What Law Centres are#
Law Centres are local charities that give free legal help to people in poverty, in the communities around them. The Law Centres Network, the business name of the Law Centres Federation, is their membership body. It describes itself as the only UK charity devoted to supporting legal assistance charities, and for about fifty years has backed the movement with funding, training, shared systems, research and campaigning. Its line is that the opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice.
To join the network, a Law Centre must be a charity, serve a defined community that no other centre covers, be run by and for that community, and employ at least two lawyers. About 42 do today, most of them in English cities and London boroughs, with a Law Centre in Northern Ireland and one in Wales. Some are joint Citizens Advice and Law Centre services. Each is an independent charity.
Finding one#
The network says plainly that, as a membership body, it cannot give you advice. Instead, use its list of Law Centres, with a map, and contact the nearest centre directly through its own website; each sets its own area, opening hours and way of booking. Most Law Centres work with legal aid, it says.
If there is no Law Centre near you, or yours cannot help, its other sources of help page lists alternatives: Civil Legal Advice, LawWorks clinics, Advocate for barristers, Support Through Court, and specialist services for family law, domestic abuse, immigration, housing and debt.
Family law and legal aid#
The same page explains a limit that shapes family cases. Since April 2013, legal aid has not been available for most family law, except for family mediation and where you or your family are at risk of abuse or serious harm, such as domestic abuse or forced marriage. GOV.UK's legal aid guide says the same: it lists advice on children or divorce if you have been in an abusive relationship among the problems legal aid can help with.
Do you need a Law Centre for a new name?#
Usually not. The Law Centres Network publishes nothing on names, and an adult's deed poll needs no lawyer: anyone aged 16 or over can use GOV.UK's free wording, signed before two adult witnesses. Law Centres matter in the harder cases around a name:
- A child's name in dispute. GOV.UK says a child's change needs the agreement of everyone with parental responsibility or a court order, after trying to agree. Can I change my child's name without the other parent's consent? explains the court route.
- Safety. If you are changing your name after abuse, legal aid may cover protective orders and the family case. Changing your name after domestic abuse covers what a new name can and cannot protect.
- Immigration status. Its other sources of help page lists immigration advice services, and a new name has to reach your Home Office record too: see UKVI and eVisas.
This page describes what the Law Centres Network publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. The network has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
