The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that the Legal Aid Agency has been the subject of a serious cyber incident.

The Chair of the Bar, Barbara Mills KC, met with the Chief Executive of the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) this morning, alongside the Law Society President and HH Deborah Taylor. Following the meeting, the Chair has written to members with an update on the situation. The key points are below.

We are continuing to engage with the LAA and will provide members with updates as and when we are able to.

What we know so far
  • The LAA identified the incident on 23 April and notified providers on 30 April. LAA took the Portal offline for periods of time throughout last week to investigate and take remedial action
  • On Friday it became clear the incident was more serious, and the Portal is now completely offline
  • A significant amount of personal data of legal aid applicants in England and Wales dating back to 2010 has been accessed, including criminal records and financial details, as well as contact details, dates of birth, national insurance numbers and employment status
  • The MoJ has been working with the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre and has informed the information commissioner
  • An update statement has been published on the GOV.UK website
Advice from the LAA

In the latest message to Portal users (sent Monday morning) the LAA advises:

  • All members of the public who have applied for legal aid since 2010 should be alert for any suspicious activity or contacts and update potentially exposed passwords
  • Anyone using the LAA Portal with a password that they use on other systems should update their passwords across all systems
  • Contingency measures are in place for solicitors to make civil and criminal applications for legal aid

We note that the communication did not address the issue of payment of legal aid fees and this is a particular concern for barristers and chambers.

The LAA committed to providing a further update on Thursday.

Payment of fees

The LAA Portal for claiming for civil and family legal aid fees for barristers is currently offline. A different Portal is used for claiming for barristers’ Crown Court fees – this Portal is currently operational and chambers can continue to use it to submit fee claims, even though the LAA are unable to process them at this time.

The Chair pressed the urgency of getting payment systems back up and running and said that if the Portal is going to be down for more than a few days, the LAA will need to put in place contingency measures, for example a manual workaround.

Next steps

Following this morning’s meeting, a working group is being established to engage with the LAA, including representatives from the Bar Council and the Law Society, as well as fees clerks and software suppliers.

The LAA is working on an FAQs document, and we’ve been feeding in the questions you’ve been sending through to the Bar Council. We expect this to be available today or tomorrow.