What is Legal Aid?
Legal Aid is government funding for legal cases. It is controlled by the Legal Aid Agency, which must follow legislation that sets out the eligibility criteria for funding.
Legal Aid will cover our costs as we carry out work on your case. Legal Aid can also cover the costs of barristers, medical experts, and other types of experts who may be required to build the strongest claim possible for you. If your claim needs to be issued in court, Legal Aid funding will also cover your court fees and protect you against having to pay for the Defendant’s legal costs if your claim is not successful.
Only firms that have been awarded a contract by the Legal Aid Agency are able to do work funded by Legal Aid.
Types of Legal Aid
There are two main types of civil Legal Aid: Legal Help and Legal Aid certificates.
Legal Help allows us to take initial steps to investigate your claim. Under Legal Help, we can do things such as have meetings with you, take a statement, obtain and review your records, prepare an application for a full legal aid certificate, and correspond with the Defendant. However, we are not able to do things such as instruct a medical expert.
Once we have investigated your claim, we will assess whether we have enough evidence to support an application for a Legal Aid certificate. When we apply for a Legal Aid certificate, we ask for funding to take certain steps, such as instructing a medical expert. We also ask for a specific amount of funding. The work we are allowed to do under the certificate and the amount of funding is limited. When we need to take further steps to progress the claim, we will make further applications to the Legal Aid Agency to request an extension to the certificate.
How do we obtain Legal Aid?
The process for applying for each type of funding is different. For Legal Help, we will help you to fill in a form with information about your finances. We will also request that you send us proof of your finances, such as your recent bank statements and proof of benefits. Once we have that information and the signed form, we can get to work on your case straight away.
For Legal Aid certificates, we apply directly to the Legal Aid Agency online using the Legal Aid Agency’s application forms and will provide evidence to support the case, such as records or statements we have obtained. The Legal Aid Agency will decide whether or not to provide the funding we have requested. We will assist the Legal Aid Agency if they have any queries about the application. If they decide not to provide funding, we will advise you on appealing the decision.
We will often need to carry out initial work under Legal Help to show that the case has sufficient merit to justify an application for a Legal Aid certificate.
Am I eligible for Legal Aid?
When it comes to assessing your eligibility for Legal Aid funding, there are three main elements we need to consider. The first is whether your claim is a type of claim that the Legal Aid Agency will fund, as they only fund specific types of claims. Your claim may be capable of being funded by Legal Aid if, for example:
- Your claim relates to abuse perpetrated against you when you were a child or a vulnerable adult; or
- Your claim relates to abuse that was perpetrated against you by someone in the course of their employment by a public body; or
- Your claim relates to abuse that you experienced whilst under the care of a public body.
Unfortunately, Legal Aid will not fund applications to Redress schemes, or applications to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. However, we are able to offer alternative funding arrangements for these applications on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis.
The second element is whether you meet the financial eligibility tests set out by the Legal Aid Agency. If you are in receipt of certain welfare benefits (such as Universal Credit) and you own under £8000 in capital (i.e. in property and in savings), then it is likely that you will be financially eligible for civil Legal Aid. Even if you are not in receipt of welfare benefits, you may still be eligible if your disposable income falls below the threshold set by the Legal Aid Agency. If the claim is on behalf of a child, then they will automatically be financially eligible.
The third element is if your case has sufficient merit to justify Legal Aid funding. This only applies if you are applying for a Legal Aid certificate, rather than Legal Help. The Legal Aid Agency will assess whether your claim has a sufficient likelihood of success to justify funding it. There are other factors they will also consider, such as whether the likely benefit of your claim outweighs the likely costs, and whether it is in the public interest to fund the claim.
Is Legal Aid free?
A common misconception about Legal Aid is that it is free. It is important to be clear that this is not necessarily the case. If you have capital between £3000 and £8000 and you apply for a Legal Aid certificate, the Legal Aid Agency may ask that you pay a proportionate contribution to your legal costs.
Another scenario where Legal Aid is not free is if the ‘statutory charge’ applies. When you are awarded compensation at the end of a civil claim, the general rule is that the Defendant will pay all of your legal costs. However, if the Defendant does not have to pay all of your legal costs, then the Legal Aid Agency may require you to pay some of your legal costs out of your compensation back to them. They cannot ask you to pay anything more than what you have been awarded in compensation.
Why is Legal Aid preferable?
We take the view that, where available, Legal Aid is the more financially beneficial funding option for our clients. Under Legal Aid funding, your solicitors are not entitled to claim a portion of your compensation from you if you win your claim. This is in contrast to a traditional Conditional Fee Agreement, often referred to as a ‘no-win-no-fee’ agreement. Under a Conditional Fee Agreement, your solicitors can charge you a success fee of up to 25% of your compensation if you win your claim. Therefore, you are likely to keep more of your compensation if your claim is funded under Legal Aid.
There is also greater protection against you having to pay the defendant’s costs under a Legal Aid certificate in contrast to other types of funding.
Finding the Best Funding Arrangement for Your Case
When we first speak with you about your case, we will discuss your finances with you to assess whether you may be eligible for Legal Aid. As above, we take the view that Legal Aid funding is the best option for our clients where it is available. When a claim is funded by Legal Aid, the claimant will almost always keep more of their damages than in claims funded under ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements. As a result of this, when consulting a solicitor about a potential abuse claim, we would recommend that you ask about Legal Aid funding if you think that you might be eligible. Not all solicitors’ firms have a contract with the Legal Aid Agency to carry out Legal Aid work, and if you are financially eligible it may be in your best interests to instruct a solicitor who is able to work on your case under Legal Aid funding.
Whilst we are able to carry out Legal Aid work, all solicitors in our team routinely carry out work under multiple funding arrangements, including Conditional Fee Arrangements depending on what suits that individual client best.
Whether or not you are eligible for Legal Aid funding, we will work with you to ensure that we find the best funding arrangement to suit you.
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