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Notice to Duty Counsel and Advice Lawyers

Posted on: Friday, November 21 /2008

On Saturday December 6, 2008, your Legal Aid Online purchase order number for duty counsel and advice lawyer work will be changing as part of Legal Aid Ontario's annual maintenance and upkeep of electronic records.

Purchase orders are created for each geographic area in which you do duty counsel work. In some cases you may have two or three purchase orders listed under your solicitor number depending on the areas of the province you work in.

When you submit a duty counsel statement on Legal Aid Online, you must select the correct purchase order for the geographic area that you are servicing.

The statement submission process and the types of duty counsel you are authorized to perform will not be affected when your purchase order number changes. It will be a seamless transition and the only change you will notice is that you will have a new purchase order number after December 6 for each area you provide duty counsel services in. All new purchase orders will start with the prefix "DC08".

To see if you have any outstanding statements, sign into Legal Aid Online and click on the link "View/Modify a statement" under "Duty Counsel/GDR Statements" on your Solicitor Home Page

All duty counsel statements must be in a finalized state (either "Approved" or "Rejected") by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, December 5. You must submit all new or revised statements for approval by midnight on Tuesday, December 2. Do not create any draft statements or submit new statements for approval between midnight on Tuesday, December 2 and 9:00 a.m. on Monday, December 8.

Status of Statement	Action Required
Draft/New	Leave the draft statement as is, if you want it to be deleted from the system Submit for approval by midnight on Tuesday, December 2 if you wish to have the statement processed
Submitted for Approval	Submit for approval by midnight on Tuesday, December 2 Reviewer will approve or reject by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, December 5.
Revisions Required	Leave the statement as is, if you want it to be deleted from the system Submit revised statement for approval by midnight on Tuesday, December 2 if you wish to have the statement processed

Any statements whose status is "Draft/New" or "Revisions Required" or "Submitted for Approval" after 4:00 p.m. on December 5 will have their status changed to "Rejected". They cannot be revised or processed thereafter. It is your responsibility to ensure all your statements that you wish to be paid for have been processed before 4:00 p.m. on December 5. Statements for work done on December 3 or later can be submitted after 9:00 a.m. on December 8, as well as statements for work done prior to December 3 that were not submitted prior to the midnight cutoff on December 2.

Duty counsel purchase order numbers will change annually. Legal Aid Ontario will always give you advance notification of when the purchase order numbers will change.

If you have any questions, contact the Lawyer Service Centre at 416-979-9934 or toll-free at 1-866-979-9934.