Legal Aid Civil - Early Legal Advice

11/02/2025
Knowledge

How To

Early Legal Advice options are only available on the Debt Recovery, Housing and Welfare Matter Types. It consists of a new series of dropdowns and Fees.

A field has also been added to the Legal Aid screen for Early Legal Advice. Ticking this box will ensure the matter appears in the Monthly Submission Spreadsheet, New Matter Starts section with the Category Code ELA. Existing matters will need the tick box updated to appear correctly.

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Time Recording

To time record the Early Legal Advice Fees open the ‘New Billable Item’ screen as normal.

A new option has been added into the ‘Billing Stage’ dropdown as ‘Early Legal Advice’ and this will show the Activity Rates of ‘Early Legal Advice (7da)’ & ‘Family and Housing and Miscellaneous (employment) (7b)’.

Select the required Activity Rate, then select the Activity that needs to be recorded.
The rates for ‘Early Legal Advice’ are the same for National and London across all Activities.

Invoicing Your ELA Claim

Once the claim has concluded, an invoice will need to be raised in readiness for this to be included within the monthly submission.

From the Office Accounting tab use the drop down on the New Invoice button, and select Early Legal Advice.
When the invoice is displayed, select the Claim Type (use Early Legal Advice – Pilot if you were part of the pilot scheme and it applies to this matter).
Select the Matter Type 1, Matter Type 2, Outcome and Stage. Here it is possible to select the ‘L’ Codes for the HLPAS scheme, this will automatically add the Fixed Fee to the invoice as required.
Amend the Date concluded to reflect the date when the claim concluded.
The Date billed, is that which will be used to post the invoice to accounts.
The Status of the invoice can be set to Draft - Unapproved, Draft - Approved or (the default option) Final – Printed/Sent by using the drop-down menu.
Use the tick box to indicate if a Postal Application Accepted.
The Total breakdown will summarize how your invoice total has been calculated.
Click Save & Close.

Click to edit heading

Note: If you were part of the pilot scheme and it applies to the matter, selecting the “Early Legal Advice – Pilot“ claim type, will select the correct £200.70 fixed fee with no limit, whereas the “Early Legal Advice” claim type will use the £157.00 fixed fee.

Last Modified Date

11/02/2025 12:37 am

Title

Legal Aid Civil - Early Legal Advice

URL Name

Legal-Aid-Civil-Early-Legal-Advice

Resolution