The aim of the Community Legal Service is to ensure that people can get information and advice about their legal rights and help with enforcing them. Bringing together legal aid solicitors, Citizens Advice Bureaux, Law Centres, local authority services and other organisations in local networks, the Community Legal Service is an important part of the Government’s fight against social exclusion.

CLS fund a network of Quality-Marked solicitors, Citizens Advice Bureaux and other advice providers to help people who need a divorce or advice about problems with debt, housing, domestic violence and benefits. Help is also available about asylum and immigration, education, employment and mental health and community care issues.

Organisations offering legal and advice services within the Community Legal Service have all won the right to display the distinctive logo, showing that they meet the Quality Mark standards for legal and advice services. Any legal services provider who wishes to be part of the Community Legal Service must achieve the minimum standards set by the Quality Mark.

The Community Legal Service has its own Website at www.clsdirect.org.uk  On the website you can: 

• Search for a quality local legal adviser or solicitor
• Ask a question or choose a topic and be directed to the right place on the best advice sites in the UK
• See if you are eligible for legal aid using the online calculator
• View or print legal information, including the legal information leaflets 

You can also call the Community Legal Service Direct national helpline 0845 345 4 345.

If you qualify for legal aid, you can get free advice from a qualified legal adviser about welfare benefits, debt or education between 9am and 5pm weekdays (if you call outside office hours, just leave a message and you will be called back). More people are eligible than you think, so call and find out.

• Listen to recorded messages about common legal problems 24 hours a day
• Find quality local advice services for other types of problems
• Order legal information leaflets 

All help and advice given is confidential and independent. Calls to the national helpline can be made for the price of a local phone call from anywhere in England and Wales.  Mobile users should check the cost of calling with their network.

Establishing, maintaining and developing the Community Legal Service is the responsibility of the Legal Services Commission (an executive non-departmental public body), working together with the Department for Constitutional Affairs and their work is overseen by a board of independent Commissioners.