Legal Aid Agency
Updated checklists are now available to help you ensure you receive payments as quickly as possible when billing for escape case work in these categories:
- civil
- mental health
- immigration and asylum
These checklists are used by caseworkers to check your claims.
But they are also useful for providers to help you ensure you have made the necessary checks and enclosed the required documentation.
What are the changes?
The checklists have been revised to put more focus on the most common errors and how these can be avoided. But there is no change to our requirements when submitting bills.
Staged checking process
The new format sets out clearly the stage 1 and stage 2 checking process followed by our caseworkers. This in line with our approach for civil certificated billing.
The stage 1 checks itemise the issues that cause the highest number of rejects in each category.
If a caseworker sees a reason to reject under stage 1 then the claim is returned without further checks being made.
Where a reason to reject is found under stage 2 the claim will be checked for a further 5 minutes or until 2 more reject reasons are found.
How to use the checklists
We recommend that the checklists are used as a pre-submission check.
If your claim is rejected, you can use the checklist again to help ensure that there will be no further rejects.
Further information
EC-Claim 1: escape fee case claim form to download updated checklists