SEN Lawyers

[kakool]

Hi
I want to go to tribunal for my 14 years old autistic daughter.
at present she is in weekly boarding but due to her aggressive and dangerous behaviour to other kids at home i wanted LEA to give me full time boarding which they disagreed.

I am in london and looking for an affordable SEN laywer, does anyone of you know anyone and how much they charge per hour.

Has anyone of you used Leena Hurloll, she is very expensive though, she charges £245 an hour which is not affordable...

i also need to know how can we get help with tribunal cost as we are in financial crisis and can;t afford the cost of tibunal, are their any charities who can help with cost?

we do not qualify for legal aid though.

I would very highly recommend The Advocacy and Mediation Partnership...it is made up of 2 fantastic SEN advocates, and they charge roughly a tenth of what solicitors do. For tribunals, for example, they charge a flat fee of £1.5k for the whole process

Hope that helps

I am using Nigel Pugh from Education Advocacy and he charges 80 pounds per hour and is very honest in his dealings with me.

You could also ask Ipsea for some advice

Fedupandfuming - thanks for posting this.

Ipsea are also brilliant, but it's sometimes hard to get through on the phone, which is understandable as the service is (I believe) run by volunteers. They do a fantastic job though. But if time is of the essence, it's great to have recommendations for other people.

Have had no personal experience of them but have previously heard that Levenes Solicitors (they are both London and Birmingham based) are good and part of their practice specialises in Educationl law.

Another vote for the Advocacy and Mediation Partnership.Much cheaper than sols. There is a list of sols at the end of this useful and tangentially related paper by Steve Broach, a barrister in education law at Matrix Chambers:

www.ncb.org.uk/edcm/Using_the_Law_to_Fight_Cuts.pdf

I mean Doughty street chambers

Here is a list of some of the best-ranked firms.

We used Chris Barnet at Levenes. He was excellent and thorough, and has been helpful with the odd enquiry we've had since.

we were successful at getting LA to settle before Tribunal, and I believe this was n no small part down to the paperwork as prepared by our solicitors.

One way to lessen the fees of any lawyers who become involved in your child's case is to make sure that you have all your paperwork up-to-date. Have everything organised: reports in one file; letters in another; divide it all up into academic years; make up one large bundle and then copy the whole thing so you can give one set to whichever lawyers you end up going to. This will reduce the amount of time they have to spend sorting out the papers before they can read them and therefore understand all the aspects.