Legal Aid Online declarations

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.

You can do this by using one of the declaration forms below or printing the completed Legal Aid Online application and getting your client sign it.

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 should use the appropriate Legal Aid Online declaration above to record key information and capture you and your client’s signatures if you are not completing and then printing the application directly from Legal Aid Online while your client is in your office. 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.

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 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.

You can print the successfully completed application if you have entered their information directly into the Legal Aid Online system instead of using the paper declaration to obtain a client’s signature. This is the simplest and most efficient way to obtain the client’s signature if you are completing the application online while the client is in your office.

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.

We have to collect information to monitor equality of access for people applying for and receiving services paid for from the public funds we administer. It is important that you ask your client to complete the equality information on our application forms.

Please print and show clients the Equality Card before asking them to complete the Equality section of the declaration forms.