Legal aid: Clients speak fondly of providers that ‘went above and beyond’
Most clients are “overwhelmingly positive” about the civil legal aid they received, which “helped them resolve significant issues and improved their lives”, new research has found.
Difficulties in obtaining financial documents, particularly bank statements, and ‘trapped capital’ which cannot be accessed were key challenges for them.
The study was one of five published on Friday as the Ministry of Justice announced 10% fee increases for housing, debt, immigration and asylum work and possible increases next year for the other areas where legal aid is available.
We have already detailed two of them – one on the provider market and the other on advocacy services.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) researchers interviewed 12 clients and 10 advice agency workers for a qualitative study with service users and “trusted intermediaries”.
A good “provider-service user relationship” was “fundamental for a positive experience of the legal aid journey”, with clients “speaking fondly of providers that ‘went above and beyond’”, but some relationships breaking down, leading to dissatisfaction.
Although some parts of the civil legal aid process were seen as challenging, “this was outweighed by the long-term benefits” for clients.
“Most service users were overwhelmingly positive about the legal aid they received. It helped them resolve significant issues and improved their lives,” the report said.
Establishing eligibility was one of those challenging areas. On average, clients needed two weeks to gather the necessary financial documents to prove eligibility.
Clients who were unable to access their own bank statements online needed to go to a branch, “which can also present barriers to the process with the closure of many banks on the high street”.
One legal aid advice worker said that “sometimes, by the time bank statements are obtained and sent to a provider, they can be out of date and the process must be started again”.
There were further challenges for victims of domestic abuse who were financially linked to the perpetrators, while some immigration and asylum clients “had no financial footprint” in the UK.
Another barrier to accessing civil legal aid was ‘trapped capital’, where clients have “an asset that they cannot access, but the capital leaves them ineligible for legal aid”.
One advice worker said the guidance on trapped capital had been updated but it was “not widely understood by either signposting staff within their charity, or legal aid providers”.
Researchers said that, following court challenges, the Legal Aid Agency would “exercise discretion to disregard trapped capital” where this was necessary to avoid breaching a legal aid applicant’s human rights, but there may be “a lack of awareness of this”.
Another barrier was lack of awareness, with clients spending “time and money on other types of legal assistance” before applying for legal aid.
Some clients “struggled to find a legal aid provider with capacity to take on their case”, with advice workers saying that trying to find a provider was “one of the biggest challenges of the legal aid process, with regional provision sometimes being an issue”.
A separate qualitative study involving 21 legal aid practitioners recorded their views that clients’ experience of civil legal aid “often appeared frustrating, stressful, confusing, and difficult”.
Especially in the initial phases, clients found “proving eligibility for civil legal aid particularly onerous and difficult to navigate” because of the need to produce financial documentation.
Asked what could improve the civil legal aid system, practitioners focused on streamlining the method of proving eligibility.
For example, government departments, particularly the Department of Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs, could “check a client’s financial status electronically more easily and without requiring the client to call multiple agencies and provide proof in print”.
Practitioners also “stressed the value of earlier engagement” in improving their clients’ experience, including by speaking to them earlier in the process about their legal issues and options, such as mediation, “rather than waiting until the issue had progressed and fewer legal options were available”.
Practitioners said this would “divert some cases from litigation by making users more informed about the process”.
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