report conversion rate, velocity, loss reasons and source performance, which makes the referral question answerable rather than anecdotal.

When a lead converts, MatterFirst assigns the matter workflow, creates the tasks, sends the emails and sets the deadlines, and contacts and documents move across rather than being retyped. Automations work as trigger, condition and action rules, and generating a document can be a step in a workflow, so the disclosure notice and costs agreement are produced by the conversion rather than after it.

Those documents come out of a document type the firm builds itself, from sections that are deterministic by default: merge fields, matter data projections, clause library entries and signature blocks, with AI used only where a section genuinely calls for synthesis. Output is branded PDF and Word. The generated document files on the matter and can be emailed, shared to the client portal, or routed for e-signature.

Key dates are calculated by an obligations engine that cites the governing statute, for example the Limitation Act 1969 (NSW) s 14(1). Matters can be recorded in all eight Australian jurisdictions. The trust accounting compliance review workflow covers NSW, VIC, QLD and WA: those four, which is the sentence a firm in South Australia needs before it starts a trial.

Pricing is per workspace rather than per user, from $199 AUD per month with users included, so adding the people who do the intake does not change the plan price. Details are on the pricing page.

What the AI does and does not cost

Every paid plan includes a monthly AI balance denominated in Australian dollars, drawn down by metered work at published rates. The AI pricing page lists document processing at a $0.60 opening fee plus $0.09 per page, agent runs at $2.50 per multi-step task, deep research at $6.00 per research memo and bulk document review at $0.15 per document per question. It also lists work included without drawing down the balance, including intake and lead intelligence, document drafting, summarisation and extraction of key dates and obligations, subject to fair use limits.

So generating a costs agreement from deterministic sections draws down nothing. Reading a fifty page contract a client attached to their enquiry does.

Who this suits, and who it does not

MatterFirst suits Australian firms of roughly two to twenty fee earners that want onshore hosting, state based trust accounting and a pricing unit that does not punish support staff logins. Data and AI processing are hosted in the AWS region the firm chooses, Sydney by default for Australian firms, as set out on the security page.

It is a weaker fit in three cases. A very low volume sole practice will find a per seat product cheaper. A firm whose workflow depends on a connection to PEXA, InfoTrack, MYOB or QuickBooks Online should wait, because those are listed as coming soon and are not connectable now: the integrations that connect today are Xero, Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, with a documented REST API and webhooks for everything else. And a firm needing a trust compliance review covering South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT or the Northern Territory should confirm scope before committing.

If you are running a comparison, the evaluation checklist sets out the questions to put to any vendor, including ours.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to give a costs disclosure for a $600 matter? In NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, no. Clause 18(3) of Schedule 4 to the Uniform Law removes the requirement where total legal costs are not likely to exceed $750 excluding GST and disbursements. In Queensland the figure is $1,500. If the estimate later rises past the threshold, the obligation revives and you must inform the client in writing.

Are the costs disclosure thresholds changing? A Legal Services Council consultation proposed raising the upper threshold to $10,000 excluding GST and disbursements, with submissions closing 16 July 2026. No amending rule has been made, so $750 and $3,000 still apply. Check the Council's recent changes page before relying on a figure.

Does MatterFirst handle Victorian trust accounting? Yes. Trust accounting is built for Australian jurisdictions and the compliance review workflow covers NSW, VIC, QLD and WA.

Can MatterFirst send a costs agreement for signature? Yes. A generated document files on the matter and can be sent by email, shared to the client portal, or routed for e-signature.

Does MatterFirst connect to PEXA or InfoTrack? Not today. Both are listed in the product as coming soon. The integrations that connect now are Xero, Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

What does MatterFirst cost? From $199 AUD per month per workspace with users included, then Practice at $649 and Firm at $1,299 per month. Extra users start at $139 per user per month. Every paid plan includes the client portal, automations and a monthly AI balance in Australian dollars.

The short version

Intake is where the obligations are fixed and the evidence is cheapest to create. Get the estimate onto the lead record as a number, let the number choose the disclosure form, generate the engagement documents from matter data, record the conflict search, and set the key dates at conversion. Check the thresholds for your own jurisdiction before writing the procedure, and check them again once the Legal Services Council finishes its review.