Section 333(2) of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) confers an additional 12-month time period from the date of the final bill for a client to apply for assessment of interim bills, even if the individual interim bills were rendered more than 12 months before the application. The 'final bill' is the last bill for the legal services the law practice was retained to provide under the retainer, not merely the last bill in time. Where a solicitor fails to render a bill for the final period of work after a reasonable time following termination of the retainer, the last bills actually rendered become the final bills. Courts exercising the discretion to order itemisation under r 743C UCPR should consider the totality of information already available to the client, including time ledgers and the client's own records, and the sophistication of the client.
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