Legal aid costs drafting for solicitors.

Legal aid work is tightly controlled. Rates are fixed, the evidence required to support a claim is detailed, and the Legal Aid Agency expects claims to follow its contract, its guidance and the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013. A claim that is late, under-evidenced or wrongly categorised can be reduced or rejected, and on low-margin work that loss comes straight off the firm's bottom line.

Our legal costs team prepares legal aid bills and claims for firms that want the work done accurately and on time. The team is made up of qualified Costs Lawyers, costs paralegals and law costs draftsmen, and a Costs Lawyer has input into every drafting instruction, so the finished bill has been checked by someone regulated by the Costs Lawyer Standards Board.

Many legally aided matters involve more than one claim for costs. If the client wins and obtains a costs order, the firm can usually claim inter partes costs from the paying party at market rates, and the legal aid fund is then responsible only for the remaining legal aid only work. Where there is no order, the whole claim is made at legal aid rates.

We prepare each type of bill: legal aid only bills, inter partes bills of costs for detailed assessment proceedings, and bills that separate the two so each item is claimed from the right party at the right rate. Keeping the elements apart from the outset avoids double claiming and makes it much easier to deal with points of dispute later.

A good legal aid claim starts with the certificate. We check its scope, any limitations and amendments, and the dates on which work was covered, because work done outside scope is not payable from the fund. We then review the file for the evidence the assessor will want to see: attendance notes, correspondence, counsel's fee notes and disbursement invoices.

We also look carefully at items that are often missed or wrongly reduced, such as preparation time, travel and waiting, and enhanced rates where the work justifies them. Where a claim has already been reduced, we can review the assessment and help you decide whether a challenge is worthwhile.

We prepare and submit civil certificated claims through CCMS, the Legal Aid Agency's Client and Cost Management System, including payments on account, final bills and the reporting of court-assessed costs. Every claim is checked against the certificate history and payments already received before it goes in.

Where a claim has been rejected or reduced, we correct and resubmit it or prepare a request for review. See our CCMS billing guide and the free CCMS billing checklist on our resources page.

Legal aid is common in housing, public law, Court of Protection, mental health, community care, family and actions against public authorities. These matters often run for years, involve several fee earners and generate substantial disbursements. Our case studies include a complex action against the police that settled close to the full value of a near £700,000 bill.

In larger matters we prepare a clear chronology alongside the bill, which helps the assessor or the court understand why the work was necessary. Where the paying party challenges an inter partes bill, we prepare replies to points of dispute and can represent the firm at a detailed assessment hearing.

Send us the file electronically or let us collect it. We confirm the deadlines, the documents we still need and a fee before starting, and we keep fee earners informed in plain English. We work from our London office, take instructions remotely from firms across England and Wales and are happy to travel to meetings where that helps.

If your firm has a backlog of unbilled legal aid matters, we can work through them in priority order so that the oldest and most valuable claims are submitted first.