Legal Aid Agency failed to handle solicitor's submissions appropriately

What happened

Mr A owned a solicitors' partnership at which he employed a number of solicitors. Four solicitors left the partnership, taking their files with them. Mr A entered into a long correspondence with the solicitors to reclaim the files. He told the Legal Aid Agency about the difficulties and explained why his submission of claim forms would be delayed. There was then a fire at the partnership's premises and some files were destroyed. Mr A also told the Legal Aid Agency about this.

When Mr A submitted the forms, the Legal Aid Agency took a long time to assess them. Communication between the Legal Aid Agency and Mr A became difficult. Mr A complained to an independent complaints assessor, who agreed with the Legal Aid Agency's stance. Mr A came to us.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint. We found that the Legal Aid Agency had failed Mr A in several areas.

The length of time the Legal Aid Agency took to handle Mr A's submission was so protracted that it was a failing. Its communication with Mr A was not always appropriate or fair, and it did not treat him with respect. Its actions were not free from personal bias.

However, we also found that the Legal Aid Agency's complaints procedure in terms of Legal Aid practitioners was reasonable and in line with what we would expect.

Putting it right

We made three recommendations to remedy the injustice to Mr A. We said that, within 28 days of the date of our final report, the chief executive of the Legal Aid Agency should write to Mr A to apologise for the injustice we found, the Legal Aid Agency should pay Mr A £5,000 to recognise the injustice, and within six weeks, it should arrange for another independent complaints assessor to examine whether Mr A had a good case for not submitting his claim forms within the set period.

The Legal Aid Agency agreed to our recommendations.