The update below is from The Law Society dated 5 June 2025:
Please note that we are regularly updating our website as new information becomes available – including what we’re doing on your behalf and what we’re hearing from the LAA.
Since the extent of the data breach at the LAA was revealed on 19 May, we’ve been demanding swift action to minimise the fallout for our members and their clients. Over the past fortnight, our priorities have been ensuring the LAA:
- Urgently clarified billing arrangements
- Informed legal aid providers about contingency measures
- Understood the stress and financial impact on solicitors and firms.
As the situation evolves, we continue to press the LAA for timely and effective responses.
What we’ve been doing
We’re in daily contact with the LAA on behalf of members, raising your concerns and seeking answers to your questions. Our president, Richard Atkinson, has been leading this engagement, which has included regular meetings with LAA chief executive Jane Harbottle.
Following sustained pressure from us, the LAA has in recent days:
- re-established regular monthly payments for legal help and crime lower work
- arranged for payment of Crown Court bills
- set up a contingency process for certificated work
- agreed to speak to HM Revenue & Customs to try to provide respite for firms in relation to VAT and tax payments due
On the civil side, the contingency process will also take account of:
- payments on account of solicitors’ costs
- payments on account of disbursements
In addition, we’re making strong representations to Ministry of Justice (MoJ) ministers, MPs, and the media about the seriousness of the situation.
Our expectations
We’ve been clear that without further immediate action from the LAA, the legal aid system will collapse. We’re prepared to escalate these calls if the LAA fails to act soon enough. We’ve set out the following expectations based on how urgently they are needed:
Immediate priorities
- Restore processes for applications for criminal cases
- Restore processes for applications for urgent civil/family cases, especially domestic abuse
- Develop a contingency for dealing with urgent applications for amendments/prior authority (e.g. imminent hearing)
Short-term requirements
- Restore payments on account of solicitors’ costs
- Restore payments on account of disbursements
- Restore processes for other initial applications for legal aid
- Restore processes for routine applications for amendments/prior authority
- Inform solicitors of the extent to which their and their clients’ data has been compromised, and what they need to do about it
Longer-term commitments
- Set out proposals for compensating providers for the costs and anxiety the data breach has caused.
- Commit the investment required to upgrade IT systems
- Develop a continuity plan to ensure it is better prepared for any similar incident in the future
- Review its data protection policies to justify why data back to 2010 is still being held
For the most up-to-date operational guidance please visit the LAA’s official page on the cyber-attack.