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.
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.
Instructions for completing the survey:
- Please answer the questions with reference to your whole organisation.
- Note that some questions are detailed and may be difficult to answer precisely. Where this is the case, 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- A number of questions ask about a typical year / typical month / what is typically the case. For these questions, 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.
- 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.
- A number of 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.
- Please leave blank any sections of this survey which are not relevant to the contract(s) held by your organisation.
Please aim to complete this questionnaire on behalf of your organisation by 18 August 2026.
If you have any questions or points of clarification, please contact Sonia Razi (Sonia.Razi@frontier-economics.com) or Stephen Lidbetter (Stephen.Lidbetter@frontier-economics.com).