Law Society calls for “sustained investment” in LAA’s IT system following cyberattack

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The Law Society of England and Wales has called the recent Legal Aid Agency (LAA) data breach “extremely concerning” and highlighted “the need for sustained investment to bring the LAA’s antiquated IT system up to date and ensure the public have continued trust in the justice system”.

The cyberattack, which took place in April, resulted in the LAA’s digital services being taken offline, with payments for the publicly funded work also halted. CEO of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, Chris Minnoch, explained that lawyers had called the representative body “in tears” as they waited for an update and payments for legal aid. Minnoch said: “What a cyberattack like this brings to the front of your mind is that the legal aid scheme is teetering on the precipice of collapse.”

The government, aware of the data breach on 23 April, took the system offline on 16 May after it became apparent that the cyberattack was more extensive than previously thought, The Independent reports. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) previously explained that the breach appeared to have impacted people who’d applied to the LAA since 2010, with a “significant amount of personal data” accessed.

Law Society President Richard Atkinson said: “The fragility of the IT system has prevented vital reforms, including updates to the means test that could help millions more access legal aid, and interim payments for firms whose cashflow is being decimated by the backlogs in the courts, through no fault of their own. If it is now also proving vulnerable to cyberattack, further delay is untenable.”

He added: “Legal aid firms are small businesses providing an important public service and are operating on the margins of financial viability. Given that vulnerability, these financial security concerns are the last thing they need.”

A spokesperson for the MoJ 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.

“These measures include setting up an average payment scheme for civil legal aid cases, resuming payments on criminal legal aid cases, putting in place processes for urgent civil application approvals and confirming that criminal applications made in this time will be backdated.”

Jenny Beck KC, who runs a family law practice with a workload that’s 60% legal aid work, spoke of the “administrative chaos”. Beck said: “We’ll have to supplement it with private income sources, because it’s anxiety provoking to be working at risk on cases that we haven’t an absolute guarantee that we’re going to be paid.” While Beck plans to “continue to work at risk”, she warned that other firms “are very concerned about taking that risk”.