Payment for Legal Aid WorkGeneral General If, in an emergency or short notice situation, you have arranged a conditional grant of aid by telephone or fax, a certificate of commitment should follow by post once the application for aid has been processed. If you have not received a certificate within a couple of weeks of submitting the application, write to the assigning officer. Normally, if prior approval has not been sought, the Commission will decline to meet those additional costs. However, in rare and exceptional circumstances, (and solely at the Commission's discretion), where the Commission has approved a grant of aid, and is aware of the matter in general, it may subsequently approve and pay costs for an item, or items, not prior approved. If your client is initially refused aid, but this decision is later reversed on reconsideration or appeal, aid is granted as if from the date of the original decision. This does not apply, of course, if aid is initially refused, but later granted on a new application. Commission fee scales The Commission's policy applicable to work done on or after a revised scale of fees comes into operation is expressed: - "All new i.e. initial grants of aid and extensions approved on or after _ _ _ (effective date) will be made in accordance with the following scale". Private practitioners usually opt to complete the approved work included in Certificates of Commitment granted before the fee rise, at the old rate, and do not seek an extension to the new rate. The Commission does not unilaterally offer the new rate where a practitioner has elected to bill the work at the old rate, i.e. where an extension is neither sought nor granted. However, where a practitioner seeks an extension, (as per the definition preceding the scales) to be upgraded to the new rates, and sets out the proportion of work to be undertaken after the salient date, the practitioner is entitled to the extension, unless in the opinion of the Commission, all the work has in fact been completed before the effective date of the fee increase. If an extension is granted, the new rates apply. How to bill the Commission - Certificate of commitment One bill per certificate If you are aware that a particular disbursement will need to be paid before your work can be completed, as where it is the practice of an expert witness to require payment of an account before releasing a report, you may ask us to provide separate certificates for your work and for the disbursement. This is particularly relevant where GST may apply to one item, but not another. If difficulties arise with payment of counsel, for example in a part-heard matter, you should raise this with the assigning officer concerned. Occasionally, for accounting reasons, we may have to ask you to interim bill us for part of the work certified. This will be rare and we will write to you if it arises. Unused commitment It may also happen that commitment is not taken up, for instance where the client abandons the case or fails to keep in contact with you. In this case, we need to know so that we cancel the certificate/tax invoice and allocate that commitment elsewhere. For this reason, if we do not receive a report within 6 months of the date of a certificate of commitment, we will cancel the commitment and apply it to another matter. This can be easily avoided by sending us a short report on the matter, showing that the commitment is still needed. How the Commission pays you Payments outside the monthly cheque run will not normally be made. If a practitioner believes that there are such exceptional circumstances prevailing that a cheque outside the normal run should be requested, then such requests should be made to the Director, Deputy Director, or Assignments Manager who are the only authorised officers to consider such requests. Your final report |
