Timely legal advice can save costly legal action

[baldrick]

Mr B was a client that failed a ESA medical on 0 points. He had lodged an appeal.

The Client approached us for help.

We had a long doscussion with the client under the legal help scheme discussing his abilities as he stated them and the ESA criteria.

The client was adamant that he wanted to appeal before our discussion. After it he realised that his case was almost impossible and that with advice other options could be better.

After the above advice the appeal was withdrawn by the client saving client, DWP, and Tribunal Service a lot of bother and expenditure.

But whos bothered about that post review.

[nickd]

Baldrick illustrates how Legal Help saves the State money! It's often wrongly assumed that agencies, by default, encourage the client to pursue the appeal option. Specialist help can often pinpoint a case where the client can receive a knowledgeable explanation of how the law applies, when the client has it explained to them, the outcome can be such that the client realises they don't meet the criteria. So long as this is correctly explored with the client and all potential grounds of entitlement are considered, the outcome is that a costly appeal can be averted. This reduces the Tribunals Service case load (which is currently overstretched) and saves a great deal of money. It can apply to many other types of dispute where specialist help looks at the constructive merits of the case.

Please use this as your opportunity to tell us about other examples of how Legal Help saves money, but also continue to keep us informed of the many beneficial outcomes achieved with Legal Aid intervention. We need as many examples of the positive values of Legal Aid as possible in order to challenge the proposed reforms. This your forum and your opportunity, so please let's hear what you have to say.