The recent changes now include:

• Actuarial Factors such as age at Date of Accident, Date at Assessment Date, Life Expectancy, Years to Retirement and the related life expectancy tables.
• Page Breaks on Reports – we have added page breaks on the reports so that each head of damage now prints on a new page.
• Summary of Economic Loss – a simple table including each head of damage.
• Tax rate changes in future economic loss – we have made some slight changes including a test if the net earnings changes then it adds a new line to future economic loss.
• Updated CPI for December 2009 CPI Index of 169.5.
• Slight changes to the descriptions on each report.
• Changes to the formatting of the reports which improve the consistency of the reports when copying and pasting into word documents.

We are also looking at some other major changes to the layout of the matters, scenarios and report pages with the aim of improved user functionality.

We would love to hear of any suggestions that you have have, leave a comment below:

When calculating the economic loss of minors, as there is no past earning history from which to use as a base for probable earnings, it is often necessary to look to other sources to provide a guide as to their probable earnings capacity.

Possible sources include:

• Earnings, occupation and education of the parents.
• Pre-accident school reports as an indicator of future education possibilities and career trends. High performers may have a greater likelihood of attending university etc.
• Average weekly earnings of full-time adult males or females. This is commonly used alternative especially where future career opportunities cannot be determined reliably. It is advisable to consider this as an alternative scenario.
• Average weekly earnings of a particular occupation or group of occupations.

There are two ways that you can use Lawcalc to calculate the economic loss of minors:

1. Simple Economic Loss

This presents a simple straight line economic loss using say, average weekly earnings and setting the Start Work Age to 18 – as seen shown below. In this alternative, economic loss will not be calculated until the plaintiff reaches age 18. If age 18 is in the future, no economic loss would be calculated. I would suggest that CPI – No Increase is selected when using average weekly earnings.

2. Complex Economic Loss

This alternative is useful when a particular career progression is able to be determined. Examples would include professionals such as:

• solicitors (law clerk, solicitor, associate, senior associate, partner)
• doctors (intern, resident, specialist)
• trades people (apprentice 1, apprentice 2, employed tradesperson, sub-contractor, own licence).
• accountants (graduate, CA qualified, senior, manager, partner)

Using the complex economic loss option, you would enter the dates and the earnings for the various earnings levels as shown below:

And a sample of the future economic loss calculations is shown below, in which the tax rates, discount multipliers etc are all applied correctly:

Any questions, please leave a comment below.

CPI is based on the CPI Index for All Capital Cities as published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It assumes that the first financial year (year of accident) is the base and then CPI increases are applied each year until the date of hearing.

Future Loss, when CPI increases are selected, is based on the CPI indexed earnings at the date of the hearing. Consistent with common law, CPI increases are not applied into the future.

In Lawcalc – you set up your matter once and then develop scenarios.

After login in, you will be directed to the Matters page, which lists all your matters. You can create a new matter as shown below:

Click Continue to confirm the details.

The Scenarios Page will list all the economic loss, domestic care and future medical scenarios that you have created. You can create as many different scenarios as you like.

Step 1: Create a scenario by clicking new economic loss.

Step 2: Enter the economic loss variables

Step 3: Select Report and Hearing date and click Create

Final: The Report is displayed instantly, that can be printed of copied into your own documents: