Community Legal Advice helpline
- How the Community Legal Advice helpline can help you
- What will happen when I call?
- What happens if I ask you to call me back?
- Advice available in other languages
- Minicom and typetalk
How the Community Legal Advice helpline can help you
Community Legal Advice is a free and confidential advice service paid for by legal aid. If you live on a low income or benefits, call for independent advice about debt, education, benefits and tax credits, employment and housing problems.
You can:
- Call us on on 0845 345 4 345 from 9am to 6:30pm Monday to Friday. Calls cost no more than 4p per minute from a BT landline. Calls from mobiles are usually more. Worried about the cost? Ask an advisor to call you back.
- Ask us to call you. Use our callback service by filling in this form or you can simply text 'legalaid' and your name to 80010 and we'll call you back within 24 hours.
The cost of your text will be at the standard rate for your operator. These costs will vary but should cost no more than your usual text rate.
The service covers English and Welsh law.
What will happen when I call?
The first person you will speak to is an operator. They are not legally trained but will ask you questions about your problem to find out what kind of information and advice you need.
- If you have a problem we can help with, the operator will ask you some more questions about your finances to see if you are eligible for free specialist advice.
- If you are eligible you will be connected to a specialist legal adviser immediately. The specialist legal adviser will then take on your case. They will write letters on your behalf and speak to third parties like landlords and creditors for you. They can even prepare bundles of documents for you to take to an employment tribunal. You can speak to your adviser, in confidence, as many times as you need to, until your problem is solved.
- Even if you are not eligible or we do not cover your problem ourselves we can put you in touch with other agencies, helplines or local advice services that can. We can also give you directions to other legal information resources to help you help yourself.
- We never charge for our services. All our advice and help is completely government funded.
What happens if I ask you to call me back?
If you ask us to call you back the service is the same but you will save yourself the cost of a call.
Advice is available in other languages
The helpline has a translation service if you would like advice in a language other than English or Welsh. Language Line provides an instant translation service in 170 languages.
Minicom and Type-Talk
Minicom and Type-Talk calls are welcome.
- Minicom is a telephone typewriter device for communication with or between deaf, hard-of-hearing, or speech-impaired people. The Minicom number is 0845 609 6677.
- Type-Talk enables those who have hearing difficulties to use a text phone to access telephone advice through a free operator service.
