About This Survey
The Law Society has commissioned Frontier Economics to undertake analysis of the costs imposed by the administrative burdens that the current legal aid system places on providers. The focus of this work is on two areas that have emerged as key pressure points for providers: billing processes and supervision requirements.
We are seeking key data on these areas from legal aid providers through this survey. Your input is hugely valuable for this work, through which we hope to provide robust evidence on the scale of the issues and on where administrative changes could make the greatest difference.
Individual responses will be treated as confidential and not attributed to any party, without prior consent. Responses will not be used for any purposes outside of this project.
We anticipate that the survey will take approximately 30-45 minutes to complete.
As a thank you for your contribution to the study, we will also be offering a small token of appreciation to all respondents who submit a completed response. Respondents will be able to select between a £50 retail voucher with One4All, or a charitable donation of the same value.
Completing the Survey
- The ideal respondent for this survey would be the person overseeing legal aid work for your firm with responsibility for financial oversight, contract management, and supervision. You may need to refer to colleagues to address some of the questions.
- Answer the questions with reference to your whole organisation.
- Some questions are detailed and may be difficult to answer precisely. In these cases, approximations are very welcome - we are primarily interested in the broad scale of the issues rather than exact numbers, so please provide your best available estimate. There is space on each page to indicate briefly how you have arrived at your figures.
- Civil / criminal legal aid: If your organisation provides both civil and criminal legal aid, we will be requesting disaggregated figures. If this is not straightforward, please provide your best estimate (as above).
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- When you indicate that your organisation provides both civil and criminal legal aid, you will be given the option to complete the survey for just one of these areas if preferred (e.g. if your organisation does the majority of its work in one area, if you have oversight of just one of the areas, etc.). You may wish to suggest that a colleague complete the survey separately for the other area.
- If an offline version of the survey would be helpful to coordinate your response internally, you can download a copy here. If possible, it would be helpful if the final response could still be submitted via the online survey, but please get in touch if this causes any issues.
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- Note that this offline version includes the full set of questions for both civil and criminal legal aid providers. If only one of these areas is relevant to your organisation, please feel free to ignore the sections relating to the other type of legal aid work.
- Leave blank any sections of this survey which are not relevant to the contract(s) held by your organisation.
Reference Period and Financial Values
- Some questions ask about a typical year / typical month / what is typically the case. We suggest that you think about your last complete financial year prior to the LAA data breach. For these purposes, we are treating the date of the LAA data breach to be 23 April 2025.
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- This is to ensure that the evidence we gather demonstrates the scale of the underlying issues, even without the additional effects of the data breach.
- Some questions ask about value (e.g. of fees claimed). For these purposes we are interested in the total £ amount including expenses and disbursements, but excluding VAT.
Deadline and Contacts
Please complete this questionnaire on behalf of your organisation by 14 September 2026.
If you have any questions or points of clarification, please contact Sonia Razi.