Solicitors affected by the cyber attack on the Legal Aid Agency will not be given a separate route to compensation, the government revealed last week – as it also emerged that work to restore systems has forced the government to push fee uplifts for housing and immigration work down the list of priorities.

Solicitors have endured months of disruption after the LAA was forced to shut down its systems in May.

Asked by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy if solicitors would be compensated for the extra work caused by the attack, justice minister Sarah Sackman said a route for compensation claims already exists, directing the MP to the LAA’s ‘complaints procedure’ page.

The page states that compensation might be paid if there has been maladministration on the part of the LAA that has directly resulted in financial loss. Providers must produce documentary evidence of the losses claimed.

Sackman said time spent communicating with the LAA on specific cases is generally claimable at hourly rates subject to contract provisions and the LAA’s cost assessment guidance. However, solicitor Jenny Beck told the minister in July that the guidance treats downtime or system slowness as office overheads, so the costs are not recoverable.

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The Law Society has been pushing hard for solicitors to be compensated. Mark Evans, president, said that firms 'already on the margins of economic viability' had been put to extra expense and bureaucracy. 'The cyber-attack was no fault of legal aid firms and yet they have paid the price, further undermining this vital public service. We expect that firms will bring claims for compensation on various bases and we will be doing everything we can to support them.’

Responding to a separate question from Ribeiro-Addy about fee uplifts for housing and immigration work announced in July, Sackman said the government’s priority has been to maintain access to justice through the rapid implementation of contingency measures and restoring critical systems following the attack.

‘We remain fully committed to introducing the fee uplifts as soon as it is operationally feasible,’ Sackman said.

However, Jeremy Bloom, a consultant solicitor at Duncan Lewis, said the firm settled its judicial review claim with the government over pay rates for immigration and asylum work based on the lord chancellor not only making a decision on pay but taking reasonably prompt steps to implement the decision.

Bloom said the situation facing legal aid providers is even worse now, with providers having to turn clients with meritorious claims away amid a growing need for representation in light of changes that have been made to immigration and asylum policy. 

'It is not at all clear what connection there is between the cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency and the lord chancellor’s abject and continuing failure to secure access to justice and act to honour the commitments it has made in legal proceedings,' Bloom added.

 

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