Maverick Costs Continues to Expand Legal Aid Coverage Across Family and Civil Law

Legal Aid billing is rarely straightforward. Different funding schemes, varying remuneration structures, and multiple categories of work often mean firms rely on a combination of spreadsheets, manual calculations, and several different systems simply to prepare accurate claims. As firms grow their Legal Aid departments, these processes become increasingly time-consuming and difficult to manage consistently.

At Maverick Costs, we’ve always believed there should be a better way.

Over the past year, we’ve invested heavily in expanding our Legal Aid platform to support a broader range of practice areas while simplifying the billing process for firms of all sizes. Our aim has never been to build software that supports just one category of Legal Aid work. Instead, we’re building a comprehensive Legal Aid billing platform capable of supporting the day-to-day needs of modern family and civil law practices.

One of the most significant developments is the expansion of our billing engine to support both Fixed and Escape Fee bills alongside Hourly Rate bills within a single platform.

Historically, these different billing models have often required separate workflows or entirely different systems. Fixed Fee and Escape Fee claims have their own rules and calculations, while Hourly Rate matters introduce different considerations around remuneration, rates, and claim preparation. Rather than forcing firms to adapt to multiple processes, we’ve brought these billing methods together into one consistent and intuitive workflow.

This allows firms to prepare different types of Legal Aid claims without changing systems or relying on manual calculations, helping to improve consistency across departments while reducing the administrative burden placed on fee earners and billing teams.

The expansion of our Legal Aid platform also reflects the growing range of work undertaken by many of our clients.

We now support Legal Aid billing across Care & Supervision, Private Law Children, Domestic Abuse, Finance, Housing, and TOLATA matters, giving firms the ability to prepare both Fixed/Escape Fee and Hourly Rate claims from a single solution.

Care & Supervision remains one of the most complex areas of Legal Aid practice, requiring detailed billing across lengthy proceedings and often involving significant volumes of work. Maverick Costs continues to support firms preparing both Fixed Fee and Escape Fee claims, helping ensure bills are prepared accurately and efficiently.

Our support for Private Law Children matters reflects the increasing demand from firms undertaking legally aided children work. These cases often involve a unique combination of procedural complexity and funding considerations, and our platform has been developed to simplify the preparation of claims while maintaining compliance with Legal Aid requirements.

The inclusion of Domestic Abuse and Finance further strengthens our family law offering. These are important areas of publicly funded work, and firms should be able to prepare claims confidently without relying on fragmented processes or outdated spreadsheets.

Alongside our family law coverage, we’ve also expanded into Housing and TOLATA. These areas introduce different remuneration structures through Hourly Rate billing, and we’ve designed the platform to accommodate those requirements without sacrificing the simple and intuitive user experience that Maverick Costs has become known for.

For us, this expansion is about much more than adding additional billing categories. It represents another step towards creating a single Legal Aid billing platform that supports the full breadth of work undertaken by Legal Aid practitioners. By bringing multiple funding schemes and practice areas together within one system, firms can reduce duplication, improve consistency, and spend less time navigating administrative processes.

As always, our development has been driven by feedback from the firms that use Maverick Costs every day. Their experience continues to shape our roadmap, ensuring that every new feature solves genuine challenges faced by Legal Aid practitioners rather than simply adding complexity.

Looking Ahead

Our work doesn’t stop here.

Development is already underway on Other Public Law and Immigration, continuing our commitment to providing one of the most comprehensive Legal Aid billing platforms available to solicitors, costs lawyers, and costs draftsmen in England and Wales.

As with every practice area we’ve introduced, our focus is on building functionality that reflects the realities of Legal Aid billing rather than simply replicating the rules. We’re working closely with practitioners to ensure these new modules support the relevant remuneration schemes, simplify claim preparation, and help firms maximise efficiency while maintaining compliance.

Our long-term vision remains unchanged: to provide a single, modern platform capable of supporting the full spectrum of Legal Aid billing. With support now available for Care & Supervision, Private Law Children, Domestic Abuse, Finance, Housing, and TOLATA, and Other Public Law and Immigration already in active development, Maverick Costs continues to move closer to that goal.

We’re excited about what’s coming next and look forward to sharing further updates as our Legal Aid platform continues to evolve.