Legal Aid Online declarations

When to use declaration forms

Online declarations should be used to obtain a client’s details and signature before making an application for them on Legal Aid Online. These are used in legal aid, A&A/ABWOR, appeal and transfer applications.

The application process for legal assistance is on Legal Aid Online. However your firm must still obtain and retain in your office the client’s signature for advice and assistance/ABWOR, criminal, children’s, civil, transfer and criminal review (of a decision to refuse legal aid) applications.

How to use declaration forms

Please use the declaration form to record key information and capture you and your client’s signature. You can obtain your client’s signature by:

• using the appropriate declaration form below
• or by entering the information directly onto the Legal Aid Online application, printing it and getting your client sign it. At the bottom of the printout there is a space for the client’s signature. Please ensure that both you and the client sign and date this and you keep it in the client’s file.

Where possible all declarations must be:

• signed and dated by the client
• signed and dated by you
• completed in full, including details of the type of ABWOR granted, where applicable.

Where it is not possible to get the declaration signed by the client

You must always get clients to sign the declaration form when you are seeing them face to face.  However, if your client is not present or there are other reasons why they cannot sign the form you must provide this information for us to consider.

This can be noted on the online system. On the Advice and Assistance/ABWOR system, the reason “Client not present and agrees with the declaration terms” should be used. “Other” should be used for all other reasons, with a full explanation given of the circumstances for us to consider.

For all other Legal Aid Applications, the system requires a date to be entered when the applicant signed the form. Where it has not been possible to get the client to sign the declaration, the date entered here can also be the date of the remote consultation.

You can add a brief explanation about the circumstances elsewhere in the application, for example in the “additional financial information box”.

Data capture form

In some cases we have also provided a data capture form to capture additional information. You can then use this to personally complete the application online or give it to a member of staff to complete on Legal Aid Online. The data capture form is not required to be signed or retained.

You do not have to send us a copy but as part of our audits and quality checks we will randomly verify that declarations have been signed. You may complete the form in the absence of your client but it remains your responsibility to ensure that your client signs and dates it.

Data capture forms for criminal legal assistance applications are also available to help you gather all the necessary information about the case. We have produced these following feedback and you can then use this to personally complete the application on Legal Aid Online or give it to a member of staff to complete. The data capture form does not have to be signed or retained.

You will require Adobe (Acrobat) Reader to use the forms. If you receive an error message when opening up a form it is probably because you do not have this software or your browser (typically Google Chrome) is trying to open the document instead of this PDF reader.