Legal Advice

Community Legal Advice

Formally known as Community Legal Service (CLS), Community Legal Advice should be your first port of call for free and confidential advice. The service, paid for by legal aid, is delivered in partnership with independent advice agencies (such as Citizens' Advice Bureau) and solicitors which means that you can feel confident in the knowledge that you will get the right guidance and help with your legal problems.

Further details about the service are available on the Community Legal Advice website or call the helpline on 0845 345 4345 (calls cost no more than 4p per minute from a BT landline but calls from mobiles are usually more. If you are worried about the cost ask an adviser to call you back).

Consumer Direct

Consumer Direct brings together consumer advice agencies to ensure that good quality advice is accessible by the whole community. Advice available from Consumer Direct includes:

• what to look out for when buying goods and services
• consumers' rights and obligations when buying goods and services
• how to obtain redress when things go wrong

Consumer Support Networks and the Community Legal Advice are complementary initiatives.

For more information see the Consumer Direct website.

Legal Service Commission

The Legal Service Commission oversees and funds the Community Legal Advice scheme. If you wish for further information about how legal aid works or would like to understand the Criminal Defence system view the Legal Services Commission website.

Quality Mark

An important principle of the Community Legal Advice scheme is that of simple referral to the right part of the network. If the first organisation you contact cannot help, they should be able to refer you to another organisation that can. Community Legal Advice Partnerships ensure that advice providers in their area take part in a referral network and strongly encourage providers to apply for the Quality Mark.

One of the ways to improve access to, and delivery of legal and advice services in the community is by setting up and running referral networks. Effective referral is also one of the requirements of the CLA Quality Mark. We want people to recognise a certain standard of legal information and help.

When you see an organisation that displays the CLS logo, you know that organisation meets certain quality standards. If a Community Legal Service provider is unable to deal with all aspects of your problem, it can refer clients to another Quality Marked organisation.

For more information on the Community Legal Service Quality Mark see the Legal Services Commission website.