Limited activity in the resources sector has resulted in the continued challenging times for the majority of Australia’s native title practices. But for residual matters and a strongly performing agribusiness sector it would have been truly lean times for Australia’s native title lawyers. Despite a challenging market Australia’s native title lawyers are yet to look towards alternative pricing as frequently as their colleagues in other practice areas do.
Alternative Pricing
Only 68% of of practitioners noted using alternative pricing (typically anything under 80% is considered low).
The majority who did adopt alternative pricing methods reside within the larger commercial firms with a number of smaller practices not yet having moved away from an hourly rate model.
Fixed pricing was the most common form of alternative pricing being used by 84% of individuals and similarly capped fees and stage-based costing were also common with 47% and 53% respectively using these models.
21% of individuals offered performance or outcome based fee structures and a comparatively low 11% used retainer-style agreements.
Hourly Rates
The hourly rates of Australia’s native title lawyers vary wildly. Typically when piecing together our pricing spread firms tend to gravitate towards a “middle ground”. This is far from the case in Native Title with hourly rates ranging between $300-$800 per hour.
The below table outlines what percentage of the market sets their hourly rate across various levels and two key trends emerge from such:
- Predictably… the hourly rate of individuals working in the native title practices at larger commercial firms are substantially higher than those of individuals at smaller firms or specialist native title practices.
- The hourly rates of those individuals acting for Traditional Owner bodies generally don’t exceed $500 per hour.
| Hourly Rate | Market Share |
|---|---|
| $300-$350 | 2% |
| $350-$400 | 9% |
| $400-$450 | 13% |
| $450-$500 | 20% |
| $500-$550 | 13% |
| $550-$600 | 8% |
| $600-$650 | 13% |
| $650-$700 | 19% |
| $700-$750 | 3% |