Criminal legal assistance helps people who need legal advice or representation if they have been questioned by the police or charged with a criminal offence.
Find out more about criminal legal assistance.
Civil legal assistance helps people to get legal advice and the help of a solicitor to resolve their problem and, if necessary, to put their civil case in court. It may be free or you may have to pay something towards it.
Examples of civil cases:
- divorce and other matters affecting families and children
- trying to get compensation for injuries after an accident or for medical negligence
- housing matters such as rent or mortgage arrears, repairs and eviction
- debt and welfare rights
- matters relating to immigration, nationality and asylum
- Adults with incapacity - guardianship and intervention orders.
Find out more about civil legal assistance.
Yes. To find out more about legal aid you can contact the relevant department on 0131 226 7061. We operate a call routing system to direct callers to the relevant area. You can find the shortcodes for this here.
If you have specific questions about your financial eligibility for legal aid you can call our Financial Assessment Unit - 0131 240 2082 (open Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5pm).
Please note that we do not provide legal advice. Calls are charged at local rate. For training and monitoring purposes calls to SLAB may be recorded.
You can use an eligibility estimator to work out if you are likely to qualify financially for advice and assistance in civil, criminal or children's cases or for civil legal aid in civil cases.
Legal aid is not always free, sometimes you will need to make a contribution towards the cost of your case.
Financial eligibility is just one of the tests for legal aid, and so even if you qualify financially there are additional tests which your case will need to satisfy.
A child can apply for legal aid if you are old enough to understand why you need a solicitor to help you, and to ask a solicitor to work for you.
But you will have to go and see a solicitor first. (You can only get legal aid through a solicitor.)
Find out more
You must have a solicitor to apply for legal aid. Legal aid is a means of paying your solicitor or counsel to act on your behalf.
The application must be submitted by a solicitor who is registered to provide civil legal assistance.
You can use our Solicitor Finder to get information on your nearest solicitor who offers help through legal aid, or other legal advice providers funded by SLAB.
The Civil Legal Assistance Office or other advice providers may be able to help you if you are having trouble finding a solicitor.
The Scottish Legal Aid Board funds projects around Scotland to help people who are facing legal problems. The current projects can help with one or more of the following types of problem:
- assistance and representation focused on the resolution of a mortgage repossession or tenancy repossession action;
- assistance for serious debt problems;
- assistance and representation focused on resolving welfare benefits problems;
- information, one-off advice and signposting about civil court processes;
- assistance and casework assistance with small claims cases to help you to solve problems before they get to court or early in the court process.
More information
Advice and assistance
This helps pay for advice from a solicitor on any matter of Scots law, civil or criminal – for example, to try to settle a dispute for you without going to court.
As well as advising you about the matter you have raised, your solicitor can:
- Advise you on whether you have a legal case to take forward
- Try to negotiate with the other party to settle it
- Advise you whether to apply for legal aid to take the matter to court
- Write letters for you or get medical or expert reports.
- Apply on your behalf for civil legal aid
You have to qualify financially for advice and assistance and you may need to pay a contribution towards the cost of the work done for you.
If you win or keep money in your case, you may have to pay up to the full cost of the work done for you.
Only a solicitor can grant advice and assistance.
Civil legal aid
This helps pay for your solicitor to act for you in court. It covers the preparation work, as well as the hearing itself, and can provide funding for advocates and experts if needed.
You have to qualify financially for civil legal aid and you may need to pay a contribution towards the cost of your case.
If you win or keep money in your case, you may have to pay up to the full cost of the work done for you.
Only a solicitor can apply for civil legal aid on your behalf.
Some people need only advice and assistance, others need only legal aid, and some need both.
Many people start the legal process with advice and assistance, and then move on to legal aid. If you do not qualify for advice and assistance, you may still qualify for legal aid, and vice versa – ask your solicitor about this.
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.
You can apply for advice and assistance, and civil legal aid for any case involving a matter of Scots law.
So long as the courts in Scotland can deal with your case, then you can apply for legal aid in Scotland.
Legal aid can only be granted to an individual. If your case involves your limited company, or your partnership, then you are unlikely to qualify for civil legal aid.
You may be able to qualify for legal aid if you are a partner in dispute with the remaining partners in your firm, but you would not qualify if you are effectively applying for legal aid on behalf of the partnership.
A sole trader can apply for legal aid for a business debt.
Legal aid can include additional payments to meet the reasonable costs of communication support, such as the use of language or BSL interpreters, from the time that legal aid is in place. Legal aid can also meet the cost of lengthier meeting times that clients might need, or travel by the solicitor where the client is unable to attend the solicitor’s office due to disability or ill health, to help them access the services of a solicitor.
Solicitors do not normally need the approval of SLAB to cover payments made to interpreters although in some instances they need to contact SLAB in advance to ensure they have the funding in place for this.
Some criminal legal aid cases are paid on a fixed fee basis. However, the payment arrangements in these cases can be changed to accommodate the additional support needed for clients with disabilities. Solicitors can apply to SLAB for exceptional status in these fixed payment cases. If this status is granted by SLAB, the solicitor can charge for all work on a detailed basis and this would result in the solicitor being paid for any time necessarily spent with the client. Some of the factors that we would take into consideration in determining whether a case is exceptional include "whether the assisted person, or any witnesses, may be unable to understand the proceedings because of age, inadequate knowledge of English, mental illness, other mental or physical disability or otherwise".
