About Birmingham Law Centre
Birmingham Law Centre is an independent, not-for-profit, solicitor-led legal advice agency. We have specialist contracts from the Legal Services Commission (LSC) to provide legal advice in the areas of debt, welfare benefits and community care.
We have 11 caseworkers, of whom five are qualified solicitors. Two of our solicitors are also registered social workers.
We distribute grants as agents for a number of charities as well as from our own funds. We have also created and operate the West Midlands’ only fund to assist destitute asylum-seekers, and work with partner-organisations in a range of other projects - see here for more details.
We meet the LSC’s stringent Specialist Quality Mark (SQM) for providing advice. We are members of Advice UK and of the Law Centres’ Federation. Our solicitors are members of the Law Society and our social workers are members of the General Social Care Council We also have a licence from the Office of Fair Trading for debt-advice work.
We have experience of both welfare benefits and debt advice stretching back over a 15-year period. We now also advise and assist clients in other areas of social welfare law. Last year we opened 1508 new cases in all areas and undertook in excess of 3,500 hours of casework.
Our face-to-face casework is carried out both at our offices near Birmingham city centre (accessible to people with disabilities), and through outreach sessions. We provide high-quality advice to our clients through all of our projects in all three areas of law. All advisers are expected to advise clients to the LSC Specialist Quality Mark standard regardless of the project. Advice required that is outside caseworkers’ competence in these three areas is referred on to our solicitors in the first instance.
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