Cyber-attack on Legal Aid Agency leaves abuse victims in danger

One KC said the extra hours of administrative work required as a result of the attack mean they will represent “two or three” fewer ­victims of domestic abuse each week than before. She is concerned other victims will not seek representation because of the risk of their data being stolen.

The hack came at a time when legal aid lawyers are already stretched. Those  family law, one of the lowest-paid areas of the legal profession, have not had a pay increase in decades.

Leslie Samuels KC, vice-chair of the Family Law Bar Association, fears lawyers will move out of the sector to seek more stable work. He said: “We will see an increasing number of providers… simply giving up the work and moving into other areas… Frankly, it’s been a terrible time, and things are unlikely to improve.”

On the 23 April, hackers, who have not been publicly identified, accessed the portal used by legal aid lawyers to bill for work and register new clients, and downloaded an estimated 2m pieces of personal information, potentially including bank details and addresses dating back to 2007.

In response, the Legal Aid Agency set up a contingency payments plan that pays lawyers a weekly sum based on an average of their earnings from the months preceding the hack. But the payments come in the form of a loan and do not reflect the extra unpaid admin work the hack created.

Jenny Beck KC, director of London law firm Beck Fitzgerald, said: “We are literally at complete sustainability breaking point right now. This is the straw that is going to break the camel’s back.”

She added: “I can guesstimate how many people are now not getting help...  Every single case is taking us at least two more hours than it previously took. If I add up all of those two hours by the amount of people I’ve got doing the work... That’s two or three people who aren’t getting the protection order each week.”

Samuels said he does not think that lawyers will actively be turning down work across the sector, but Oliver Conway, a family law solicitor at legal firm Oliver Fisher in west London, has found the pressures too much. “I have to look at a case and go: ‘Well, can I afford to take this case on?’ I certainly won’t be taking on any sort of domestic abuse injunctions. I just refuse… Why would I take on that sort of piecemeal work when I’m not going to get paid for it for potentially a year, two years?”

The current conditions for legal aid lawyers working with domestic abuse victims is a stark contrast to the government’s commitment to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade.

Samuels said that the government’s plan “does not seem to [involve] actually recognising that the rates of pay for those undertaking the work need to be… aligned in some way to rates of pay in other areas of work and the private sector or in other government areas of work”.

Beck said: “A lot of the work we do helps to keep people protected from violence against women and girls by stopping domestic abuse” and that it was “short-sighted and dangerous” not to make the sector financially sustainable.

Last week, the Legal Aid Agency wrote to legal aid providers saying the portal should be up and running by mid-November.

But Samuels is not convinced this will fix the crisis. “Eventually, the cyber-attack will be resolved and there will be a functioning system. We have no doubt about that. But the longer-term issues will remain,” he said.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We understand the challenges this situation presents for legal aid providers. We are working as fast as possible to restore our online systems and have put in place contingencies to allow legal aid work to continue safely with confidence.

“We’ve introduced interim payments for civil cases and resumed payments for criminal cases and we’re fast-tracking urgent civil applications, and backdating criminal applications made during this period.”

Photograph by Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images