What is Legal Aid and how does it work?
Legal Aid is funding provided by the Legal Aid Agency to help meet the cost of legal advice or representation in court or in a tribunal. 
JCWI’s legal department has a Legal Aid contract. This means that we are able to represent and assist clients using Legal Aid but only if you are eligible.
Your eligibility is based both on your ‘means’ (whether you can afford to pay for legal advice) and the ‘merits’ of your case (how serious your case is and whether it is in ‘scope’).
What does ‘scope’ mean?
When we say that a type of case is ‘in scope’ it means that, provided you are financially eligible, this type of case is automatically covered by Legal Aid according to the rules set by the Legal Aid Agency.
Unfortunately, since 2010 there have been deep cuts to Legal Aid and, as a result, there’s been a big reduction in the types of immigration cases that are ‘in scope’. For example, since 1 April 2013 cases involving Article 8 ECHR (Family) a…