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Catch LAPG’s conference early bird deal
The LAPG conference will take place in London on 10 October. As usual, it features speakers from the LAA, MOJ, and Law Society amongst others, to bring you the very latest developments in legal aid. In...
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Updated Resources Page
We have updated our Resources page to the new locations of documents on gov.uk. There are a couple of items that we haven’t been able to locate on gov.uk, in which case we have linked to the archive...
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Civil tenders announced
The LAA has announced that it will open tenders in December for contracts in actions against the police, clinical negligence and public law. Contracts will run from November 2015. It has published a...
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Civil certificate means test – passported applications
Our thanks to Colin Henderson for drawing to our attention the following passage from FAQs released following the LAA’s recent provider reference group meetings: Can the LAA reconsider what level of...
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Tender update
More news on a couple of ongoing or upcoming tenders: The LAA has published an advert for the forthcoming clinical negligence, public law and actions against the police tenders. The tender opens on 1...
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CCMS – don’t give up – report
Resolution, the Law Society and LAPG have spent many hours in meetings with the LAA, trying to secure improvements to CCMS (the LAA’s civil certificate client and cost management system). The LAA...
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Civil tender FAQs published
The LAA today published the FAQs for the current civil tender for clinical negligence, public law and actions against the police etc contracts. Bidders will need to consider them carefully before...
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CCMS mandatory from October
The LAA announced this week that the Client and Cost Management System (CCMS) will become mandatory for new civil applications and bills from 1 October 2015. The LAA has served notice under clause 20...
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Updated expert witness guidance
The LAA has released an update to its guidance on use of expert witnesses in civil cases. The updates include new material on requesting transcripts of judgments, translations and interpreters, and...
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LAA annual report 2014-15
The LAA’s recently published annual report shows how much less money has been spent on securing legal advice and representation for the poorest people in England and Wales. There was an overall net...
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Significant changes to merits tests from Monday
On the last day that Parliament sat before the summer recess, the Lord Chancellor laid a set of regulations making significant changes to the merits tests for civil legal aid. As the explanatory...
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LAA changes assessment of emergency certificates
Yesterday, the LAA informed the representative bodies that it would be changing its approach to assessment of emergency certificates immediately. As far as we are aware they have not made a public...
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LAA announces plans for civil contract tenders
The LAA has published a statement setting out its long terms plans for re-tendering and harmonising civil contracts. It says: It is our intention to align all face to face civil contracts from April...
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Updated expert witness guidance
The LAA has released an update to its guidance on use of expert witnesses in civil cases. The updates include new material on requesting transcripts of judgments, translations and interpreters, and...
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Residence test hearing expedited
Readers of this blog will know what a serious threat the residence test would be to access to justice. We last covered developments here. We understand that Public Law Project’s challenge to the...
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Initial certificate limits increaed
The LAA has announced that it is increasing the default costs limit on certificates in family cases to £5000. This doesn’t apply to emergency certificates – that limit remains at £1350 (though you have...
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As you were – merits tests back to 50% or above
We reported the likely impact of the Court of Appeal in The Director of Legal Aid Casework and Lord Chancellor v IS [2016] EWCA Civ 464. The Court found that the merits test, limiting legal aid to...
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Merits tests amended from 22nd July
Following its successful appeal in IS in the Court of Appeal, the LAA announced that it would no longer fund cases that were “poor” or “borderline”. We questioned at the time whether it could lawfully...
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Upcoming training – with free books!
Our publisher LAG is running training courses by two of the Handbook’s editors as part of its autumn training programme. Vicky Ling is delivering “Managing Civil Legal Aid Contracts” in London on 15...
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New process for CCMS contingency applications
The LAA has changed its process for so-called “contingency” applications – that is, those that have to be made via paper because CCMS is down and the application is so urgent that it can’t wait until...
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