The lord chancellor has obtained injunctions preventing the disclosure or publication of data taken from the Legal Aid Agency cyber attack, it has emerged – as legal aid lawyers continue to struggle with the incident's fallout.
The Ministry of Justice revealed in one of its latest updates that the court granted an application by the lord chancellor last month preventing the ‘disclosure, publication or communications of information of data’ obtained from the LAA’s IT systems.
A further injunction was granted this week. ‘This continues the prohibition on the hackers publishing the information and also prevents third parties who know about the injunction from doing so (as to do so would undermine the injunction and amount to contempt of court),’ the ministry said.
Despite regular updates being issued, the fallout of April’s cyber attack continues to cause chaos for lawyers. One practitioner told the Gazette that the inability to bill or apply for new legal aid orders was causing massive problems for firms and clients, and ‘staggering’ amounts of free work being done in terms of legal advice, advocacy and administrative work.
While Crown court claim assessments and payments have now recommenced, trying to secure urgent funding for experts has become a headache. The Gazette also understands some firms are having to keep paper timesheets because of difficulties time recording without a legal aid order.
The ministry told the Gazette that providers can submit a request for a prior authority without confirmation of a representation order being in place. For civil applications, providers would need to call customer support, obtain a contingency reference number, and email the paper application. Payments for the expert will then be covered by the LAA’s ‘average payments scheme’, which the provider would have to opt into each week to receive payment.
On when the digital portal will be up and running again, the ministry said there were no updates beyond what has been published on the LAA webpage. The LAA webpage states that online services remain offline ‘until further notice’.
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