General legal advice
This page provides information on organisations that offer
legal advice.
Community Legal Service
The idea behind the Community Legal Service (CLS) was for people
to find help easily and feel confident in the quality of service
they get from legal service and advice providers. The
CLS
aims to ensure that people can
get help and information about their legal rights and understand
how to enforce them in the right place and at the right time.
To make it easier for the public to get advice and legal help,
the CLS brings together organisations offering advice and legal
services into local networks. These networks include solicitors,
Citizens' Advice Bureau, Law Centres, local authority services
(including libraries), community centres, and a host of other
organisations. The networks are organised and supported by
Community Legal Service Partnerships, which are made up of
representatives of the Legal Services Commission, local
authorities, funders and providers of advice.
The job of Partnerships is to assess the need for legal and
advice services in their area. They must also work together to
ensure that the right kinds of services are available to meet
priority needs.
Details of the CLS Partnerships are available on the Community
Legal Service website.
Community Legal
Service
Consumer Support Network
Consumer advice agencies are working together as a group to
develop a network plan to ensure that good quality consumer advice
is accessible by the whole community. The Consumer Support Networks
(CSNs) initiative, encourages consumer advice providers to join-up
their services and provide consumers, wherever they live, with
reliable, timely and quality assured advice.
Consumer advice needs to reflect today's complex and
fast-changing marketplace. It must take account of developments
such as the growth of internet shopping and the often complicated
ways that goods and services are sold. We would expect advice
available to cover:
- 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 Service are
complementary initiatives.
For more general information see the Consumer Support Networks
website.
Consumer Support
Networks
Community Legal Service Quality Mark
An important principle of the Community Legal Service 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
to another organisation that can. Community Legal Service
Partnerships will 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
CLS
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.
Legal Services Commission