Someone has applied for legal aid for a case in which I am a party. What can I do, and what can you tell me about their application?

If someone has applied for legal aid in a case involving you then you will normally get a letter from us telling you about this.

The letter we send you will give you all the information you are entitled to receive. It is a criminal offence for any member of our staff to tell you anything else about the application.

The letter we send you will let you know whether you can submit “representations” to us.

This means that you get a chance to tell us about anything you know which might be of interest to us in considering the application eg the applicant might have a job you think he or she has not declared, or you might have made an offer to settle the case which they have not told us about.

We produce a leaflet which tells you about the sort of things we can take into account, and those that we cannot.

If you submit representations then we need to be able to forward the information you have given to us to the applicant so that they get an opportunity to tell us their side of the story.

If you do not want us to do this, then it is unlikely we will be able to take your representations into account.

If we investigate your representations we will not be able to discuss our investigations with you, or tell you anything about what we have done.

We will notify you of any decision to grant or refuse legal aid, and you will be notified of any decision to terminate legal aid (bring the grant to an end) but we will be unable to let you know the reasons for our decision.