Summary of your responsibilities in providing advice and assistance

It is your personal responsibility to:

  • Decide whether advice and assistance may competently be provided and whether it is appropriate to provide it at public expense.
  • Decide if your client is financially eligible and in doing so to consider any matters needing the exercise of your discretion, such as whether any resources may properly be disregarded.
  • Identify the matter about which advice and assistance is to be given.
  • Be satisfied whether your client has already received advice and assistance on the same matter from another solicitor.
  • Decide whether your client may have other rights and facilities available to them that make it unreasonable to provide advice and assistance.
  • Provide the actual advice and assistance – a non-qualified member of staff cannot do so.

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