Legal Aid Newsletter | June 2025

If you have any feedback from this newsletter, or would like our team to look into any issues for you, please email us.

Resolution working for you – LAA cyber incident

We understand that the uncertainty around the impact of the cyber incident is causing concern to members in terms of legal aid for clients and also payments to firms.

We have been doing everything we can to ensure the LAA understands the impact the situation is having and encourage them to reconsider some of their contingency arrangements and clarify their communications, including:

• Melanie Bataillard-Samuel, Resolution’s Chair has written formally to Jane Harbottle, the LAA’s CEO, to raise members’ concerns. You can read the letter here.
  • We have received a reply, which you can find here.
• Melanie has been in touch with the President of the Family Division to ensure he is aware of the impact on cases in the Family Courts
• Co-ordinating with and supporting the other representative bodies including the Law Society and LAPG in bringing practitioners’ concerns and ideas for improvements to the LAA’s attention
• Attending a meeting with the LAA to raise members’ concerns
• Resolution’s Legal Aid Committee responded within hours to some draft documentation on contingency arrangements on High Cost Cases with suggestions for improvement

We have created a collated document which brings together the LAA’s emails and FAQs so that you can follow changes and developments as their advice has changed. As it is in Word it has internal links and is searchable. You can download it here.

• • We have added the points from the LAA’s ‘Update on Portal Availability’ emails to the collated by date to 16 June 2025
  • The LAA announced a new service to check evidence of domestic abuse on 9 June. We understand that the update email sent that day may not have reached everyone on the circulation list, so we have highlighting it here:
    • What support is there for providers in civil cases when using delegated functions, to check if evidence of domestic abuse or child protection is acceptable to bring proceedings within scope for certain private law family matters? We are introducing a new service allowing providers to check evidence with the Legal Aid Agency before making an emergency grant under delegated functions. Queries should be sent to [email protected]. The service is intended to be available where the provider is concerned the evidence may not be accepted by the Legal Aid Agency, most of the evidence attached to applications is straightforward and will not need to be checked.

Please note: some very important new guidance which may not be totally obvious from the LAA’s email or the collated document. Click on the links which take you to new guidance documents:

• Applications in respect of high-cost family, exceptional and complex cases and Prior Authority
• For all matters involving exceptional and complex cases, please click here for further information on how to submit work.
• For all High-Cost Family related work please click here for further information on how to submit work.
• Civil Prior Authority requests where the provider cannot justify the expense of expert assessment, testing, etc on assessment can submit their Prior Authority request to the LAA using the CIV APP8A form located on GOV.UK and submit it directly to [email protected] without the need for a contingency reference number. Please ensure you detail that you have a current live certificate on CCMS or that you have delegated functions to grant emergency funding in this matter.
• How can I make claims for Payments on Account (POAs) and final claims?NOTE: This FAQ concerns the operation of the contingency payments scheme rather than dealing with the question. More information on how the scheme, including how it is calculated, and what to do if you do not believe it is appropriate for you, is available here: Contingency Payment – Providers Guide

Legal Aid Committee’s hints and tips

Staying Informed – closely monitoring email updates from the LAA and the incident webpages: Legal Aid Agency cyber-security incident GOV.UK page and the associated FAQ

Maintaining Records – keeping lists of all applications we would have made and following LAA guidance on recording delegated functions

Maintaining cash flow

• submitting contingency claims for Legal Help and Crime Lower matters
• opting into the LAA’s weekly contingency arrangements for certificated work, based on average claims February to April
• noting the SRA’s confirmation (to the Law Society) that payments should be paid into office account and the SRA does not consider that this money is client money – para 1.3 here
• holding contingency payments  in a suspense account until they can be properly allocated against bills

Contingency payments – keeping clear records for how this money has been used

Disbursements – logging all POA disbursements on the case management system to maintain a clear record of what would have been claimed

• using part of the contingency payments to cover disbursements, prioritised by urgency and date, with a memo on the relevant ledger

Preparing Bills and POAs – processing them as far as possible, so they’re ready to go when normal service resumes.

Billing schedule – maintaining a spreadsheet to track all matters we would otherwise be billing, complete with outcome codes ready for submission

Acknowledging the limitations of the current situation –  firms are unable to monitor billing performance or other usual management data to the normal standard. This limits our ability to understand the legal aid part of the business in the way we normally would.

Managing Expectations – being aware that it could be months before systems are fully restored. We do not have any additional information that hasn’t been shared publicly by the LAA; but the latest update emails from them say they cannot confirm a timeline for full recovery and they are planning for extended contingency arrangements beyond the end of this month. We are also aware of other cyber attacks, eg on Marks and Spencer, which are taking months to resolve.  Our best guess is that this is likely to last for months rather than weeks.

Case records – firms which always print/save certificates and notifications to the file are in a better position than those which rely on access to CCMS

Issues raised with the LAA so far

Timescale
All those who responded said having some information about the likely timescale was their most pressing issue

Contingency payments

• apparent lack of flexibility – the LAA says requests to vary the amount based on 3 months payments can be made through your contract manager if you think they are too high or too low
• timing and amounts which do not accommodate individual firms’ circumstances

Delegated functions
Members agree it is a good idea to let providers delegate more. It is helpful to promise not to retrospectively review intra-vires decisions; but the LAA also need to spell out what is intra and ultra vires. Members felt this was particularly important. A range of suggestions for improvement were also made.

Applications
Members need to know the status of applications that were submitted but not processed before CCMS went down.

Billing
Members want the LAA to know that they will be preparing bills ready to send as soon as they can. The LAA will need to consider how they will resource processing these as quickly as possible.

Recoupment of contingency payments
Members are concerned that the LAA will be unable to deal and pay all these claims quickly. They need to extend the proposed 2 weeks grace period before they start recoupments to allow firms to submit their claims and be paid. The proposed system could lead to reduced payments received and then the recoupments placing burden on firms’ cash flow.

Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards

We need a happy legal gathering more than ever at the moment – luckily there is one not far away!

The Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards will take place in London on 4 July 2025. If you haven’t booked your tickets for this uplifting awards ceremony in London, they are still available here.

SQM accreditation to last for 5 years

The LAA will be increasing the length of the SQM accreditation period from 3 years to 5 years. This will mean SQM holders will not have to be audited as often to maintain their accreditation. This change will apply from 1 October 2025. More information.