Why do I need to provide financial information for legal aid ?
Renfrewshire Law Centre’s website home page shows the following important notice:
We require that all service-users provide this information, whether first-time users or established clients with new matters, and whether attending the Drop-In Surgery or an appointment or some other service. This has prompted a number of you to ask why you need provide this information, particularly as Renfrewshire Law Centre is a charity. This is an understandable question.
This became necessary as a result of regulations introduced by the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) in January 2011, whereby SLAB effectively imposed a new rule that lawyers cannot provide legal help to their clients without first seeing documentary evidence that they qualify for legal aid. In the past it was enough for a lawyer to ask a client what his or her financial circumstances were, and the lawyer could take the client at their word, then SLAB would undertake random checks of clients’ circumstances to make sure they did indeed qualify. However, in January 2011 SLAB changed this system.
So why does it matters if you qualify for legal aid when Renfrewshire Law Centre is a charity ? Well unfortunately, like many UK charities, Renfrewshire Law Centre does not receive 100% grant-funding, therefore we also require to supplement our grant-funding through various endeavours. One of these is legal aid.
Where a client may qualify for legal aid, we may wish to apply for legal aid funding. Where a client does not qualify, we would hope to be in a position to help that client insofar as we can on a pro-bono basis, although in certain instances we may require to ask the client to pay a contribution. For example, in some cases the client may need to access health records for which there is a fee — it may be necessary to apply for legal aid to cover this fee. Also, in court proceedings, it may be appropriate to apply for Civil legal Aid, as this may protect the client from their opponent’s legal expenses in the event of defeat.
Some of you ask why any of this matters when you only want advice. Renfrewshire Law Centre's legal casework service has three main elements: (1) advice, (2) assistance and (3) representation. Advice refers to meetings with clients, usually face-to-face, when they may consult our fully qualified lawyers on legal problems, often for an answer there and then. Assistance goes beyond advice, and refers to ‘taking the case on’, conducting inquiries for the client, entering into correspondence with third parties, making telephone calls, and trying to negotiate a solution to their problem. Representation takes it yet further, referring to stating legal claims and appearing at courts and tribunals to pursue those claims. Of these three elements, advice probably takes up the greatest part of our time, and in this sense is one of the most useful and efficient kinds of service that we offer. However, it is legal advice that we offer, and this is a commodity. It takes our lawyers many years of private study to qualify, and yet further years of practice to become experienced, while the costs of maintaining law offices are also considerable in terms of overheads, administration and insurance. Grocers sell groceries and rightly expect payment. Likewise, lawyers provide advice and this too has a cost.