Finding Legal Advice
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Free legal advice
There are some sources of free legal advice around but they are in high demand and there can be waiting lists. They also can’t run your cases for you, but help you and off when they can.
Call charges may apply.
Reliable sources of legal advice guide
A wonderful law library expert, Sally McLaren, has written a guide to reliable sources of legal advice which you can download for free.
Norfolk Community Law Service
NCLS helped to create this website and works with UEA Law Clinic. Appointments can be by phone, online, or in person. They offer free legal advice on family law and on protection from domestic abuse.
Unfortunately NCLS is only available to help people in Norfolk (although they can be flexible if you are on the border).
Website: Free legal advice - Norfolk Community Law Service
Phone: 01603 496623
Whatsapp: 07900 153753
Email: family@ncls.co.uk
Suffolk Law Centre
They offer free legal advice on family law and on protection from domestic abuse. Unfortunately they are only available to help people in Suffolk.
Website: Family Law - Suffolk Law Centre
Phone: 01473 526711
Email: office@suffolklawcentre.org.uk
Citizens Advice
Website: Citizens Advice
Phone: 0800 144 8848
They have offices all around Norfolk: Find your local Citizens Advice - Citizens Advice
CORAM Children’s advice line
This is a free helpline and lots of advice online on legal issues about children.
Website: Home new - childlawadvice.org.uk
Email: Email advice - childlawadvice.org.uk
Telephone: 0300 330 5480
Webchat is from their homepage
Book a callback: Booking a call back - childlawadvice.org.uk
Family Rights Group
The Family Rights Group is a charity that offers free advice to parents and kinship carers. As well as helplines they have lots of online forums for parents and carers.
Website: Get Help and Advice - Family Rights Group
Telephone: 0808 801 0366
Webchat: Advice Webchat - Family Rights Group
Email form: Advice Enquiry Form - Family Rights Group
Advocate
Advocate is a charity that offers free barristers to represent people in court. They only help people who can’t afford legal advice. They only represent you in court and don’t do court documents apart from a skeleton argument (a summary of what they are going to say in court).
Rights of Women
Rights of Women offers free, confidential legal advice for women in England and Wales on family law.
Website: Family law advice | Rights of Women
Telephone: 020 7251 6577
Free initial meetings with a solicitor
Some law firms offer a free initial meeting. There’s some advice on the Legal Choices website on how to make use of this time.
You can find a list of local solicitors and whether they offer a free appointment on the NCLS short guide.
Paying for legal advice
Most law firms will have a family department. You should be able to find one near you, but firms can also see people on Zoom or Teams if you can’t visit them.
You can ring up a law firm and ask to speak to someone about instructing them. You should not be charged for an enquiry and some firms will offer a free appointment.
Most lawyers in this area charge around £300 per hour plus VAT. That’s a lot of money. Lawyers do a lot of training and have lots of costs of running the firm. Some lawyers will charge more or less depending on their experience. A firm might have someone cheaper who can do some of the work.
Some firms say that instructing a lawyer will cost £10-50,000. The true cost depends on how difficult your case is. That difficulty can be because of:
International assets
The personalities of you and your ex
Types of assets that might need specialist advice such as valuable pensions or companies
Delays outside your control
Whether you or your ex are making particular arguments about things
Whether you and your ex can reach agreement, and how quickly.
A study of lots of cases about money on divorce found that:
One in four people who got legal advice paid less than £1,000
One in five people spent between £1,000 and £3,000
One in ten people spent more than £10,000 but they tended to have much more money to argue about
Getting legal advice tended to result in better financial outcomes for women (what money they got on divorce).
Direct access barristers
Traditionally only solicitors could hire barristers. These days many barristers will work directly for people without solicitors. This is known as direct access or public access. This is not free, but they will tell you how much they will charge in advance and it will usually be a fixed amount rather than an hourly rate. Barristers can represent you in court or draft court documents. They can’t write letters on your behalf.
You can find more about that on the Bar Council site.
Getting legal aid
Legal aid is when the state pays for some or all of your legal costs so that you can use a solicitor and a barrister.
Legal aid is only available for certain types of cases and only for certain people.
You generally have to have a low income and low assets, and be able to demonstrate that the case is going to help you enough for it to be worth it, and that you have a reasonable likelihood of success.
You may be eligible for legal aid if:
You are a victim-survivor of domestic abuse, for family cases against your abuser, or cases where there is child abuse. This can include children cases, non-molestation orders, occupation orders, and divorce and finances on divorce. You have to be on a low income with limited assets.
For mediation. The first meeting is free for both you and your ex if either of you is eligible for legal aid and then after that only the legally aided person will get it free.
Social workers want to take your child into care. You can get legal aid when they write to you telling you this. Some solicitors specialise in this type of case. It doesn’t matter how much you earn.
Your child has been abducted to another country or there is a risk of that happening.
You can check here if you can get legal aid. Legal aid: Check if you can get legal aid - GOV.UK. You can also ring up a law firm that does legal aid, as they usually know the rules very well.
In Norfolk most law firms don’t offer legal aid. This is because the government appoints firms to offer legal aid and it does not pay much or appoint many firms. It’s easier to get legal aid for children cases than for other types of case such as divorce and finances.
We have a short guide to legal aid and local legal aid firms.