What is Initial Electronic Advice? How does it work?

Initial Electronic Advice is a web based system which provides short, initial legal advice in response to relatively straightforward questions. It is designed to assist not for profit organisations and individuals who cannot afford to pay for solicitors privately. Once a not for profit organisation or advice agency has registered and been approved to use the system, they are able to post queries which are then visible to participating volunteer lawyers. LawWorks, or the community of volunteer lawyers, can then edit the query if necessary and categorise it under the appropriate legal area. Volunteer lawyers ‘follow’ different legal areas (much like following someone on Twitter), and are sent a notification when a query has been posted in their area. They can then log on, view the query, and answer it if they would like to. Once a query has been answered, and the answer has been voted on to ‘approve’ it by another volunteer (or LawWorks if necessary), the answer is relayed to the organisation that raised the question.

Who are LawWorks?

LawWorks is an independent charity and is the working name of the Solicitor’s Pro Bono Group. The charity exists to encourage and support solicitors to carry out pro bono work (for free), and runs several projects to encourage solicitors to do this, and to provide free legal support to individuals, communities and small voluntary organisations who are unable to afford or access legal advice. You can see more information on the charity itself on our website – www.lawworks.org.uk.

Who answers the questions?

The questions are answered by volunteer advisors who are LawWorks members.

What sort of questions can I ask?

Your question has to provide enough information for an advisor to be able to answer it but without it being too lengthy. The service is designed to provide answers to simple legal questions of a general nature and is not able to advise on specific situations.

Examples of suitable questions:

• “What is Statutory Sick Pay?”
• “On what grounds can an organisation refuse a request for information under the Data Protection Act?”
• “How do I change a company’s constitution?”
• “How do I secure copyright on publications?”

Examples of questions which are not suitable:

• "I want to sack Mr. X tomorrow as he really is not doing a good job.”
• “I need to decide what to do about a claim sent into us by a large Company of 'passing off'.”
• “I need to get help on whether I should settle a claim under a contract for payment of £x for work under a contract a former Trustee made with a Computer company which never worked.”
• “I need to decide if we can ignore a request for information made by some minority shareholders (including a couple of sponsoring companies) of the charity. What should I do?.”

If your question is unsuitable for the system you will be contacted and directed to an appropriate source of assistance.

How long will a response take?

Questions are usually answered within 10 working days – however, as we rely on volunteer advisors who carry out pro bono work on top of their existing case loads, we are unable to guarantee this time frame, nor can we guarantee that any question will be answered, although we will do our best to ensure that all appropriate questions are.

Is the system anonymous and confidential?

Questions are sent anonymously – advisors will not know your details. Answers are also provided anonymously - you will not know the advisor’s details. Your contact details are held on the LawWorks system so that we can contact you with the answer to your question. The system is completely confidential.

You may also like to look at our fact sheets on various areas of law, produced for not for profit groups to enable them to expand their legal knowledge. The fact sheets can be found here.

If your question is on behalf of a not for profit organisation, and is a more complex issue which you do not think a lawyer will be able to answer with basic information, you may like to apply to the LawWorks for Community Groups project. The project was set up to match small not-for-profit organisations in need of free legal advice with a network of volunteer lawyers. We help those who have limited access to funding or other resources and who cannot afford to pay for legal advice. We do not provide legal advice ourselves, rather we act as a broker between not-for-profit groups and volunteer lawyers willing to act pro bono (for free). For more information and to apply click here.

If you are an advice agency and your question is on behalf of a client, and is a more complex issue which you do not think an advisor will be able to answer with basic information, you may like to apply to the LawWorks Individuals Casework project. This project assists individuals who are not eligible for legal aid and are not able to afford a solicitor. For more information and to apply click here.

For more information please see our terms and conditions and data protection policy here.

If you have any further queries please contact the LawWorks office on 0207 092 3940.