New Measure to End Duplicate Correspondence with the Director

It has been noted that despite specific request in the Guidance Notes to Legal Aid Practitioners and an appeal by the Department on its homepage for panel lawyers not to correspond with the Director by fax and by post/DX and limit correspondence by fax to urgent matters, there are still a considerable number of panel lawyers who persist in doing both. The practice not only adds burden to legal aid staff to spend time on unnecessary filing, it is also environmentally unfriendly.

In order to put an end to such practice and with effect from 1 June 2009, the Department will return to the senders all hard copies of correspondence sent to the Director marked “By fax AND by post/by hand/DX” immediately upon receipt.