Terms & Conditions

Settle Easy is the trading name of Legal Easy Pty Ltd (ACN 699 007 700, ABN 44 699 007 700).

Settle Easy provides residential property conveyancing services to individuals in NSW, VIC and QLD — including property buying, selling and transfers.

Our services are delivered by qualified Australian property lawyers and licensed conveyancers. We operate entirely online, serving clients in NSW, VIC and QLD.

By engaging us (whether through our website, by email, or any other channel) you agree to these Terms & Conditions. A separate engagement letter or costs agreement will set out the specific scope, fees and deliverables for your matter.

We provide residential property conveyancing services — acting for you when buying, selling or transferring residential property in NSW, VIC and QLD. This includes contract review or preparation, property searches, exchange, and PEXA electronic settlement.

Each engagement is limited to the services described in your engagement letter or Terms of Engagement. If your matter turns out to be more complex than a standard fixed-fee conveyancing matter (for example, a disputed title, multiple registered interests, or a significant change in scope), we will let you know and discuss your options before any additional fees apply.

We may decline or cease to act on a matter where we are unable to assist, where there is a conflict of interest, or where reasonable instructions or payment are not provided, with reasonable notice.

Our professional fees are fixed and quoted to you upfront before work begins, unless otherwise agreed in writing. Quoted professional fees are exclusive of GST unless stated otherwise; any GST payable is shown and added separately.

In addition to our professional fee, your matter will usually involve disbursements: third-party costs that we pass on to you at cost with no mark-up. These can include government charges, title and property search fees, registration fees, and stamp duty (transfer duty).

Stamp duty and government charges are set by the relevant state or territory revenue office and are payable by you. We will estimate these where we can, but the final amount is determined by the relevant authority.

Our professional fee is payable on settlement. If we issue an invoice at any other time — including before settlement or where a matter does not proceed to completion — payment is due within 7 days of the date of invoice. Where a matter does not proceed to completion, fees for work already performed are invoiced on termination.

To act effectively on your behalf, we rely on you to provide accurate, complete and timely information and instructions.

Your responsibilities include: providing identification and any documents we request, responding promptly to our questions, reviewing documents we send you, and meeting key dates such as cooling-off periods and settlement.

You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to provide any documents or information you give us, and for telling us about anything that may affect your matter (such as finance approval, building reports, or special conditions).

We will keep you informed of the progress of your matter and explain the steps involved in plain English.

We will act with care, skill and diligence in providing your services. However, many aspects of a property transaction or legal matter are outside our control.

We cannot guarantee a particular outcome: for example, that a sale or purchase will complete, that finance will be approved, that settlement will occur on a specific date, or that a third party will meet their obligations.

Any timeframes we provide (such as turnaround times) are estimates made in good faith and may be affected by factors beyond our control, including other parties, lenders, and government authorities.

Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law or other rights that cannot be lawfully excluded.

To the extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim arising out of or in connection with our services is limited to the professional fees you paid for the specific engagement giving rise to the claim. This fees-paid cap does not apply to the free preliminary contract-review service; see section 11.

Subject to the non-excludable rights preserved above and only to the extent permitted by law, we exclude liability for indirect or consequential loss, including loss of profit, opportunity or anticipated savings. For the free preliminary review, section 11 also applies.

Liability may be limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

We treat your information as confidential and handle your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

We collect and use your information to provide your services, and we may disclose it to other parties where reasonably necessary to complete your matter (such as the other side's representative, your lender, or a land titles registry).

We may also process your information using assessed third-party technology providers, including artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help us review documents and extract key information. Providers may operate outside Australia. See section 8 below, the Privacy Policy and the specific free-review provisions in section 11.

For full details of how we handle your information, please see our Privacy Policy.

We may use technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to assist our team. Use must be appropriate to the matter, subject to our professional and privacy obligations and any more specific terms agreed with you. The free preliminary review is also subject to section 11.

We may use AI tools to assist us with tasks such as:

• Reviewing contracts and supporting documents and extracting key information, such as the parties, property details, dates, deposit and price, and special conditions.

• Summarising documents and correspondence, and helping us identify issues, risks, or missing information that need a lawyer's attention.

• Preparing initial drafts of letters, file notes, and standard documents for review by our team.

• Organising and checking information so we can meet key dates and reduce administrative delays.

AI is only ever a tool that supports our qualified lawyers and licensed conveyancers. It does not replace human judgement, make decisions about your matter, or provide legal advice on its own. A qualified member of our team reviews and verifies any AI output against the source documents before we rely on it, and we remain professionally responsible for the advice and services we provide to you.

AI can misread documents, omit information, confuse parties or dates, or produce plausible but incorrect statements. Human checking reduces but cannot eliminate those risks. We do not guarantee that AI-assisted processing will identify every error or issue. This does not reduce the care and skill we are required to exercise or make you responsible for checking our professional work.

Before a provider is used with matter information, we must assess its confidentiality and security arrangements, processing locations and subprocessors, retention rules, and whether inputs or outputs may be used for model training. We must use terms and configurations appropriate to the disclosed purpose. Consent to assisting with your matter is not consent to unrelated general-purpose AI model training. We do not make a blanket promise that every provider offers zero retention or no-training controls.

To use these tools, we may input documents and information relating to your matter into them. You confirm that you are entitled to provide us with the documents and information you give us for this purpose.

We will explain relevant AI processing and obtain consent where required; engaging us does not authorise undisclosed or unrelated uses of your information. If you object to AI or overseas processing, tell us before providing documents or before that processing begins. We will discuss any available alternative and confirm its scope, timing and fees before you agree. For the free review, an alternative free or immediate service is not guaranteed.

Our use of AI does not reduce our professional duties to you or your rights under your engagement letter, these Terms, or the law.

From 1 July 2026, Settle Easy is a reporting entity under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) (AML/CTF Act), as amended by the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024 (Cth). These reforms extend Australia's AML/CTF framework to legal practitioners and conveyancers, consistent with international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations. Property transactions are internationally recognised as a significant avenue for money laundering, the concealment of proceeds of crime, and terrorism financing. Our obligations as a reporting entity reflect the critical role conveyancers play in protecting the integrity of the Australian property market.

We maintain an AML/CTF program that sets out how we identify, assess, and manage the risk of our services being used for money laundering or terrorism financing. The program covers customer due diligence, ongoing transaction monitoring, staff training, reporting, and record-keeping. AUSTRAC — the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre — is the government agency responsible for overseeing our compliance with the AML/CTF Act.

Before we commence substantive legal work on your matter, we are required by law to complete a customer due diligence (CDD) process. CDD is the process by which we collect, verify, and record information about you and, where relevant, any entity (such as a company or trust) that is giving us instructions or that will be a party to the transaction. Standard CDD for individuals involves verifying:

• Your full legal name, date of birth, and residential address.

• Your identity using an acceptable primary photographic document — such as a current Australian passport or Australian driver licence — or a combination of secondary documents, in accordance with the verification standards required by the AML/CTF Act.

• The nature and purpose of your conveyancing matter and, where required, the source of funds involved in the transaction.

For companies, trusts, or other entities that are a party to or giving instructions in relation to a transaction, CDD also includes: verifying the entity's legal name, ABN or ACN, and registered address; identifying the directors, trustees, or other persons who control the entity; and identifying and verifying the beneficial owners — the individuals who ultimately own or control 25% or more of the entity.

In certain circumstances we are required to conduct enhanced customer due diligence (ECDD). ECDD applies where, among other things: you or a related party is a politically exposed person (PEP) — that is, a person who holds or has held a prominent public function such as a government minister, senior public official, judge, senior military officer, or senior executive of a state-owned enterprise, or an immediate family member or close associate of such a person; the transaction involves a higher-risk country or jurisdiction identified by FATF; the source of funds or the structure of the transaction raises risk indicators; or we otherwise identify a heightened risk profile. ECDD requires us to collect additional information and apply additional scrutiny before and during the matter.

You are required to complete the CDD process — including providing all documents and information we request — within 5 business days of our request. We cannot commence or continue substantive legal work on your matter while CDD is incomplete. This is a legal obligation we cannot waive. We will make every effort to make the process as straightforward as possible; in most cases it can be completed online in under 15 minutes.

If you do not provide the required information and documents within 5 business days of our request, we may suspend work on your matter immediately and without further notice. Suspension means we will cease all steps to progress your matter — including reviewing or exchanging contracts, conducting searches, responding to requisitions, or proceeding to settlement — until CDD is satisfactorily completed.

If CDD remains incomplete or unsatisfactory for a further 5 business days after suspension, or if at any time we are unable to complete CDD to our satisfaction — including because required information or documents are withheld, are inaccurate or inconsistent, or because we cannot verify your identity to the standard required by the AML/CTF Act — we may terminate this engagement immediately by written notice. Termination does not affect our right to recover fees for work already performed, which remain payable in full. We are not liable for any loss, delay, or adverse consequence arising from a suspension or termination under this section.

Our CDD obligations continue throughout the matter. We are required to monitor transactions for consistency with our understanding of your circumstances and the purpose of the engagement, and to update CDD information if your circumstances change or if we identify any inconsistency or emerging risk. If there is a material change — such as a change in the parties to the transaction, the source of funds, or the structure of the deal — you must notify us promptly, and we may be required to conduct further CDD.

We may be legally required to submit a Suspicious Matter Report (SMR) or other report to AUSTRAC without informing you. This is a mandatory tipping-off prohibition under section 123 of the AML/CTF Act, which applies without exception regardless of the circumstances or the outcome of any assessment. Breach of the tipping-off prohibition is a criminal offence. We may also be required by law to decline, delay, or freeze a transaction or instruction without being able to provide you with a full explanation. We are not liable for any loss or delay arising in those circumstances.

We are required to retain CDD records and related transaction records for a minimum of 7 years from the end of the engagement, as required by the AML/CTF Act. These records may be accessed by or disclosed to AUSTRAC or other government authorities under applicable law. For full details of how we collect, use, store, and disclose your personal information — including for AML/CTF purposes — see our Privacy Policy and our AML/CTF Notice at settleeasy.com.au/aml2026.

By engaging Settle Easy, you acknowledge that: (a) we are required by law to complete CDD before and during your matter and cannot commence or continue without it; (b) you will provide accurate, complete, and up-to-date information and documents promptly on request; (c) you understand the consequences of failing to complete CDD within the required timeframe, including suspension and termination of the engagement; and (d) you consent to us collecting, verifying, and where required by law disclosing your personal information to meet our AML/CTF obligations.

These Terms are governed by the laws of Australia and the state or territory in which your matter is conducted. You submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of that place.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be communicated to current clients. Continued use of our services following an update constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force and effect.

These Terms, together with your engagement letter or costs agreement, form the entire agreement between you and Settle Easy in relation to the services provided.

Questions about these Terms can be sent to info@settleeasy.com.au.