The Civil Public Funding module deals with all civil matters that are
part of the Civil Fee Scheme where you can create Civil Claims for inclusion
on your Bulk Upload (Consolidated Matter Report and New Matter Start Forms).
Claims are then paid through accounts and the system uses the appropriate
level of fees for the matter. These fee levels are set up in Utilities
as are the exceptional fee levels.
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Following the April 2013 changes, a number of work types are effectively out of scope for matter started on or after 1 April 2013. Some will still be allowed by meeting Exemption Criteria and you can apply for an Exceptional Case Funding, although these are for exceptions only. For full details, please click and see the Legal Aid Agency website.
Note As part of the changes, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) and been replaced with the Legal Aid Agency (LAA). Whilst we have amended forms and references to the agency in this manual, there are fields and postings in ALB that still relate to the LSC. These will not affect any claims and will be dealt with in a future release.
Your Consolidated Matter Report Forms and New Matter Start Form are produced and stored on the Legal Services Client in Civil Public Funding Billing module as is an Internal Summary and Exceptional Claims Summary. These reports are for your own use only.
After the initial set up the system is ready for use, and when adding matters to the module will allocate a UFN and UCN based on the Legal Services UCN criteria. You will be able to time record on your matters as normal and change the combination
The Claims are then posted and paid using the Accounts Posting designed specifically for Public Funding claims. This means that the actual cost of the matter will be shown on the CMRF and the Fixed Fee amount is shown on the client ledger.
For those of you that don’t usually get involved with this aspect of the Accounts System, detailed notes are included, although you should check with the Head of your Accounts Office before undertaking Financial Postings of any kind.
Note There is a LSC VAT adjustment posting for dealing with the VAT element of the balance of funds in your LSC client matter.