The Unified Contract (Civil)

On this page:

About the Unified Contract
Contract documents
Contract notices
Amendments for Mental Health providers
Contract for Signature
Standard Terms
Specifications
For more information

About the Unified Contract

All our civil legal aid providers must sign a contract with us.

Our Unified Contract (Civil) regulates how civil legal aid work is funded by the Community Legal Service (CLS). This makes sure we get competent, quality assured, best value contract work.

Contract documents

All documents are in the Documents panel on the right.

We keep providers updated about information affecting the contract via the CLS news page.

Contract notices

The Unified Contract (Civil) commenced on 1 Apr 07.

We amended the contract on 1 Oct 07, 1 Jan 08 and 1 Jul 08.

See the Documents panel for the current version of the Unified Contract (Civil) including the latest 1 Jul 08 amendments.

Amendments for Mental Health providers

Amendments under clause 13.2 of the Unified Contract (Civil) come into force on 3 Nov 08 as urgent amendments under clause 13.10 of the same.

The amendments follow the LSC and Ministry of Justice consultation with representative bodies.

The amendments take account of changes to the tribunal system resulting from the Tribunals, Court and Enforcements Act 2007.

See Documents for a list of the full amendments.

Contract for Signature

This sets out the term of the Unified Contract and is in force until 31 March 2010 with an option for extension up to 31 March 2012.

Providers also get an office schedule for each of their offices that carry out legal aid work.

The immigration and asylum success rate

See the office schedule for this: where we have funded representation before the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal a minimum success rate of 40% combined and 35% in respect of asylum and immigration cases respectively is required.

Standard Terms

See Documents for these. The main changes include:

a more efficient way of working by issuing one contract per organisation rather than one per office
new provisions about e-business and equality and diversity
new Payment on Account provisions as agreed with the representative bodies
setting a minimum and maximum number of new cases to be started by an individual office each year.

Specifications

Our Unified Contract Specification is under Documents and covers:

General
Family Category Specific
Immigration Category Specific
Miscellaneous Category Specific
the Payment Annex.

The 1 Apr 07 Specification still applies to matters and cases opened in the Mental Health Category of Law.

The Specification brings into effect civil fee schemes from 1 Oct 07 (1 Jan 08 for Mental Health). A new Funding Order and certain Funding Code and regulation changes support the changes to the fee schemes.

Not-for Profit transitional provisions

These transitional provisions apply to all NfP providers who previously carried out work under NfP Specifications. They are in the Documents panel.

Other specifications

See Documents for the:

Family Mediation Specification
Mental Health Category Specific Specification

Family Mediation applies to all solicitor and NfP providers and brings into force new fee schemes. Mental Health sets out the criteria for:

the various levels of service
mental health specific rules for the new fee scheme.

For more information

Please see Documents for:

all contract information
equality and diversity guidance

Visit the Pay rates and schemes pages for details of remuneration.

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Last updated: 03 October 2008