Policy and guidance for clawback in Advice and Assistance updated

We’ve made amendments to the policy and legal aid guidance for Hardship – unreasonable difficulty or delay in Advice and Assistance.

The intention is to allow payments to be made within a more reasonable timescale.

Our guidance

Our policies and decision-makers’ guidance are intended primarily for our decision-makers for:

• assessing the factors we take into consideration in applications and accounts
• detailing the information we take into account and the decisions we take as a result of the information.

As part of the project, our existing legal aid guidance for solicitors on our website is reviewed and updated, as appropriate.

It remains the primary legal aid reference material for solicitors and has links to published policy statements or decision-makers’ guidance, if you need that at any time.

What’s changed?

The main change is to our policy of not accepting an unreasonable delay application from a solicitor until after 12 months of attempting to recover sums from the client.

This will allow the solicitor to be paid within a more reasonable timescale.

Please note, it must be shown that the solicitor has undertaken all reasonable steps to obtain payment before submitting any application.

For more information, please see:

• updated policy: Unreasonable difficulty or delay
• updated legal aid guidance: Solicitor hardship applications: difficulty or delay in recovering from the applicant

Further update coming on recovery and change of agency

Following the update issued on 19 January 2026 regarding interim fees, we will issue further guidance on this where there is a possible recovery and there has been a change of agency.

More information

Please contact Sara Brown, Civil Finance Senior Specialist T: 0131 240 1998 E: brownsa@slab.org.uk