Section 16 Legal Practitioners Act

Section 16 of Legal Practitioners Act 1975 is about Recovery of charges, etc. It is under ‘Remuneration of Practitioners‘ of the sections of the Act. It provides as follows:

1. Subject to the provisions of this Act, a legal practitioner shall be entitled to recover his charges by action in any court of competent jurisdiction.

2. Subject as aforesaid, a legal practitioner shall not be entitled to begin an action to recover his charges unless-

a. a bill for the charges containing particulars of the principal items included in the bill and signed by him, or in the case of a firm by one of the partners or in the name of the firm, has been served on the client personally or left for him at his last address as known to the legal practitioner or sent by post addressed to the client at that address; and

b. the period of one month beginning with the date of delivery of the bill has expired.

3. In any case in which a legal practitioner satisfies the court, on an application made either ex parte or if the court so directs after giving the prescribed notice-

a. that he has delivered a bill of charges to a client; and

b. that on the face of it the charges appear to be proper in the circumstances; and

c. that there are circumstances indicating that the client is about to do some act which would probably prevent or delay the payment to the legal practitioner of the charges, then, notwithstanding that the period mentioned in paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of this section has not expired, the court may direct that the legal practitioner be authorised to bring and prosecute an action to recover the charges unless before judgment in the action the client gives such security for the payment of the charges as may be specified in the direction.

4. The court may, if it thinks fit, on the application of a client-

a. order a legal practitioner to deliver his bill of charges to the client;

b. make an order for the delivery up of, or otherwise in relation to, any documents in the control of the legal practitioner which belong to or were received by him from or on behalf of the client, and without prejudice to the generality of the powers of the court to punish for contempt or to the provisions of this Act relating to the discipline of legal practitioners, the court may punish for contempt any legal practitioner who refuses or fails to comply with an order under this subsection.

5. The value of any consideration received by any person for anything done by a legal practitioner in his capacity as a legal practitioner shall, in so far as the value exceeds the minimum charges to which by virtue of this Act the practitioner is entitled in respect of that thing, be recoverable from any person who received the consideration or from the legal practitioner by the person from whom the consideration moved either directly or indirectly.