Legal Aid

The top criminal legal aid lawyers in the State earned as much as €690,000 last year as total payments under the criminal legal aid scheme topped €68 million, new figures reveal. Michael Bowman SC topped the table for senior counsel by a considerable margin with payments of €692,095 i

Criminal barristers in Dublin briefly stopped work yesterday morning in protest of the low fees paid to defence lawyers in the District Court.

The legal aid financial eligibility test has been waived in Northern Ireland for victims of domestic abuse who need to respond to an application by their abuser. Justice minister Naomi Long yesterday commenced section 28 of the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021, which

Proposed cuts to Northern Ireland's justice budget would create "legal aid deserts" with access to justice severely curtailed or completely non-existent in many local towns, Stormont's justice committee will be warned today. Representatives from the Law Society and the Bar will tell MLAs that propos

Legal rights group FLAC has welcomed the Irish government's acceptance of four UN recommendations on civil legal aid. Ireland has accepted over 200 recommendations arising from the UN Human Rights Council's recent review of Ireland's human rights record through the universal period review (UPR) mech

Solicitors can now apply once for all the counties whose legal aid panels they wish to be placed on under a streamlined process. The Courts Service said it had replaced the "cumbersome process of having to apply separately in each individual county".

Nuala Jackson SC has been appointed as chairperson of the Legal Aid Board for a five-year term. Ms Jackson was an ordinary member of the outgoing Board. Six members of the outgoing Board have been reappointed while six new appointments have been made.

Demand for civil legal aid fell sharply last year as public health restrictions were put in place, new figures from the Legal Aid Board reveal. The number of applicants seeking civil legal aid services from the Board's law centres totalled 14,383 in 2020, down by nearly a fifth on the previous year,

Legal rights group FLAC has said an additional €3 million in funding for the Legal Aid Board is "a welcome step in the right direction but only a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed". Justice minister Heather Humphreys yesterday welcomed a five per cent budget increase for the justice

Family lawyers have been urged to complete surveys related to legal aid fees before they close later this month. Solicitors who worked on proceedings in relation to Article 8 or Article 50 applications under the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 in the Family Proceedings Court (FPC) between Apr

Some lawyers may have lost access to case information after Northern Ireland's legal aid agency inadvertently closed the deadline for re-registration on its digital case management system a day early. The Legal Services Agency Northern Ireland had told practitioners in May that they had until 30 Jun

A woman who wants to bring family law proceedings against her allegedly violent former partner has settled her High Court challenge over the Legal Aid Board's refusal to fund her action. The mother-of-two, who is reliant on social welfare payments, had claimed that her application for legal aid was

Housing assistance payment (HAP) will no longer be taken into account by the Legal Aid Board when calculating entitlement to civil legal aid. The immediate measure was agreed by ministers late last week and comes ahead of a broader review of the civil legal aid scheme.

Legal rights group FLAC has welcomed government plans to review the civil legal aid scheme and bring forward proposals for reform by September 2021. The review is one of the 240 actions set out yesterday by the Department of Justice in the first of its planned series of annual justice plans, though

The law firms and barristers earning most from legal aid in Northern Ireland are set to be named again under plans put out to consultation today. The Legal Services Agency has not published details of payments made to solicitor firms and individual barristers for nearly five years.