New to legal aid

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 criminal or civil legal assistance.

We fund 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

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.

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You can apply for advice and assistance and civil legal aid for any case involving a matter of Scots law.

You can apply for legal aid in Scotland as long as the courts in Scotland can deal with your case.

 

Legal aid can include additional payments to meet the reasonable costs of communication support from the time that legal aid is in place.

This can be for the use of language or BSL interpreters, for example.

To help access to the services of a solicitor legal aid can also meet the cost of:

• lengthier meeting times that clients might need
• travel by the solicitor where the client is unable to attend the solicitor’s office due to disability or ill health.

Solicitors do not normally need our approval to cover payments made to interpreters. In some instances they need to contact us 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 meet the additional support needed for clients with disabilities.

Solicitors can apply to us for exceptional status in these fixed payment cases. If this status is granted by us, 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.

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.