New and increased panel practitioner fees in 2025

We appreciate the valuable work that panel practitioners do on behalf of legal aid clients and that practitioners work in a challenging financial environment.

We have consulted closely with the profession and heard concerns about our fees. In response, we have now completed targeted reviews of fees for criminal and family law matters.

As a result of these reviews, our Board and acting chief executive officer have approved a range of new fees and increases to existing fees, to take effect on 1 January 2025.

While we know there is more to do, these are the changes we can make within our limited funding. The changes are designed to recognise the value of the work performed by panel practitioners, the need to increase the number of practitioners available to increase access to justice in regional areas, and changes in court procedures.

Over the course of 2025, we will continue to work with panel practitioners and explore opportunities to advocate for funding to support further changes to our fee structures and amounts.

Criminal law fee changes

The new fees to be introduced are:

• $221 fee for first remand hearings (to cover situations where a bail application cannot take place)
• $555 fee for consolidated contest mentions where two or more briefs are listed.

The increases to existing fees are:

• increase in overnight travel fee from $177 to $377 per day
• increase in contested hearing fee from $877 to $1,050
• increase in contested hearing (resolves on the day) appearance fee to equal that of a contested hearing which proceeds (from $626 to $1,050)
• maintaining the current Assessment and Referral Court (ARC) fee amounts, but amending the ARC fee structure to fund appearances for all ARC review hearings.

Family law fee changes

In addition to the changes made earlier this year, the new fees to be introduced are:

• $208 fee for independent children’s lawyers (ICL) to meet with children whose interests they are representing (for the first and any subsequent meeting)
  • $208 distance allowance where the ICL’s office is more than 50 km from the meeting location
• $1,040 pre-trial settlement fee where a matter is listed for final hearing and settlement is negotiated prior to the final hearing, resulting in filing of final consent orders
• standard disbursement fee of up to $1,000 for hair follicle testing
• $1,040 litigation file transfer fee.

The increases and changes to apply are:

• increase in fees for psychological and psychiatric assessments to $2,500 for a first report and $1,600 for a supplementary assessment report
• increase in preparation fee for a subsequent hearing to $624, clarifying definition of ‘subsequent hearing’ to include mentions and directions hearings, and renaming the existing mention, directions hearing or callover fee to ‘callover only’
• increase in preparation fee for Family Dispute Resolution Service conferences in family law property matters to $832 and introduction of a $416 preparation fee for subsequent conferences in family law property matters
• increase in preparation fee for court-based dispute resolution conferences to $416
• for recovery/information/location order matters, increase in preparation fee to $1,040 and amendments to hearing fees to provide for one subsequent hearing ($624, already available in the grant) and one interim contested hearing ($1,707, currently only available by extension on the grant)
• increase in lump sum fee for contravention, enforcement and contempt proceedings to $3,995
• increase in family law fee ceiling to $30,000
• allowing fees for procedural hearings to be claimed in child support matters
• allowing fees for consent orders to be claimed by each party with a grant of legal assistance in a matter.

Fee schedule increase

In addition, we will implement our annual increase to our fee schedule. All fees will increase by 2.25 per cent. The new fees will take effect and be published in the VLA Handbook on 1 January 2025. The fee increase applies to all existing grants of legal assistance where the matter has not been finalised, and new grants made on or after that date. All appearances and additional preparation completed prior to the changes attract the old fees.

The new fees will be published in the VLA Handbook on 1 January 2025.

Contact

If you have any questions about these changes, please contact our Grants and Quality Assurance team at grants@vla.vic.gov.au or (03) 9269 0600.