Transition from paper-based to online procedures - mailshot to all solicitors
Latest system updates – December 2009
We released an updated version of the system on Monday 14 December with various online enhancements. We list some of the key enhancements below:
Civil legal aid Online
Financial form 1 now available online
You can now submit a form 1 (that is, the financial form used when your client is receiving income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, income-related employment and support allowance or payments from the National Asylum Support Service or if you are applying on behalf of a child) online along with your Civ/Sol online application which means you no longer have to send us a scanned or paper form 1. We have revised the online mandate has been revised and the declaration now also covers the information given in form 1. Please note that you only have to complete the partner section of the mandate if a partner’s finances had to be shown in form 1.
If your client has to complete Financial Elligibility Form 2, you will still have to send us a paper copy of the form.
Civil attachments
You will now see that you are not prompted for attachments until after you have selected the submit button – this is to improve the attachments facility and ensure the procedure for attachments is the same for all areas of Legal Aid Online.
Postcode lookup
We have now provided a facility to look up an address using a valid postcode. This is only currently available in civil but will be expanded to all areas of online early next year.
Advice and Assistance Online
Online attachments
You can now include online attachments for A&A applications and increases either electronically or using a printed barcode sheet. You can access this through the view case facility. We will soon be expanding this to include online A&A accounts.
We are due to release another version of the system in early February 2010 so please watch this space for further updates.
Legal aid online - major improvements September 2009
Legal Aid Online is now available for all your civil and criminal legal aid applications – even existing paper ones.
From Thursday 24 September, you can use Legal Aid Online for all civil and criminal legal aid applications, as well as advice and assistance. You don’t need to do anything to get started – when you log in you will see new menus allowing you to apply for:
Civil legal aid
- special urgency
- Civ Sol Family
- Civ Sol Non-Family
- Sanction
- Amend
- Review
- Stage report
- Summary application
- Sanction
You can use Legal Aid Online for all these aspects of new cases – but the same functions are available for all your other recent cases, even if the original application was on paper.
(If you don’t want the menu for either civil or criminal to appear, you can remove access by using the edit user function within the administration menu.)
Important information about the new services
Mandates
You will need to print the Legal Aid Online mandates for civil and criminal applications from the online mandate web page.
This page also gives you important information about completing the mandates that you should read before using them.
Attachments
A new Add Attachments facility allows you to send supporting documentation with your applications and accounts. You can do this either:
- electronically – by sending documents you have saved electronically or scanned in your office or
- on paper – by printing a bar code header to attach to paper documents before faxing or posting them to us.
To find out more about how to add attachments, go to the e-learning pack for the relevant type of application. Please click on this link for general attachment and scanning guidance.
Self-service training
Learn how to use all the new services with our learning pack, available in the E-learning section of our website. (This is still partially under development, and the section on criminal sanctions is not yet available.)
Advice and assistance online update
We have also improved the existing A&A online services. New benefits include the facility to add attachments and being paid on offer for any A&A accounts submitted online.
At the same time as we make an offer for an online account, we will also process payment for that amount. You can accept the offer or negotiate the balance and, if a larger sum is negotiated, we will pay the difference.
We hope that, with the support of our e-learning, you’ll find it easy to use the new services. But if you have any questions or need some extra help, please contact Diane Ireland, Legal Aid Online Marketing Manager on 0131 240 2013, or email her at irelanddi@slab.org.uk.
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