Lawyers’ bills soar under Coalition

Taxpayers shelled out more than $825 million last year on lawyers,with one firm pocketing a large chunk of the work.

Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter.

Attorney-General Christian Porter has warned he is closely scrutinising all requests from bureaucrats to approve legal bills as it emerged taxpayers shelled out more than $825 million last year on lawyers.

Total spending on legal services has jumped 20 per cent while the Coalition has been in government, up from $689m in 2013-14 despite a vow to rein in the ­expenditure.

Private law firms have been the big winners, reaping an extra $63m a year, to take their total ­professional fees last year to $197m, excluding GST and ­disbursements.

The shift away from in-house departmental legal teams towards outsourcing has come amid a blowout in spending on contractors, consultants and labour hire, as the public service has shrunk in size.

Defence was the biggest honey pot for lawyers; its legal bills rose to $99.4m last year, up from $82.8m two years ago. Legal spending by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission jumped to $87.9m, up from $62.7m in 2014-15, while the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s expenditure rose from $59.2m to $79.1m.

 

A spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs, which incorporates immigration and border protection, said the management of migration and citizenship litigation — started by people challenging visa decisions — was the “single biggest contributor” to its bill for external lawyers. Its caseload had jumped 73 per cent in two years, the spokesman said.

Clayton Utz, which recently became part of a new trial to outsource the drafting of legislation, was the government’s favoured private law firm, pocketing 12 per cent of all external legal fees.

The share of legal work performed by in-house departmental lawyers declined from 54 per cent in 2013-14 to 49 per cent last year. Of the work briefed externally, the share performed by the Australian Government Solicitor (the government-owned law firm) fell from 38 per cent to 35 per cent.

Mr Porter said the government was “developing a new model” for buying legal services following a review by Attorney-General’s Department secretary Chris Moraitis.

“I am taking a particular interest in the expenditure of funds on legal services, applying very close scrutiny to each and every application that comes before me for approval,” he said.

The secretary’s review, released last November, recommended a major shake-up of legal services procurement, including a new Australian Government Legal Service to better co-ordinate in-house departmental legal teams and cut duplication of work, and a new whole-of-government legal panel to “obtain the full benefits of its purchasing power” from private law firms.

It found the structure of commonwealth legal services was “substantially more decentralised than most comparable countries”.

The total value of briefs to barristers rose to $67.7m last year, up from $48.1m in 2013-14.