Legal aid lawyers are facing “administrative chaos” in the aftermath of a cyber attack amid fears more providers will leave the sector, a representative body has said.
The Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) digital services, which are used by legal aid providers to log their work and get paid by the Government, were taken offline following the data breach in April.
Payments for the publicly funded work initially stopped and legal aid applications are not able to be formally granted at the moment.
This has left legal aid law firms, often small businesses, to decide whether to take on the risk of cases and hope they will be approved and paid retrospectively.
Chris Minnoch, chief executive of Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG), said that lawyers have called the representative body “in tears” having “sleepless nights” waiting on news and payments coming through from legal aid because of the cyber attack.
“They’ve been on the verge of collapse because they hadn’t had payments for one or two weeks,” he told the PA news agency.
“What a cyber attack like this brings to the front of your mind is that the legal aid scheme is teetering on the precipice of collapse.
“If it goes and if lawyers just say, ‘I can’t do this anymore’, it has profound consequences for almost every aspect of society, because we are talking about the law of everyday life.”
Those eligible to apply for legal aid include domestic violence and modern slavery victims, people involved in care proceedings or at risk of homelessness, as well as people accused of criminal offences.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) previously said a “significant amount of personal data” of people who applied to the LAA since 2010, including criminal records, was accessed and downloaded in the cyber attack.
The Government became aware of the hack on April 23, but realised on May 16 that it was more extensive than originally thought, and took the system offline.
Mr Minnoch said it was “unforgivable” for an organisation of that size to not have a business continuity plan that anticipated this sort of fallout.
“You’ll have a number of providers that, by the end of this digital disaster we’re dealing with, won’t be there anymore because they just couldn’t afford to, and a number of others that just say, ‘I just I can’t take this anymore’,” he said.
“Every time there is some sort of crisis that befalls the legal aid scheme, you end up with fewer lawyers willing to do it at the end of it.”
An MoJ source had put the breach down to the “neglect and mismanagement” of the previous government, saying vulnerabilities in the LAA’s systems have been known for many years.
The attack happened as the MoJ was working on replacing the internal system with a new version hoped to be up and running in the coming weeks.
At the end of May, the LAA brought in a scheme for civil legal aid providers to be able to receive payments based on their average billing until the system is back online, when lawyers will then submit specific bills and applications.
On June 4, payments were sent to more than 1,700 solicitors and barristers who took up the offer.
Payments for criminal legal aid cases separately have also resumed, the MoJ said.
Mr Minnoch added that while the civil legal aid payments should have been done two weeks earlier, they were an important step forward, effectively loaning providers cash while they cannot claim money owed to them.
“I think one of the ways they need to mitigate this is by being as flexible as possible with providers, once the situation is restored to some sort of business as usual, because they’re going to be punch drunk by the end of this, they’re already punch drunk,” he said.
There are also concerns the move will create a backlog of providers trying to push through all their cases that need to be claimed in a short period of time when the system is back up and running, to effectively gain the income to repay the loan as quickly as possible.
Jenny Beck KC, co-chair of the LAPG, said: “There’s administrative chaos in an already beleaguered and fragile supplier base.
“Nobody does it because it’s a very sensible business proposition. People do it because they genuinely care about vulnerable people and they want to help them.”
Ms Beck, who runs a family law practice, said her firm’s workload is 60% legal aid work helping extremely vulnerable people such as domestic abuse survivors who need protection orders.
She told PA a “good proportion” of clients are reliant on legal aid to access their rights which is a “massive access to justice issue”.
Of the legal aid work, Ms Beck, who is also a member of the Law Society’s access to justice committee, added: “We’ll have to supplement it with private income sources, because it’s anxiety provoking to be working at risk on cases that we haven’t an absolute guarantee that we’re going to be paid.”
“I am going to continue to work at risk because I cannot leave my clients vulnerable.
“But I know that many other firms are very concerned about taking that risk.”
Nicola Jones-King, Law Society council member for legal aid, said that while taking the risk for certain types of cases is “okay” when it is known legal aid will be granted, there is more concern for means and merit tested applications for legal aid such as in housing or cases against police action.
“If it’s a slightly more challenging or unusual case, or it’s a case where you need to assess merits and means, that’s more problematic obviously for the solicitor to take that on that risk,” she said.
The risk also applies in cases that already have legal aid granted, but then need further approval to continue the funding at different stages in the proceedings.
Stuart Nolan, managing director at DPP Law Ltd and chairman of the Law Society’s criminal law committee, said his firm’s criminal law department is made up of about 95% of legal aid cases and could sustain the current situation “at a cost” for a couple of months before feeling the pinch.
“The impact is so far reaching, clogged criminal justice system, this is prospect of more delays,” he said.
“The quicker it’s sorted out, the better for everyone.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We understand the challenges this situation presents for legal aid providers – we are working as fast as possible to restore our online systems and have put in place contingencies to allow legal aid work to continue safely with confidence.
“These measures include setting up an average payment scheme for civil legal aid cases, resuming payments on criminal legal aid cases, putting in place processes for urgent civil application approvals and confirming that criminal applications made in this time will be backdated.”
