Firms affected by the cyber attack on the Legal Aid Agency are entitled to compensation and the Law Society will not let the matter drop once systems are fully restored, legal aid practitioners have been told.

Practitioners have endured five months of disruption after hackers targeted LAA systems required to log work and get paid, forcing the agency to take its systems down.

LAA deputy chief executive Hitesh Patel told the Legal Aid Practitioners Group' flagship conference yesterday that crime systems are back online but main systems for civil work, such as CCMS and the replacement CWA service, will not be up and running until mid-November.

Asked about compensation, the LAA's David Thomas, head of contract management and assurance, acknowledged that the past few months have been a 'tricky time' for practitioners and the agency has existing routes for claiming compensation. 'We're going to be keeping this under review,' he said.

However, Richard Miller, the Society's head of justice, told practitioners the Ministry of Justice will have to pay compensation. Miller identified potential routes for practitioners to pursue. If they cannot claim compensation through the LAA's internal systems, they could go to the legal ombudsman or potentially make claims under data protection legislation, he said. 

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Chancery Lane has been pushing the government to set up a bespoke compensation scheme. Miller said: 'We will continue to pursue this... We want the systems back up as quickly as possible but the issue of compensation is not something we will allow to drop.'

Asked what firms should do in the meantime, Miller said they should keep notes of how much additional time they are spending on cases.

'If that's not practical, perhaps do it on sample files and work out what your caseload has been over the past few months. If this was going to court and they were assesing damages, what evidence would they want to see of your losses? The more records you take to demonstrate losses, the stronger your case will be.'

Richard Miller, The Law Society

Miller: 'Issue is not one we will allow to drop'

 

Jenny Beck, director of family law specialist Beck Fitzgerald, told justice minister Sarah Sackman in July that her staff were doing at least two hours' extra work per case that the firm would not be able to claim for because the LAA’s costs assessment guidance treats claims for downtime or system slowness as office overheads, so they are not recoverable.