Legal Aid UK: 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, 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 could not 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.

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 duplication 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 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.