Frequently asked questions

No. We provide legal information to help you represent yourself at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. We are not lawyers and we do not give legal advice.

For advice on your specific circumstances, contact LawAccess NSW on 1300 888 529 (Mon-Fri, 9-5), Legal Aid NSW, your local Community Legal Centre, or a solicitor.

No honest platform can promise an NCAT result. The Tribunal decides each case on the evidence and the law. TribunalReady cannot change weak facts or replace advice about your particular legal position.

It can help you give your case its best chance by doing the preparation properly: identify the issues, put events in order, connect evidence, state the orders you want and arrive with a plan for presenting it yourself.

NCAT is designed to be accessible to self-represented parties. In the Consumer & Commercial Division, representation often requires the Tribunal’s leave, although exceptions apply and NCAT decides the issue in the particular case.

Targeted advice may be worthwhile where a limitation date, high value, technical expert evidence, vulnerability or a represented opponent creates material risk. Value alone does not decide it, and legal fees are not automatically recoverable. Our triage flags reasons to seek advice; it cannot decide for you.

For most home-building disputes, yes. NCAT’s Home Building application asks you to confirm you contacted NSW Fair Trading first, and the Home Building Act (Part 3A) supports that triage step.

For tenancy, residential and consumer disputes you generally do not need to go through Fair Trading first; you can apply to NCAT directly. We flag the right path for your case in the triage.

Some NCAT deadlines are strict and missing them usually ends your case. The 14-day window to dispute a bond claim and the 28-day window to lodge an internal appeal are two examples. Extensions are not automatic; the Tribunal weighs length, reason, prospects, and prejudice.

We surface the supported statutory clocks when you add the required anchor dates, show the source, and send reminders. Your Notice, directions and legislation remain controlling because no general tracker can infer every case-specific date.

Each case gets its own inbound address. When you CC or forward an email to it, whether a repair request, a notice or a quote, we parse the message and add it to your case timeline.

We keep the raw .eml with full headers and DKIM/SPF/DMARC verdicts, so the evidentiary chain holds up if the other side disputes that something was sent or received.

Whether material is accepted depends on relevance, compliance with directions, filing and service—not on which app produced it. NCAT’s current checklist says to bring or send documents as the listing requires; your Notice and directions control the method, deadline and any paper-copy count.

TribunalReady organises the documents and emails already in your case into a table of contents, page numbers and consistent order. You remain responsible for deciding what is relevant and complying with NCAT's instructions.

Currently, tenancy and residential proceedings are around $64 standard or $16 concession. The Consumer & Commercial general application fee is value-banded by the amount claimed: $64 for claims up to $10,000, $133 for $10,001 to $30,000, and $344 for claims over $30,000 (concession about a quarter; corporations double). Strata applications are a flat $133 / $33 reduced / $266 corporation.

These are the figures on the 1 July 2026 schedule, CPI-indexed each year. Always verify on ncat.nsw.gov.au before lodging. Check the current reduced-fee eligibility and hardship-waiver process before filing.

An NCAT money order does not move money on its own. If the other side does not pay voluntarily, you register the order with the Local Court for amounts up to $100,000 or the District Court for amounts over $100,000, then use the enforcement process of the court where it is registered.

It is a separate process from NCAT, and the Tribunal will not do it for you. We walk you through each step with preparation worksheets and links to the current official forms and filing process. Court fees change, so check the official schedule before filing.

Usually no. NCAT’s default rule (s60 of the CAT Act) is that each party bears their own costs. NCAT may award costs where special circumstances justify it, including relevant conduct and complexity. In Consumer & Commercial matters, Rule 38 also permits an award without special circumstances for claims over $30,000, and in a narrower class of $10,000–$30,000 matters.

You can ask for proven filing, expert or service expenses, but including them in your orders does not guarantee recovery. NCAT decides whether to award costs, who pays, and the amount or assessment basis.

Your case data is stored in Supabase’s Sydney region (ap-southeast-2), under the Australian Privacy Principles. When you use the AI features (drafting, document reading, email sorting), that content is processed by our AI provider, Anthropic, in the United States; the AI features are optional and can be turned off. Our privacy policy lists every sub-processor and where it sits.

Raw emails are content-hashed and stored once. We do not sell your case data, use it for advertising or repurpose it to train AI models. We disclose it only as described in the privacy policy—for example to the service providers needed to run features you choose. You can export your data and request account deletion.