Legal Aid: Matters and Escape Fees

Overview of Legal Aid practice area categories

The Legal Aid Fields and Legal Aid Activity Category Rates are set to appear exclusively for matters with one of the practice areas below. For fields and rates to appear, you will need to select one of the following for the matter practice area.

• Legal Aid – Civil Controlled
• Legal Aid – Civil Certificated  
• Legal Aid – Criminal Controlled 

Create Legal Aid matters

If you created client and did not click Save and create matter when setting up the client, follow these steps to create a matter:

1. Go to Matters and click New matter.
2. Enter the required Matter description and Permissions.
3. From thePractice area dropdown, select the required Legal Aid type:
   • Legal Aid - Certificated Civil
   • Legal Aid - Civil Controlled
   • Legal Aid - Criminal Controlled
4. Scroll down to the Legal Aid section and complete the required Legal Aid information.
   Tip: When creating a matter, the Case ID and Case start date combine to determine the unique filing number (UFN). This field is mandatory for communicating with the legal aid society and automatically populates starting at one if left blank.
5. Enter the required matter Billing preferences.
   • If this matter is fixed fee, select this here by changing the Hourly dropdown menu to Fixed fee, and then select the correct Fixed fee category.
6. Click Save matter.

Create community care certificated civil matters

Rates for community care-certified civil matters are available by following the setup below while creating or editing the matter.

1. Go to Matters and click New matter.
2. Enter the required Matter description and Permissions.
3. From the Practice area dropdown, select Legal Aid - Certificated Civil.
4. On the Legal Aid fields section, select your desired LAA Contract.
   • Under Fee Scheme, select Other Legal Help.
   • Under Category of Law, select Other Legal Help
5. Fill out the other fields as you need.
6. Click Save matter.

Create matters for criminal duty

If you are a criminal duty solicitor, rates for court duty are available by following the setup below while creating or editing the matter.

1. Create a placeholder Legal Aid contact (link to above) named Duty.
2. Go to Matters and click New matter.
3. Enter the required Matter description and Permissions.
4. From the Practice area dropdown, select Legal Aid - Criminal Controlled.
5. On the Legal Aid fields section:
   • Under the Criminal case stage field, select Proceedings
   • Under Criminal matter type, select PROD: Court duty solicitor session.
6. Select the hourly billing method and fill out the other fields as you need.
7. Click Save matter.

Set escape fee threshold

With Clio's escape fee threshold feature, you can monitor the time spent working on fixed fee legal aid from the matter's dashboard. When creating a fixed fee Legal Aid matter, the escape fee threshold is three times the Fixed fee category rate.

1. Go to the Legal Aid matter
2. Select Edit matter and scroll down to Billing Preferences
3. Under Billing method, choose Flat rate.
4. Select the firm user who will earn the flat rate.
5. Select a fixed fee category.
   • A flat rate time entry will auto-populate in the Activities subtab of the matter. You can still edit the time entry up until the activity is generated on a bill. 
6. Click Save matter.

Manage escape fee threshold

You can update an existing legal aid matter to include the Escape Fee Threshold calculations. A time entry will appear on the list of Activities as a billable item, as well as the Matter Dashboard under Work In Progress. It will also be included in a future generated bill.

Move Legal Aid matters between stages

In Clio, you can use Matter Stages to visualize and track Legal Aid matter progress. When you assign a Legal Aid practice area to a matter, that matter will automatically appear on the matter stages board for that practice area. You can select from the practice area, add matters to specific stages, and easily move matters between stages.