In the hiatus following the cancellation of family contracts last autumn two new family fee schemes, due for implementation, were postponed. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has now announced their belated introduction from 9 May. The new schemes are:

The Family Advocacy Scheme. Under this scheme both solicitor advocates and barristers claim a single, graduated fee for advocacy work done on public and private family law cases.

The Private Family Law Representation Scheme. Under this scheme solicitors claim a standard fixed fee for work done (excluding advocacy) from the issue of proceedings to the conclusion of the final hearing.

The LSC say that online training to help preparation for the new family fee schemes is now available on their training website and encourage family providers and advocates affected by the new schemes to use this training to ensure accurate claiming. The Commission has also published new guidance on their website under Guidance on fees and funding.

Three new forms to support the schemes have been introduced:

• CLAIM1A for non-advocacy work
• CLAIM5A for advocacy work
• Advocates’ Attendance Form for advocates.

If you are an advocate you need to complete the Advocates’ Attendance Form:

• for hearings that last for more than an hour or
• when claiming bolt-ons.

The Court needs to verify the information on this form and it is the advocate’s responsibility to:

• get the form signed at court by the judge, magistrate or legal adviser and
• keep a copy of the signed form.

The advocate should submit this form with their claim. Copies of signed forms will not be kept by the court. The full list of new and revised forms can be found at:

http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/civil/forms/preview_may_2011.asp

But if you are wise enough to be a subscriber to the excellent Anya Designs iLaw system you will have these concerns catered for in the latest service pack being despatched this week.

Every quarter we release a new version of iLaw. This is mainly because the Legal Services Commission has instituted a raft of changes but also because we have added some good stuff that we think you will like. These service packs come out on a disc in time honoured fashion and your IT bod – or the person in the office nominated to be them for a day – gets to run around updating all the PC’s in your office.

Then 3 days later we will get an email from the LSC saying something along the lines of ‘Sorry guys but we had to change something .. again’ and we are left thinking about *another* shipment of discs, not knowing whether you really want to see them for another 3 months.

So we have changed iLaw to make it easier for you to stay up to date with interim service releases without having to collect more pink discs than you ever wanted to own. This is how you do it:

Go to the Housekeeping menu on the menu bar and select Check for software updates.

This will check your current version of iLaw. If you are up to date, it will tell you. If you are not, it will take you to our website and download the latest version. Really simple.