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.

Usually not. NCAT’s Consumer & Commercial Division defaults to no legal representation. You generally need the Tribunal’s leave to be represented, and NCAT’s own annual reports show around 85% of applicants self-represent.

For high-value home-building matters (typically above $30,000) paid advice often pays for itself. For a $3,000 bond dispute it almost never does. The triage tells you honestly which side of that line your matter sits on.

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 every statutory deadline for your matter and remind you before each one, so nothing quietly expires while you are heads-down on something else.

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.

NCAT’s preparing-for-hearing guidance asks for an indexed, paginated, chronological bundle with three copies on the day (one for the Member, one for the other side, one for you). That is what Members expect.

TribunalReady produces exactly that bundle from the documents and emails already in your case: table of contents, page numbers, consistent ordering, ready to print.

Currently, tenancy and residential proceedings are around $62 standard or $16concession. The Consumer & Commercial general application fee is value-banded by the amount claimed: from $62 for claims up to $10,000, $128 for $10,001 to $30,000, and $330 for claims over $30,000 (concession about a quarter; corporations double). Strata applications are a flat $128 / $32 concession / $256 corporation.

These are the figures on the 1 July 2025 schedule, CPI-indexed each year. Always verify on ncat.nsw.gov.au before lodging. Concessions cover pensioners, Legal Aid grantees, CLC clients, full-time students and inmates. Hardship waivers exist.

An NCAT money order does not move money on its own. If the other side does not pay voluntarily, you register the order at the Local Court (for amounts under $100,000) and enforce it: typically a garnishee order against wages or bank accounts, or a writ for levy of property.

It is a separate process from NCAT, and the Tribunal will not do it for you. We walk you through each step, including the forms and fees.

Usually no. NCAT’s default rule (s60 of the CAT Act) is that each party bears their own costs. Costs can be awarded against the other side if the amount in dispute is over $30,000, or if they behaved unreasonably during the proceedings (Rule 38).

Self-reps can usually claim disbursements (filing fees, expert reports, service costs) but not the value of their own time. Set expectations accordingly when you decide what to spend.

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, share or repurpose your case data; it exists to run your case and nothing else. You can export everything and delete your account whenever you want.