New live chat feature for general public
Published: June 23, 2022
Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) is launching a live chat feature to allow website visitors to send general inquiries to a live agent from Monday to Friday between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The chat will be available in both English and French. During the pilot phase of this project, users will have the option to access the chat on LAO’s most frequently visited webpages, including:
- How do I apply for legal aid?
- Will legal aid pay for my lawyer?
- Finding the right legal aid lawyer
- Criminal legal issues
- Help with immigration or refugee problems
- Landlord and tenant legal issues
- Duty counsel
Please note that this service is for answering questions related to legal aid services only. Our live agents cannot answer questions specifically related to lawyer issues and concerns.
Please feel free to direct clients towards this helpful new feature if they need support with general inquiries and common questions about our services. Since the live chat is only for general support at this time, please note that our live agents will not be asking for any personal or case related information from chat users.
Our live chat hours and the pages it is available on will expand as we continue to improve and learn from this tool.
During hours that the chat function is unavailable, clients and applicants may still reach our contact centre by phone from Monday to Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
We hope this new tool will help us make our services more convenient and accessible by allowing clients to reach out through their preferred method (either by chat or by phone) so we can better respond to them.