Solicitor left frustrated even though the Legal Aid Agency had already apologised for poorly handling her complaint

What happened

Mrs B complained to the LAA about the way it handled her practice's legal aid account. She said the LAA held back over £38,000 of her money which it said was to account for what her practice owed it. Mrs B said she had been deprived of this money which she was owed for cases she had worked on, and had been properly assessed by the courts. She wanted the money back plus interest. She said the LAA had failed to explain why it had not paid her the money and also that it had handled her correspondence about this badly. She said it had also taken away her legal aid account.

Mrs B wrote several letters to the LAA about this over a number of years but said the LAA did not respond to them all. After she pursued the matter and escalated her complaints, it eventually responded to all of her concerns, and apologised to her.

Although the LAA reinstated her practice's legal aid account, Mrs B said the LAA had failed to explain why it had not paid her the outstanding amount that she said was due to her. Mrs B wanted an explanation for this, and also for her costs to be paid directly to her, with interest, rather than being offset against what she owed the LAA.

Mrs B complained to us about this and also said that the LAA had handled her correspondence badly.

What we found

We did not uphold this complaint. After a detailed look at what happened we decided that the way that the LAA used funds that were due to Mrs B's practice was fair. The LAA often make advance payments to solicitors as they work on a case, and then if the solicitor or their client are personally awarded costs they repay the money to the LAA.

There were failings in the LAA's complaint handling because it didn't reply to some of Mrs B's letters and she had to write several times and complain to the chief executive before she got a response to some of her concerns.

However the LAA had already identified this and sincerely apologised to Mrs B. This was enough to put the matter right, but we recognised Mrs B's frustration at having to chase the matter up.