Consider defending yourself. Save yourself money.
Many lawyers say "if you defend yourself then you have a fool for a client". 
Some cases - Yes. But not in every case.
In many cases it is necessary to engage the services of a lawyer.
But NetLaw believes that there are also a number of cases where you should seriously consider representing yourself.
At the very least, you can use all of the information we provide you in NetLaw to carry out all of the basic preparation yourself and then make it clear to the lawyer that your fee should be substantially reduced because of all the work you have carried out.
Court lawyers are now charging something in the region of $200 an hour and frequently more than that figure and GST goes on top.
Therefore, you can see that somewhere between 4 and 5 hours work can easily rise to $1,000 and full preparation of a case might take up 5 to 10 hours of your lawyer’s time even on minor cases.
Take some control of the situation yourself and consider either defending yourself on minor matters or at least carrying out all the basic preparation yourself and not letting your lawyer charge for that preparation.
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When you are first charged with an offence, on the first day you appear in Court you will be entitled to what is known as a Police Discovery kit.
This will contain much of the information on the Police file but will not necessarily contain all of the statements by the witnesses. You are entitled to obtain a full copy of the Police file and you can do this by dropping a brief note to the local Police Prosecutions Division along the following lines
Police Prosecutions,
Dear Sir
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