A supplier has stopped delivering, a customer has stopped paying, or a contractor has walked off the job halfway through. You are sitting on a broken promise that has cost you money, and you are deciding whether a lawyer is worth it. That moment, before you open a directory or take a referral, is when the important decisions get made, because the choices you make now will shape the cost, the timeline and the outcome of the whole matter.
The decision is not who to hire, at least not first
You have more options than "sue or not". You can negotiate directly, have a lawyer send a letter of demand and negotiate for you, instruct a lawyer to start court proceedings, or decide the loss is not worth chasing and move on. The decision that looks like "which lawyer should I hire" hides a narrower real question: which lawyer can assess this specific claim honestly and run it at a cost that leaves you better off than doing nothing. Those are different questions, and most people answer the second one badly.
Two things you may assume are available are not, or not in the form you expect. The American-style contingency fee, where a lawyer takes a percentage of whatever you recover, is prohibited in Australia. Under s 183 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW), a law practice must not enter a costs agreement under which the amount payable is calculated by reference to the amount of an award or settlement. The local equivalent is a conditional costs agreement, often marketed as "no win no fee", which is a different creature with its own rules. And while the courtroom is the familiar picture of dispute, most commercial disputes resolve before trial, so the useful question is which path your matter actually needs rather than how to fight it to the end.
The factors that should decide who you engage
Whether the claim is worth making at all
A lawyer is the wrong first stop if you have not asked whether there is a claim. A breach of contract claim has three moving parts: a binding contract, a term of that contract that was breached, and loss that flowed from the breach. If any one of those is missing, no lawyer, however good, can manufacture a claim. Damages are the primary remedy, and they aim to put you in the position you would have been in if the contract had been performed, the expectation measure confirmed in Clark v Macourt [2013] HCA 56. That means the value of your claim is tied to the loss the breach actually caused you, not to the aggravation of being let down.
There is also a clock. Under s 14 of the Limitation Act 1969 (NSW), a claim founded on a contract must be brought within six years of the cause of action accruing, and twelve years under s 16 if the contract was made by deed. Similar six-year periods apply in the other states and territories. If you are close to the deadline, the question is not which lawyer is best, but which one can act this week.
A lawyer will want three things at a first meeting:
- The contract: the signed document, and any variations or emails that changed its terms.
- The breach: what was promised, what happened instead, and when.
- The loss: invoices, bank records, quotes for replacement work, anything that puts a dollar figure on the damage.
Experience with your kind of contract and your kind of loss
Contract law is a wide field, and experience in it is not uniform. A lawyer who runs commercial leasing disputes all day is a different resource from one who does construction contracts or supply agreements. Ask what proportion of their practice involves your kind of contract, and what those matters produced.
Experience is useful for a specific reason: it lets a lawyer price the claim. Someone who has run similar matters can give you a realistic range for what the case is worth, what it will cost, and how long it will take. What experience cannot do is guarantee a result. Any lawyer who promises a particular outcome in a breach case is telling you something about their sales technique, not their legal judgment. Treat confidence about process as a good sign and confidence about outcomes with suspicion.
How they would run the matter, and whether court is even on the path
A useful test is to ask what the next three months look like if you engage them. Australian solicitors are professionally obliged to tell you about the alternatives to contested litigation: r 7.2 of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules 2015 requires a solicitor to inform the client about alternatives to fully contested adjudication that are reasonably available. A lawyer whose answer begins and ends with "we file proceedings" is not giving you the advice the rules require.
The two paths look like this:
- Option A — Negotiation and mediation: Cheaper, faster, private, and it preserves whatever is left of the commercial relationship. The outcome is negotiated, so it stays within your control. The trade-off is that you may accept less than a court would award.
- Option B — Litigation: Public, slow and expensive, and the outcome is uncertain regardless of the merits. Even when you win, a costs order rarely covers your entire bill; the other side typically pays only part of what you were charged. A judgment is also only as good as the other party's ability to pay it.
Ask what proportion of the lawyer's matters settle before trial, who would appear at mediation, and what happens if the other side ignores the proceedings. The answers tell you whether they run disputes as a business negotiation or as a courtroom exercise.
Who actually does the work
The senior lawyer you meet at the first appointment may not be the person who runs your file. Firms structure matters around teams: a partner oversees, an associate does the drafting, a paralegal organises documents, and counsel may be briefed for court appearances. That is normal, but you should know the shape of it before you sign, because you are paying for it.
Ask who will do the day-to-day work, who will appear at mediation and in court, and whether a barrister would be briefed. In a billable-hours arrangement, every hand that touches the file adds time to the bill. That is not a reason to avoid teams, but it is a reason to understand the staffing plan before you agree to it, and to ask how the firm keeps the work proportionate to the amount in dispute.
The fee structure, and what it does not include
Fee transparency is not a courtesy in Australia, it is a legal obligation. Under s 174 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW), a law practice must, when or as soon as practicable after instructions are given, provide written disclosure of the basis on which costs will be calculated and an estimate of the total legal costs. If a lawyer cannot tell you how they charge and roughly what the matter will cost, that is a compliance problem, not just a customer service problem.
The common structures:
- Billable hours: you pay for every hour worked, usually at a rate per level of seniority. The estimate matters more than the rate, so ask for it in writing and ask whether the firm will warn you as the bill approaches the estimate.
- Fixed fee: a set price for a defined scope, which suits predictable work such as a letter of demand or a straightforward negotiation. Confirm what is excluded, commonly disbursements, counsel's fees and court filing fees, and what happens if the matter escalates beyond the scope.
- Conditional costs agreement ("no win no fee"): permitted under s 181 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW), which requires the agreement to be in writing, in plain language, and signed by you, and to include a cooling-off period of at least five business days. These agreements cannot be used for criminal proceedings or family law matters, and you may still be liable for disbursements and for the other side's costs if you lose. Some agreements add an uplift fee, an extra amount for the risk the firm carries.
One structure is off the table: as noted above, a contingency fee that takes a percentage of your recovery is prohibited by s 183 of the Uniform Law. If a firm offers one, treat the offer as a red flag about the firm.
Conflicts, and who else the firm acts for
Your lawyer's loyalty needs to be to you. The Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules 2015 make this concrete: r 11 requires a solicitor to avoid conflicts between the duties owed to two or more current clients, and r 12 prohibits acting where the duty to serve your best interests conflicts with the solicitor's own interests.
The practical question to ask is direct: does the firm act for the other party, or for anyone connected to them, in this or any related matter? And have they run a conflict check before taking your instructions? A firm that acts for your supplier's industry association, or for the insurer on the other side of a claim, may be able to act for you only with informed consent, and may be reluctant to push a matter hard against a client or contact it relies on. Better to know before you sign the costs agreement than to discover it halfway through.
How an Artificer Legal practitioner helps you make the call
The decision to hire a lawyer for a breach of contract is itself a judgment call, and it is the one most people get wrong by doing it in the wrong order: they pick a lawyer first and work out whether the claim makes sense afterwards.
An Artificer Legal practitioner would start before that. We would review the contract and the evidence of breach and loss, and give you a candid view on whether the claim clears the cost-benefit bar: what it is worth, what it will cost to pursue, how long it will take, and whether the other party can actually pay. We would stress-test the assumptions you are making about your own case, model the downside of each path including the costs you could be exposed to if you lose, and map the limitation period so the clock does not run out while you decide.
If the claim is worth pursuing, we would handle the steps that follow: a letter of demand that sets out the claim and the consequences of ignoring it, negotiation with the other side or their lawyer, a settlement agreement and deed of release that ends the matter cleanly, and, where proceedings are unavoidable, the court documents and the strategy to run them. If the claim is not worth pursuing, we would tell you that too, and the cost of that advice is a small fraction of the cost of a case that should never have started.
Run the numbers before you run the interviews
The discipline that separates good outcomes from expensive lessons is one of order. Start with your own case: is there a contract, a breach and a measurable loss; is the limitation clock still running; and does the likely recovery justify the likely cost? Only then interview lawyers, and only against that answer. The lawyer who is cheapest per hour is expensive if the claim was never worth making, and the most experienced firm in the state cannot help you if the six-year deadline has passed.
This guide has walked through the decision in that order: whether the claim is worth making at all, what experience actually tells you, how the matter would be run and whether court is even on the path, who does the work, what the fee structure covers and hides, and whose interests the firm serves. Hiring a breach of contract lawyer is a commercial decision like any other, and it rewards the same discipline as the rest of your business: assess the return before you commit the capital.