LAA system failure leaves vulnerable clients at risk, lawyers warn

Lawyers forced to work unpaid hours as a cyber-attack cripples the Legal Aid system for months

Legal aid lawyers are warning of dire consequences for vulnerable clients as the cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) drags into a third month, leaving firms swamped with unpaid administrative work.

Speaking at this week’s all-party parliamentary group on access to justice, family lawyer Jenny Beck, director of Beck Fitzgerald, painted a grim picture of frontline services under strain. Beck’s firm, which specialises in domestic abuse cases, has been forced to revert to telephone and paper-based processes since the LAA portal was taken offline in May.

“We’re working in the dark ages,” she told Justice Minister Sarah Sackman KC MP. “The extra admin is swallowing hours we don’t have—and we can’t claim for any of it.”

Beck revealed that her staff now spend at least two additional hours on every legal aid case, time which cannot be recovered under the LAA’s current cost guidance. The agency treats system downtimes as office overheads, meaning firms must absorb the costs themselves.

“For a firm supporting 15 women fleeing domestic abuse in a single week, that’s 30 hours of unpaid work,” Beck said. “That time isn’t just a financial hit—it’s time we can’t spend helping more clients.”

The impact, she warned, could be catastrophic for a sector already on life support. “Family legal aid survives only because some of the work is cross-subsidised by private income. On its own, it’s entirely unsustainable. This data breach could be the final straw.”

Contingency payment arrangements, Beck added, are unreliable and bureaucratic. “We haven’t once received the amount we requested. You can’t plan financially when the system is this chaotic.”

Sackman acknowledged the seriousness of the situation. “I’m very cognisant of the impact this is having,” she told the group. “The IT systems are not user-friendly and impose enormous unpaid workloads on legal aid providers already struggling to meet clients’ needs. This is useful for me to take back.”

She assured attendees that LAA staff were “working round the clock” to manage the fallout and confirmed that the Ministry of Justice was reviewing longer-term reforms to replace outdated systems.

“We’ve got to get through the immediate crisis,” Sackman said. “But we must also learn from this so firms’ long-term prospects aren’t damaged.”

However, with no clear timeline for restoration of the LAA’s portal, frustration is mounting. Lawyers say the government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls by 2030 is meaningless without sustained support for those delivering legal protections on the ground.

“We’re delivering emergency legal help to women in life-threatening situations,” Beck said. “But we’re being ground down by a broken system—and asked to do it for free.”

The cyber-attack, first disclosed in May, has triggered a wave of concern across the legal profession. Barristers and solicitors alike warn that continued instability could drive even more practitioners out of legal aid, worsening the justice gap for society’s most vulnerable.