Free letter of demand for unpaid fees

Does your engagement letter change what you can demand?

It usually decides it. Professional fees differ from a plain invoice because the entitlement comes from the engagement terms, not just from delivery — and those terms are the first thing a client's adviser will read if the matter escalates. Before sending anything, check what your engagement says about the fee basis, any interest on late payment, and whether costs of recovery are recoverable. You can only demand what the agreement supports.

There is no automatic right to interest on a late commercial payment in Australia. Unlike the UK, there is no statutory late-payment interest regime for ordinary contracts here. If your engagement letter does not provide for interest, a court may still award it on judgment — but you cannot simply add it to a demand and call it owed.

Regulated professions carry more. Legal practitioners have costs-disclosure obligations under state legal profession legislation, and a failure to disclose can make a costs agreement unenforceable. If you are a solicitor chasing your own fees, the disclosure position matters more than the letter does.

Do you need a lawyer to send one?

Anyone can write to someone who owes them money, anywhere in Australia. Chasing a debt owed to you is acting on your own behalf, and that needs no licence.

Who signs it still matters. A demand from the person who has already asked three times reads like the fourth ask. That is the reason a paid option exists, not a legal requirement.

When is this the wrong move?

• The client is disputing the quality of the work. A demand will not settle that, and sending one can harden a complaint into a formal one.
• You are a legal practitioner and disclosure was incomplete. Resolve the costs-agreement position before demanding payment under it.
• The fee is contingent or unbilled. Demand only what has been properly rendered.
• The debt is outside the limitation period. Most Australian contract debts stop being enforceable after six years. Check the limitation period first.
• They are already in liquidation, administration or bankruptcy. A demand does nothing once an insolvency practitioner is appointed.

And one about us rather than you: we can only send letters on your behalf where the debtor is in NSW, Victoria, Queensland or the ACT. Doing it for someone else in WA, SA, Tasmania or the NT needs a licence we do not hold. The free letter above works in all eight.

Should you send it yourself, or have us send it?

A letter you send yourself works in a small number of cases — usually where the other side simply forgot and one firm reminder is enough.

For most debts it is not enough. If you have already asked and been ignored, another message from you changes nothing. What changes things is the debt leaving your hands: a demand on our letterhead, written and approved by a NSW solicitor, delivered and tracked, followed up on a schedule, and handed to a partner law firm on day 14 if it is still unpaid.

Use the free letter to put it in writing. If that does not work, you need more than a letter.

What other letters can you build here?

Every one of these is the same tool, set up for a different debt. All free, all downloadable as Word or PDF.

• Unpaid invoices — the general business version, and the place to start if none of the others fit
• Unpaid wages — what law is on your side when wages go unpaid
• Rent arrears — does a rent demand go to a court or a tribunal
• Strata levies — why does this letter give 30 days when the others give 7
• Money you lent — can you recover a loan with nothing in writing