Legal Aid

Legal Aid (Community Legal Service Funding) is administered by the Legal Services Commission.

We do not act for legally aided clients. Availability of legal aid is limited and is not free. Your legal costs come out of whatever you receive/recover in financial terms from any settlement or any asset or money you recover, either immediately or when the asset is sold (known as the "statutory charge").  You may also have to pay monthly contributions to those costs during the case.

Solicitors who conduct Legal Aid work are required to have a franchise, which involves a lot of administration and can take the focus away from the client. There is a financial incentive for a legal aid solicitor to use unqualified or less experienced staff as the hourly rate is fixed irrespective of qualification or experience. The person dealing with the case also has to do extra work dealing with the Community Legal Service, potentially negating any costs saving that legal aid would provide. 

Where there are a number of aspects to a case then the statutory charge applies to all of these.  So, if you apply for an injunction and for financial relief the statutory charge applies to both items.  This can mean that you have to pay for work that you may regard as completely separate.  It also means that if you are involved in a protracted dispute over, for example, where any children should live or in respect of contact it may end up being considerably cheaper for you to instruct a solicitor privately to deal with the financial aspects of your divorce/separation, instead of having your legal aid solicitor deal with all aspects.  That way the costs of the children dispute would be covered by the Legal Aid Board and you would only have to pay for the costs of the financial dispute.

The statutory charge can be deferred if you secure a property for you to live in.  They take a charge on the property instead.  When the property is sold the costs are then paid back, with interest.

In general terms legal aid is available if you have less than £8,000 in capital and a monthly income before tax less than £2,435. You should check the Community Legal Service website by clicking here for fuller information.