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Judicial Review: Procedure Guide
We begin by speaking to you about the background to the case, either
face to face or, where appropriate, by telephone or email. It will
help us if you can collect together any background documents and email
or post them to us before this initial meeting. Or, if that is not
possible, please bring them to the initial meeting and we will make
copies.
If you are entitled to legal aid we will help you complete a legal
aid application form and submit this for you.
If the case is urgent and strong enough, we can immediately grant
emergency legal aid. If legal aid is not available we will discuss
with you other ways of funding the case. If you are not entitled to
legal aid we may agree to provide a free initial consultation to provide
advice about whether judicial review may be appropriate and alternative
ways of funding a case.
We then begin to investigate your case and obtain relevant evidence.
In some cases we may also ask a specialist barrister to provide an
initial report to help us work out whether the case is likely to succeed.
We will then write to you with our initial advice.
If we think the case is likely to succeed we will then send a letter
to the public authority in question explaining that you are considering
bringing a judicial review case and why and what the public authority
will need to do if they want to avoid this. We call this a ‘letter
before claim’.
The public authority will normally be given 14 days to respond. Many
public authorities will back down at this point – so many judicial
review claims are resolved quickly and cheaply. Public authorities
who refuse to back down have to explain why they are refusing to do
so. They also have to say whether they would agree to mediation or
any other way of resolving the dispute.
If the public authority refuses to back down we will provide you with
a copy of their reasons for refusing to do so. We will also advise
you whether we still think the judicial review claim is likely to
succeed. You can then make a decision about whether you want to go
ahead with a judicial review court case.
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