https://www.slab.org.uk/solicitors/training-e-learning-and-laol/registration-advice/
https://www.slab.org.uk/solicitors/training-e-learning-and-laol/registration-advice/
Legal Aid Online is accessed via your browser and you don’t need to download any extra software to use it. The LAOL hub is designed to keep you up to date with any changes and news and offer support and guidance to the people using our online service.
To access LAOL your firm must first register to carry out criminal, civil or children’s legal aid work. Once you are registered the LAOL Helpdesk will email the firm administrator a username and password for Legal Aid Online.
If your firm is already registered your firm administrator will be able to provide you with login details.
The first time you access Legal Aid Online the terms and conditions will be displayed for you to read and accept before you can complete the login process.
Before you login to LAOL there are learning materials available so you can familiarise yourself with the layout of the system. You should check out the guidance on how to submit applications and accounts, as well as the information on other aspects of LAOL.
These contain screenshots and basic information that will provide an overview of some of the screens you will be presented with when using the system.
You can arrange a webinar or contact us at any point if you have any further training needs or queries.
The Legal Aid Online helpdesk can provide you with assistance or help resolve any technical issues you experience when using the system.
Please contact them on 0131 240 2037 or by emailing online@slab.org.uk. They are available Monday to Friday during office hours.
The system is available 24/7, except Sunday evenings between 10pm and 11pm when it is offline to allow a back-up to take place.
The system will also be unavailable for scheduled updates and maintenance. We will advertise this downtime with a message on the LAOL login page (as well as on our website news section and Twitter) and always aim to give at least 24 hours’ notice of any scheduled downtime.
Unscheduled downtime is when there is a system failure and access is no longer possible. In such circumstances we aim to have the system up and running in a maximum of two hours.
Legal Aid Online can be accessed by using a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Some issues have been identified when using iPads and we are continuing to work on ways to improve the user experience when using different devices.
Operating systems
We do not recommend any specific operating system for Legal Aid Online but we do recommend that your operating system is kept up to date with the latest security patches.
We cannot guarantee Legal aid Online will function properly with out of date software.
Browsers
We recommend you keep your browser version reasonably up to date. We cannot support issues found on older unsupported versions of browsers.
Since the release of the Edge browser in 2015, Microsoft has not enhanced Internet Explorer (IE) to support many modern web standards.
Since November 2020, LAOL has not been tested against IE and therefore if you are using IE, you should consider moving to Edge or another browser.
We currently test the system on the following:
You must have a connection to the internet. We recommend that you have at least a 2Mb broadband connection to fully utilise the system.
You are allowed more than one firm administrator on Legal Aid Online if you decide it is necessary due to workload or office requirements.
LAOL Administrators:
We recommend you limit their number as a security measure. Your current firm administrator can add the firm administrator access to any user in the firm.