Somebody has done you wrong and you want a court to say so. That is a reasonable instinct. It is also, roughly half the time, not the instinct that ends the problem.
Here is the conversation we have in the first meeting, in the order we have it.
1. What does the end of this look like for you?
Not what you are entitled to. What you want. Money is the obvious answer and it is often not the real one. Sometimes the objective is a rectified roof, a released guarantee, a variation to a contract, an apology, or simply being able to stop thinking about it.
Those objectives produce different strategies. A client who wants to be paid and a client who wants to be vindicated are not running the same case.
2. What is the limitation date?
We ask this early because it constrains everything else. Under the Limitation Act 1969 (NSW), most contract and tort claims must be commenced within six years of the cause of action accruing. Defamation is one year. Other regimes have their own periods.
Whether the cause of action has accrued, and when, can itself be a real argument. If the date is near, it changes what we do this week.
3. What evidence exists, and who holds it?
A claim is only as good as what can be proved. We want the contract, the variations, the emails, the invoices, the file notes, and the messages nobody has re-read since the relationship soured. We also want to know what does not exist, because that is where the case is usually lost.
A useful discipline: write the chronology before you write the pleading.
4. What is the other side's best argument?
Every client can recite their own case. Very few have sat with the strongest version of the opponent's. We build it deliberately, and we test the claim against it. If it survives, you have something. If it does not, you have saved a great deal of money in one afternoon.
5. Can you actually recover?
A judgment is a piece of paper. Enforcing it against a company with no assets, a deregistered entity or an individual who is about to become bankrupt is an expensive way to obtain a filing cabinet ornament. Before proceedings, we look at the defendant: solvency, security, insurance, guarantees, whether there is a policy behind the claim.
Insurance is the answer more often than clients expect. It is also the reason some defendants will fight harder than the merits suggest they should.
6. What will it cost, and what if you lose?
We give a written costs agreement and disclosure before we act, and we fix fees at each stage where the work can be scoped. But the number that matters is the total exposure, because in most NSW courts costs follow the event. Lose, and you are typically ordered to pay a portion of the other side's costs on top of your own.
That exposure is a strategic fact, not a disclaimer. It should shape whether you make an early offer, and what that offer is.
Then, and only then
If the objective is clear, the limitation date is safe, the evidence exists, the claim survives the opponent's best argument, the defendant can pay, and the economics work, we send a letter of demand. A surprising proportion of matters end there.
If it does not end there, we file, and we prepare the mediation as though it were the hearing. That is where most civil litigation actually finishes, and it is the reason we take it as seriously as we do.
And when we tell you not to
Sometimes the honest answer is that the claim is good, and running it will still make you worse off. We say it. That conversation costs us a file. It has also produced more of our referrals than anything else we do.
This article sets out general principles of New South Wales law as at 12 June 2026. It is not legal advice and it does not take your circumstances into account. Deadlines in this area are short and unforgiving. Speak with a lawyer before you act. Call Nightingale Lawyers on 0407 000 007.
Whatever it is, we can figure it out together.
A first conversation costs you nothing. You will speak with Hanna, not a call centre, and you will leave knowing what your options are and roughly what they cost.