The fiscal year of Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) runs from April 1 to March 31 of the next year. Today marks the year end of year 2008-09, and many Legal Aid practitioners have good reasons to celebrate.

Lately LAO has been dragging its heels in processing accounts where dicstretionary increase requests. According to the billing manual, discretionary increases are supposed to be processed within 60 days. However, there have been major delays – accounts were only processed after some 90 days. My friend Jack has an account submitted in mid December 08 and still hasn’t received a dime.

We suspect it’s because LAO is running out of the allocated funds for discretionary increase towards the year end.

While this sounds whiny, there are merits to my complaint here. It costs a lot of money to litigate (where most of my cases lie) – court filing fees, process server charges, medical reports, transcriptions, audio and video records, requisition of third-party documents, photographs, fax, photocopies, witness fees, expert witnesses, courier fees, etc. – it all adds up. For big cases, these  costs (what we call “disbursements”) can be greater than the lawyer’s fees, especially when several expert witnesses are involved.

Under the terms of LAO, lawyers are required to pay the disbursement charges up front and subsequently bill to LAO for reimbursement. For small firms without large cash reserves, this adds to the cost of operation. Many small firms are thus forced to take on commercial loans in order to keep the business running.

With the new fiscal year starting tomorrow, I hope LAO can be more efficient in dealing with accounts with discretionary increases, so we LAO practitioners don’t have to worry about ballooming our debts.