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Rollout of electronic working delayed
The national rollout of a new system of electronic working for civil cases has been postponed by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) just before its launch date. The client and cost management system, which will allow practitioners to submit applications for legal aid and process legal aid bills online, was criticised during its pilot phase by users and their representative bodies.
Vicky Ling, a consultant specialising in legal aid practices and co-editor of the LAG legal aid handbook 2013/14, said: ‘I do have concerns that the system will never be ideal from a legal practitioner’s point of view because it was designed with the LAA as the “end user” rather than the practitioner.’ She believes that the LAA had no choice but ‘to halt the rollout because the system just was not stable and could not tolerate a significant number of additional users’.