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Legal Aid UK: Matters and Escape Fees

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Legal Aid matters in Clio Manage capture the legal aid details, activity rates, and escape fee thresholds that firms in England and Wales need to bill the Legal Aid Agency. This article explains how to create Legal Aid matters, complete their legal aid fields, set and manage escape fee thresholds, add an uplift percentage to a time entry, and move to matters between stages.

Note: If your firm has turned on Deferred legal aid matter configuration, you can create Legal Aid UK matters without completing the legal aid fields, then finish them when you generate the matter's first bill. See Enable deferred legal aid matter configuration below.

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.

Tip: If you cannot view the Legal Aid Activity Category Rates and/or Legal Aid Section (this will be located under the Related Contacts section) when creating or editing a matter, double-check your account, client, and matter are properly set up for Legal Aid.
  • Legal Aid – Civil Controlled
  • Legal Aid – Civil Certificated
  • Legal Aid – Criminal Controlled

 

Turn on deferred legal aid matter configuration

Deferred legal aid matter configuration is a firm-level setting that lets you create Legal Aid UK matters before completing the legal aid fields, then finish them any time before the first bill. Three fields must be complete before you can bill: Fee scheme, Category of law, and Region. When the setting is on, the Legal aid section of the matter marks these fields with an asterisk and the legend Required for bill generation, and you can complete them at creation or later by editing the matter. When the setting is off, you complete these fields as you create the matter.

Note: The setting applies immediately to new matters. Only firm users with administrator permissions can change it.

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Click Firm Preference. 
  3. Select Legal Aid (England and Wales).
  4. In the Deferred legal aid matter configuration section, turn on the toggle.

 

Create Legal Aid matters

When deferred legal aid matter configuration is on, you can save a Legal Aid UK matter before completing the legal aid fields and finish them before the first bill. See Required legal aid fields and rates above for the fields you must complete and how they affect rates.

Note: When you log time on a matter that has only a practice area set, the Activity categories list filters to that practice area, so you see a shorter, more relevant set of options. Duplicate entries are removed to keep the list clean.

  1. Go to Matters and click New matter.
  2. Enter the required Matter description and Permissions.
  3. From the Practice 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 information you have. You can leave any field marked Required blank and complete it at the time of billing. 

    • If you selected Legal Aid - Certificated Civil or Legal Aid - Civil Controlled in step 3, select the relevant Fee Scheme1 and Category of Law2 fields for the matter. When you create a new time entry for the matter, you can select any relevant hourly or fixed-fee option from the Activity categories field.
    • If you selected Legal Aid - Criminal Controlled in step 3, select the relevant Criminal case stage3 and Criminal matter type4 fields for the matter. When you create a new time entry for the matter, you can select any relevant hourly or fixed-fee option from the Activity categories field.
    Note: If an Activity category has an incorrect rate, contact Clio's Support team with the Activity category rate you see in Clio, the rate you expect to see, and the resource (e.g., The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations) where you found the new rate.
    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 with 1 if left blank.
  5. Enter the required matter Billing preferences.
    • If this matter is a fixed fee, select Fixed fee in the Hourly dropdown menu, then select the correct Fixed fee category.
  6. Click Save matter.

Refer to the two specific scenarios below (Create community care certificated civil matters and Create matters for criminal duty) for further context about how to create these and other categories of Legal Aid Matters.

 

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, you may be doing work—and billing—at various stages of the case lifecycle. To accurately track your work at the various stages that may span multiple investigation and proceedings codes, you can make use of the relevant criminal controlled matter categories available for you to select in Clio Manage.

The following scenarios provide some examples to help you to understand how you might select different options for the Criminal case stage field.

  • For Investigations work where a client pleads guilty in the local court, you can charge a fixed fee and set an escape fee threshold to help you monitor your time.
  • When a case cannot be immediately resolved, you can use the Proceedings work option to bill for time spent in hearings/ court proceedings.
  • You may use Appeals and reviews for a case with a verdict, and there is an opportunity to appeal.
  • As a result of the criminal case, you may also do Associated civil work. The three types and their codes are also available for selection in Clio Manage.

Tip: To claim time spent doing duty solicitor work where no client needed representation, you can create a placeholder Legal Aid matter to track this work.

  1. Create a placeholder contact to use for the matter. For example, name the contact “Duty Work”.
  2. Create the Legal Aid (placeholder) matter, and for the Legal aid field Criminal case stage, select Prison law work, and for the Criminal matter type field, select the relevant option.

For all other stages of work, you will add your client’s name to the matter and select the relevant matter fields to suit the needs of the stage.

Important: As individual matters progress from one criminal case stage to the next, you will have to create a new legal aid matter. Each matter represents one code under which you can claim fees. With Clio Manage, you can easily link each new matter with its relevant previous matter, while maintaining the UFN and the correct number of matter starts.

To create a new matter from a previously created legal aid matter as a result of the case now moving on to another stage:

  1. Duplicate the matter. This maintains the Unique File Number (UFN) / Unique Client Number (UCN) across the matters, along with other relevant information.

    Note: When duplicating a matter, it will create a link to the original matter. Make any additional or subsequent duplications from the original matter to ensure that links to the original matter and to previous duplications are added correctly.
  2. Edit the new matter and update the relevant fields to reflect the new type of work.

 

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.

Add to existing matter Duplicate current matter and add activities.

This option is typically used by firms when the matter has progressed through the threshold before a claim has been submitted to the LAA.

  1. Go to the Legal Aid matter.
  2. Select the Activities subtab.
  3. Click New time entry.
  4. Enter the Duration.
  5. Select the Activity category from the list of predetermined rates for this matter type.
    • If the matter Billing preference is set to Fixed fee, the box for Non-billable is checked by default. Uncheck this box before saving the time entry. 
  6. Click Save entry.

 

Add an uplift percentage to a time entry

If a matter is for Legal Aid UK controlled work, an Uplift % field will appear when you create an hourly-rate time entry. You can add a percentage of uplift to claim on an hourly rate that adheres to the rules and recommendations as outlined by the Legal Aid Agency.

 

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.

Stages tab Matter’s Dashboard
  1. Go to Matters > Stages.
  2. Click and hold a matter card and then drag and drop it to a new matter stage column.
  3. You can also select a matter card, click enter on your keyboard, and use the right and left arrow keys to move the matter card to a new column. Confirm placement by clicking enter again.

 

1 The fee scheme provides general context about what the matter related to. This is also at times referred to as the Contract Specification or the Remuneration Scheme. See for example, 2024 Standard Civil Contract Specification Category Specific Rules: Family.

2 Subcategories within the main "fee scheme". See for example, the rows of point 7.3's table in 2024 Standard Civil Contract Specification Category Specific Rules: Family.

3 At times referred to as "Classes of Work" See for example p. 33 of Crime Contract 2025
Key Information for New Providers.

4 Subcategories within the main "Criminal case stage". See Guidance for Reporting Crime Lower Work for a list of available codes and additional context.

 

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