Summary of your responsibilities in providing advice and assistance

It is your personal responsibility to:

  • Decide whether advice and assistance may competently be provided and whether it is appropriate to provide it at public expense.
  • Decide if your client is financially eligible and in doing so to consider any matters needing the exercise of your discretion, such as whether any resources may properly be disregarded.
  • Identify the matter about which advice and assistance is to be given.
  • Be satisfied whether your client has already received advice and assistance on the same matter from another solicitor.
  • Decide whether your client may have other rights and facilities available to them that make it unreasonable to provide advice and assistance.
  • Provide the actual advice and assistance – a non-qualified member of staff cannot do so.
Questions to ask your client when assessing their eligibility
Payment of Safeguarders and Curators Ad Litem in children’s hearings court proceedings

In this section

Availability of Advice and Assistance

What is advice and assistance?

Read a definition of advice and assistance and what it covers, how representation is defined and about A&A in the context of English or foreign law matters.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Who may provide advice and assistance?

Find out who may provide advice and assistance, including the roles of trainees, unqualified staff, safeguarders and curators ad litem.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Who can receive advice and assistance?

Read about who can receive advice and assistance: what is meant by a ‘person’, and who can apply on a child’s behalf.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Does your client have any other rights and facilities?

Read about the availability of advice and assistance for applicants with other rights and facilities, or reasonable expectations of financial (or other) help.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

What does advice and assistance cover?

Find out at what point you can start giving A&A, what unqualified staff may and may not do, and about charges for completing the application.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Questions to ask your client when assessing their eligibility

This page includes a list of example questions you may want to ask clients when assessing their financial eligibility for advice and assistance, and relevant information you should see. It includes questions to ask child applicants; married or cohabiting applicants; and applicants with more than one dwelling house. It also covers the issue of deprivation of resources, and what to do if the client is unable to answer these questions at a first meeting.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Payment of Safeguarders and Curators Ad Litem in children’s hearings court proceedings

Find out who pays the fees and expenses of safeguarders and curators ad litem in proceedings under the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Appointment and payment of safeguarders where the safeguarder is a practicing solicitor

Find out about what legal aid is available when a safeguarder has been appointed to a child, including where the safeguarder is a practicing solicitor.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Appointment and payment of curators ad litem who are also practicing solicitors

Find out if and when a court appointed curator ad litem to a child or incapable adult can apply for legal aid for that person.

Availability of Advice and Assistance

Advice and assistance cannot be given by safeguarders and curators ad litem

Find out whether advice and assistance can be given by safeguarders and curators ad litem.