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Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006

Complaints and discipline - Procedure

210: Order for payment of costs

You could also call this:

"Who pays costs after a legal review is decided by the Legal Complaints Review Officer"

Illustration for Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006

The Legal Complaints Review Officer can decide who pays costs after a review. You might get costs paid to you if you are part of a case. The Officer can order the New Zealand Law Society or the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers to pay costs. The Officer can also order you to pay money to the New Zealand Law Society or the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. This can happen even if you did not do anything wrong. The Officer can decide you must pay for expenses like staff salaries and overheads. The Officer gets to decide what expenses are included. Expenses are not just things you pay for directly, but also things like salaries and overheads. You can see how this rule is similar to an older rule by looking at the Law Practitioners Act 1982.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM366759.

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Part 7Complaints and discipline
Procedure

210Order for payment of costs

  1. The Legal Complaints Review Officer may, after conducting a review under this Act, make such order as to the payment of costs and expenses as the Legal Complaints Review Officer thinks fit.

  2. In particular, the Legal Complaints Review Officer may order that costs be awarded to any person to whom the proceedings relate, and that those costs be paid—

  3. by the New Zealand Law Society (if that person is a lawyer or former lawyer or an incorporated law firm or former incorporated law firm or an employee or former employee of a lawyer or an incorporated law firm); or
    1. by the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers (if that person is a conveyancing practitioner or former conveyancing practitioner or an incorporated conveyancing firm or former incorporated conveyancing firm or an employee or former employee of a conveyancing practitioner or an incorporated conveyancing firm).

      1. In particular, without finding that there has been unsatisfactory conduct on the part of a person (being a practitioner or former practitioner or an incorporated firm or former incorporated firm or an employee or former employee of a practitioner or an incorporated firm) to whom the proceedings relate, the Legal Complaints Review Officer may, if he or she considers that the proceedings were justified and that it is just to do so, order that person to pay to the New Zealand Law Society or the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers such sums as the Legal Complaints Review Officer thinks fit in respect of the expenses of and incidental to the proceedings and any investigation of that person's conduct or of that person's affairs or trust account carried out by, or on behalf of, a Standards Committee or the Legal Complaints Review Officer.

      2. In this section, expenses includes not only out-of-pocket expenses but also such amounts in respect of salaries of staff and overhead expenses incurred by either the New Zealand Law Society or the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers as the Legal Complaints Review Officer considers properly attributable to an investigation.

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