Page updated on: Friday April 23, 2010
If you’ve been charged with an offence but can’t afford a lawyer, your legal fees may be paid through criminal legal aid. Legal aid covers all your lawyer’s fees and other fees and expenses of your court case. But you may have to pay some or all of it back.
Legal aid is granted by the Legal Services Agency (the LSA). It is only granted where the person involved is on a low income and doesn’t have any assets they could sell to pay for a lawyer. The offence must be quite serious (i.e. there is a possibility of six months imprisonment). The LSA may also take into account if you have any previous convictions (which may mean the sentence is more likely to be prison) and special barriers or disabilities such as mental illness or language difficulties.
If you qualify for legal aid, you will be assigned a lawyer unless you write down your “preferred” lawyer on the form. If that person is a legal aid provider and is qualified to deal with your kind of charge, they will be assigned. If you don’t know any lawyers, you can ask for the LSA to assign the Duty Lawyer you spoke to or just allocate you someone. You can check if your preferred lawyer is a legal aid lawyer by checking on the LSA website at the right.
The Duty Lawyer will have forms for you to use to apply for legal aid. Courts, lawyers and Community Law Centres will usually have copies of these forms if you want to apply for legal aid before you have appeared in court for the first time.
The legal aid form asks for the following information:
When you have applied for legal aid, you will receive a letter back from the LSA saying whether or not you have been granted legal aid. If you have been refused legal aid, you can appeal this decision. You should speak to a lawyer or Community Law Centre before doing this. If you have been granted legal aid you need to contact the assigned lawyer immediately – do not wait for them to contact you.