As legal aid specialists, our Housing practice is dynamic, and we often work on a wide variety of cases. Our well-established team has a wealth of experience, which we've gained over several years. Our primary focus is to understand your complex legal housing issue and talk to you knowledgeably and advise you on the best way to navigate it.
We pride ourselves on making complex issues easy to understand and taking the time to explain to you how our practice works and how we can help you moving forward.
The procedure your landlord must follow to re-possess your home will depend on the type of ‘occupier’ that you are.
Once a local authority has made a decision on whether to accept a homeless duty, an applicant has 21 days to request an s.202 review if the decision is negative.
As a legal aid firm, we specialise predominantly in doing legal aid work. As such, when you first get in contact with us, we will request specific documents from you to assess your eligibility for legal aid.
The eligibility criteria consider things like the type of legal problem you have, the amount of disposable income or capital you have, and whether or not you have sought legal advice for the same issue in the past.
If you meet these criteria, we will provide you with legal advice that the Legal Aid Agency will fund.
Legal help is the first stage of two-stage processes where you could be provided with funding from the Legal Aid Agency to get advice on your particular case. If you are granted legal help, then a legal adviser can begin to work with you to diagnose the legal issue you are experiencing.
Typical work covered under legal help includes providing written and oral advice, drafting letters to the Defendant, obtaining supporting evidence from third parties, preparing witness statements, and preparing legal documents.
Legal aid is the second stage of the process where you could be provided funding from the Legal Aid Agency. Often, once all avenues of legal help have been exhausted, it may be necessary to apply for more funding to gain more specialist advice on your particular matter.
In this event, Lawstop has several barristers and chambers that we have worked with for many years, who provide us with a detailed analysis as to the merits of your case.
Depending on their advice, it may be necessary to apply to the Court for Judicial Review permission. We will continue to be your point of contact for the case, and we will keep you updated on the progress of your application and any consequences of making the application on your behalf.
At Lawstop, we have a number of Caseworkers, Paralegals, and Solicitors, each of whom is dedicated to the area in which they practice. Once you are signed up as one of our client's you will be assigned to one of our legal professionals, who will be your point of contact throughout the process.
This will be the person that provides you with advice on your legal issue and will answer any of your questions about the process and details of what you can expect to happen. In the unlikely event that they do not know the answer to your specific question, rest assured that we have a strong leadership team who can be called upon to provide specific details to your questions.
We believe that when you choose a law firm to represent you, you need to feel confident in their ability to understand your issue and provide you with clear and consistent advice.
At Lawstop, we pride ourselves on the continuous training that we provide to our staff at all levels. We know that being involved in a legal process may be daunting for you; we are here to explain things so that it is easy for you to understand and pride ourselves on our approachability.
Each of our team has chosen to work in the legal aid sector. Their individual and collective passion for achieving justice for those underrepresented cannot be rivalled and is often why we develop long-standing relationships with charities and organisations across the UK.