The short answer
Only a firm holding a contract with the Legal Aid Agency can take a legally aided case, and most family firms do not hold one. Use the official Find a legal aid adviser directory rather than a general search, and expect to ring several, because contracts carry capacity limits.
Key points
- A firm without a contract cannot take your case on legal aid, however sympathetic they are.
- Use the GOV.UK directory. A general search will mostly return firms that cannot help.
- Being turned away is often about capacity, not eligibility. Ring the next one.
- The number of firms doing legally aided family work has fallen sharply, and coverage is patchy by area.
- Have your financial evidence and any gateway evidence ready before you call.
Why it is harder than it should be
Legal aid rates have not kept pace, and firms have left the work. Between 2014 and 2022 the proportion of firms doing legally aided financial provision work fell from around 72 per cent to around 37 per cent. Some areas have very few providers, and a few have effectively none for certain categories.
None of that is your fault or a reflection on your case, but it does mean persistence matters more here than in most things.
How to search
- Go to Find a legal aid adviser.
- Choose the category. For most family matters that is Family. For care proceedings it is Family, and say on the phone that a local authority is involved, which changes everything.
- Enter your postcode and widen the radius if you get few results. Much of this work can be done remotely.
- Write down five or six, not one.
What to ask on the phone
- Do you hold a legal aid contract in family, and do you have capacity to take a new legally aided case?
- I think I come through the domestic abuse gateway and I have [name the evidence]. Is that on the accepted list?
- Can you do a means assessment, and what do you need me to send?
- If I am funded, will the statutory charge apply, and roughly what might it come to?
That last question is the one people wish they had asked. Solicitor legal aid can be recovered out of what you keep at the end. The detail is here.
Common and costly mistake
Concluding after one refusal that you are not eligible. Firms decline work when their contract capacity is full. That is a statement about their diary, not about your case, and the next firm may say yes to exactly the same facts.
If there is genuinely nobody near you
Ask the firms you call whether they can act remotely, because many can. Try law centres, which sometimes hold contracts in categories high street firms have dropped. And if your case is about mediation rather than representation, the pool is different: use the GOV.UK finder for legal aid family mediators, which lists only mediators holding a Legal Aid Agency contract.
What to do if you do not qualify covers the rest.