CCMS Bill Rejected? The Most Common Reasons and How to Fix Them

Submitting a Legal Aid bill through the Client and Cost Management System only to have it rejected can be frustrating, particularly where the underlying legal work has been completed correctly and the problem relates to a relatively small part of the claim.

A rejected CCMS bill does not necessarily mean that the costs themselves are irrecoverable. In many cases the Legal Aid Agency is unable to complete its assessment because information is missing, a claim does not reconcile with supporting documentation or an element of the bill has been submitted incorrectly.

The consequence, however, is still additional work for the provider. The bill may need to be reviewed, amended, supported by further evidence and submitted again before payment can be authorised.

Understanding the common reasons why CCMS bills are rejected can therefore save considerable administrative time and help firms improve their chances of getting Legal Aid claims paid correctly the first time.

The Legal Aid Agency itself provides guidance on common civil billing rejection reasons and has specifically published training covering the most frequent causes of rejected civil bills.

A rejection is different from an assessment reduction

It is important to distinguish between a bill being rejected and costs being reduced on assessment.

Where sufficient information is available, the Legal Aid Agency may assess the bill and reduce a particular item if it considers that the amount claimed is not recoverable or reasonable.

A rejection usually occurs earlier in the process. The LAA may determine that it does not have enough information to make a fair assessment or that something about the structure of the claim prevents it from being processed correctly.

That distinction matters because a rejection generally requires the provider to correct or supplement the bill and resubmit it.

The objective for firms should therefore be to make the claim assessable when it first reaches the LAA.

Missing or insufficient disbursement vouchers

Problems with disbursement evidence remain one of the most prominent causes of rejected Legal Aid claims.

The LAA’s current guidance confirms that vouchers are required for disbursements over £20 and that the supporting documentation should provide sufficient information about the work undertaken and the rate charged.

Simply uploading an invoice is not always enough.

An expert invoice, for example, may need to contain sufficient detail for the assessor to understand how the total fee has been calculated. Depending upon the type of disbursement, this may include the work undertaken, time spent, hourly rate, relevant client information and other information necessary to determine whether the claimed amount is reasonable.

The LAA addressed this point directly in its civil billing guidance. Where information is missing from a disbursement voucher and the caseworker cannot make a fair and accurate assessment, the guidance is to reject the claim and request the missing information rather than simply assess the disbursement down.

This can mean that a relatively small problem with one invoice delays payment of a much larger Legal Aid bill.

For billing teams, checking disbursement invoices before submission is therefore essential. Waiting until the LAA identifies the missing information can add unnecessary time to the recovery process.

Counsel’s fees do not reconcile

Counsel’s fees are another recurring source of difficulties.

Where both solicitor and counsel costs are being claimed, the figures submitted need to reconcile. The LAA must be able to understand what counsel has claimed, what has already been paid and how counsel’s costs have been allocated within the solicitor’s bill.

Historic LAA guidance specifically identifies reconciliation of counsel’s fees and insufficient counsel cost allocation as common reasons for rejection.

Timing can also be important.

In non-FAS matters, counsel and solicitors may need to co-ordinate their submissions so that the LAA can complete the final assessment with a clear picture of the total liabilities on the certificate. If the figures entered by the provider do not match counsel’s actual claim, further investigation may be required before the bill can be authorised.

This is particularly important where several counsel have been instructed, payments on account have previously been made or costs have been apportioned between multiple parties.

Incorrect Family Advocacy Scheme claims

Family Advocacy Scheme claims introduce another set of billing rules which need to be applied correctly.

The wrong hearing type, incorrect hearing unit or an attempt to claim a hearing outside the scope of the scheme can create problems with the bill.

The LAA has previously identified incorrect rates or hearing units, missing court attendance information, hearings falling outside the scheme, a final bill already having been authorised and the applicable cost limitation being reached as common problems affecting FAS claims.

The classification of the hearing itself is particularly important.

For example, the LAA’s civil billing guidance explains that, in Public Law proceedings, a finding of fact hearing may form part of a multi-day final hearing for the purpose of the final hearing advocate’s bundle payment. Private Law proceedings can operate differently, with a finding of fact hearing and a final hearing potentially treated as separate hearings.

A billing system therefore needs to do more than record that an advocate attended court. The type of proceeding and type of hearing can affect what can actually be claimed.

Missing court information or evidence

Supporting court documentation can also be important when a Legal Aid bill is assessed.

Depending upon the item being claimed, the LAA may require a court order, attendance note, listing information or another document demonstrating that the work or disbursement was authorised or incurred.

This does not mean that a court order is necessary for every expert fee. The LAA’s guidance, for example, states that a court order is not required simply to evidence the instruction of DNA testing, although particular categories such as certain drug and alcohol testing, transcription fees and risk assessment expert fees may require court-order evidence.

The practical point is that billing teams should understand what evidence is required for the particular item being claimed rather than applying the same evidence rule to every disbursement.

Where the bill refers to something that cannot be verified from the documentation supplied, the assessor may have little option other than to request further evidence or reject the claim.

The solicitor’s bill has been submitted prematurely

A final bill must genuinely be ready to be treated as final.

This can create complications where there has been a transfer of provider, where counsel’s position has not been resolved or where another party still needs to submit costs against the certificate.

The LAA specifically discusses “solicitor bill premature” as a rejection issue within its civil billing guidance.

Provider transfers can make this more complicated because the order in which different bills and case-closing actions are submitted may matter.

A costs draftsman preparing a final bill should therefore establish whether there has been a previous provider, whether all relevant claims have been dealt with and whether there are outstanding costs which could affect the final assessment.

Submitting early in an effort to speed up payment can ultimately have the opposite effect if the bill has to be rejected and recreated.

An interim bill is not appropriate

CCMS allows different types of billing depending upon the circumstances of the certificate.

An interim bill cannot simply be submitted because the firm would prefer to recover costs before the conclusion of the matter. The relevant requirements need to be satisfied.

The LAA has previously identified an interim bill being inappropriate as one of the common reasons for CCMS claim rejection.

This makes the selection of bill type an important part of the drafting process.

The person preparing the claim should understand whether they are producing an interim bill, final bill, FAS claim, payment on account or another permitted form of claim and ensure the underlying circumstances support that choice.

The cost limitation has been reached

Legal Aid certificates are subject to cost limitations.

If the amount being claimed exceeds the available limitation and the appropriate amendment or authority has not been obtained, the claim cannot simply be treated as though unlimited funding is available.

This issue can arise gradually during lengthy proceedings. Individual fee earners may concentrate on progressing the case without necessarily monitoring how the cumulative costs compare with the certificate limitation.

By the time the final bill is prepared, the problem may already exist.

For this reason, cost limitations should ideally be monitored throughout the life of the matter rather than checked only when the final Legal Aid bill is being prepared.

The same principle applies where counsel’s fees, experts and other significant disbursements contribute materially to the overall funded costs.

Supporting documents do not match the claim

A Legal Aid bill is not assessed in isolation.

The amounts claimed need to make sense when compared with the documents supplied in support.

Problems can arise where the wrong invoice is uploaded, where the amount on an invoice differs from the amount entered within CCMS, where VAT has been treated differently between the invoice and the bill or where a payment on account has not been properly accounted for.

The LAA’s guidance for escape cases provides a useful indication of the level of reconciliation expected. It asks providers to ensure that the running record of costs matches the figures on the claim and that appropriate disbursement vouchers are supplied for relevant items.

A pre-submission reconciliation between the drafted bill and the supporting evidence can prevent many of these problems.

Enhancement has been claimed without sufficient explanation

Where an enhancement is claimed, simply increasing the hourly rate or profit costs figure is not enough.

The basis of the enhancement needs to be identifiable and capable of assessment.

A Legal Aid assessor needs to understand why the work is said to justify an enhancement and which items or classes of work the enhancement relates to.

Generic statements about a case being difficult or time-consuming may not provide enough information. A useful enhancement narrative should explain the particular responsibility, complexity, speed, skill or other relevant circumstances relied upon and connect those factors to the work actually undertaken.

Even where the percentage calculation itself is correct, inadequate justification can lead to further queries or reductions.

For firms claiming enhancements regularly, producing a clear and consistent enhancement narrative should therefore form part of the billing process rather than being added as an afterthought.

Incorrect rates or incorrectly categorised work

Using the wrong Legal Aid rate can also cause problems.

The correct rate may depend upon the category of law, funding date, location, level of service, court and nature of the activity.

A preparation attendance, court attendance, routine letter, telephone call and travel entry cannot necessarily all be calculated using the same hourly rate.

This becomes even more important where a bill includes FAS hearings, enhancements, fixed fees or an escape fee calculation.

A mathematically correct bill can therefore still be wrong if the underlying rate or activity classification is incorrect.

This is one reason why Legal Aid billing can become difficult to manage using general-purpose spreadsheets. The calculation itself is often straightforward; identifying which calculation should apply is where much of the complexity sits.

Incomplete information in CCMS

Sometimes the underlying costs are correct but the data entered into CCMS is incomplete.

Mandatory information, claim details, outcome information, counsel allocations or other required fields may prevent a claim from progressing correctly.

For bulk claim uploads and XML-based submissions, validation introduces a further layer. A technically invalid submission may fail before the substantive costs are ever assessed.

This is different from the LAA deciding that a particular item is unreasonable. The problem may simply be that the billing data cannot be accepted or interpreted in the form submitted.

For firms handling large numbers of claims, standardising matter information before the billing stage can significantly reduce these errors.

What should you do when a CCMS bill is rejected?

The first step is to identify the actual reason given by the LAA rather than immediately recreating the claim.

Rejected bills generate a notification within CCMS explaining why the bill has been rejected. The current LAA guidance advises providers to review the notification and then return to the Billing section of the case.

For a rejected line-by-line bill, CCMS provides a Copy function which allows the provider to create an amended version of the rejected bill. The option will not be available where another bill is already sitting in draft.

Once copied, the rejection reason should be addressed directly.

If an invoice is missing, it should be supplied. If an amount does not reconcile, the underlying figures should be checked rather than simply changing the CCMS total. If a hearing has been categorised incorrectly, the correct FAS treatment should be established before resubmission.

Where the provider believes the bill has genuinely been rejected in error, the LAA’s current guidance provides a separate claim-fix route for raising the issue.

Preventing rejected Legal Aid bills

The most effective way to deal with rejected CCMS bills is to reduce the number that are rejected in the first place.

That begins with preparing the bill using the correct funding information and remuneration rules. The bill should then be reconciled against counsel’s claims, disbursement invoices, payments on account and the applicable cost limitation.

Supporting documentation should be reviewed before submission rather than uploaded purely because it happens to be present on the file.

The final claim should effectively be approached from the assessor’s perspective. Can every significant amount claimed be understood? Does the evidence support it? Do the totals reconcile? Is the bill being submitted at the correct stage? Have the correct rates and hearing types been used?

Technology can make these checks easier.

Maverick Costs has been developed specifically around the Legal Aid billing process, including Fixed Fee, Escape Fee and Hourly Rate bills. It can assist with the calculation and organisation of profit costs, FAS claims, enhancements, counsel fees, experts and other disbursements while producing the information required for submission to CCMS.

For firms processing a high volume of Legal Aid work, reducing manual calculation and applying consistent billing logic can help remove some of the avoidable errors that otherwise appear only when a claim is rejected.

Getting the Legal Aid bill right first time

A rejected CCMS bill is rarely just an inconvenience.

It delays payment, creates additional administrative work and requires somebody within the firm to reopen a matter that may otherwise have been considered complete.

Many rejection reasons are avoidable. Missing vouchers, unreconciled counsel fees, incorrect FAS hearings, premature final bills, incorrect rates and insufficient supporting information can often be identified before the claim reaches the Legal Aid Agency.

A thorough billing process should therefore do more than calculate a total.

It should ensure that the correct remuneration rules have been applied, that every material element of the claim can be evidenced and that the information being submitted through CCMS accurately reflects the underlying file.

The more consistently that process can be applied, the greater the likelihood of Legal Aid bills being assessed and paid without unnecessary delay.