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Civil legal aid pays an occupational therapist £54.40 an hour for expert work. The same table pays a physiotherapist £64.80, a speech and language therapist £79.20 and a psychologist £93.60. OT is rated below every other therapy profession in it.
That is a published, government-set figure, and almost no occupational therapy content mentions it. It is worth knowing whether or not you do publicly funded work, because it is the only authoritative benchmark that exists.
Where does the figure come from?
Schedule 5 to the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, which caps what the Lord Chancellor may pay for expert work in publicly funded cases.
The rates, per hour, with no London weighting for OT:
| Expert | Rate |
|---|---|
| Occupational therapist | £54.40 |
| Physiotherapist | £64.80 |
| Speech and language therapist | £79.20 |
| Psychologist | £93.60 |
| Psychiatrist | £108.00 |
The criminal equivalent, under SI 2013/435, is £63 an hour for an occupational therapist.
One qualification worth stating. The civil figures are exactly 80% of the rates as originally made in 2013, which is consistent with a 20% reduction having been applied. We could not verify when that reduction commenced, so treat any claim that the rates have been frozen since 2013 as an inference rather than an established fact.
Does this bind your private fees?
No. These are caps on what public funds will pay, not a ceiling on what you may charge a privately instructed client.
Published private OT rates commonly sit around £95 to £120 an hour, and specialist medico-legal work is often priced well above that.
But the legal aid rate is useful for three reasons.
It is what a legal aid firm will offer. If you take publicly funded instructions, this is the number, and knowing it stops you negotiating against yourself.
It is a floor with authority behind it. Quoting above it privately is entirely normal, and the government's own valuation is a reasonable reference point when explaining your rate.
It reveals a professional pattern. OT sitting below physiotherapy and considerably below speech and language therapy in the same schedule is a fact about how the profession is valued, and it is worth being aware of when you set your own prices.
How should you price reports?
Reports and sessions are different products and pricing them the same way is the most common error.
A session is time-bounded. An hour is an hour, and the surrounding work is modest.
A report is not. An assessment, records review, the writing itself, revisions after comments, and any conference or attendance are all separate activities, and the writing usually takes longer than the assessment.
Three practical approaches.
Hourly, itemised. Transparent and easy to justify, but clients dislike open-ended costs and it penalises you for being efficient.
Fixed fee per report, with stated inclusions. Better for the client and better for you once you know how long your reports actually take. State what is included and what is charged separately.
Hybrid. Fixed fee for the assessment and report, hourly for anything beyond it: additional questions, conferences, attendance.
Whichever you use, price attendance separately. A day at a hearing is a day you cannot see anyone else, and it should not be absorbed into a report fee.
What to include in a report fee
Six things people forget to count.
- Records review, which for a complex case can exceed the assessment
- Travel, covered separately in our guide to billing travel time
- The writing, realistically, not optimistically
- A revision round, because instructing solicitors ask questions
- Compliance with the format required by the forum, which since Practice Direction 1 of 2025 includes a page limit for tribunal work
- Your indemnity, which for medico-legal work may cost more than for clinical practice
That fifth point has a commercial consequence people miss. A tribunal report now capped at fifteen pages does not take less expertise to produce than a thirty-page one. It usually takes more, because compression is work. Pricing per page, or implicitly per page, is the wrong model.
A note on which forum you are in
The rules differ, and so does what you can charge for.
Civil proceedings run under CPR Part 35, with prescribed report contents and a statement of truth. SEND tribunals run under their own rules, with Practice Direction 1 of 2025 setting format requirements. Our guide to the case manager and expert witness distinction sets out why that difference matters and why you cannot hold both roles on one case.
Establish the forum before you quote. It changes the work.
Setting your own rate
- Time your last three reports honestly, including revisions
- Divide your fixed fee by those hours and see what you are actually earning
- Compare it to £54.40 and to your clinical hourly rate
- Price attendance and conferences separately, always
- Put your terms in writing before accepting instructions, including what triggers additional charges
- Review annually, because these rates do not move on their own
Most OTs doing report work discover, when they do step two, that their effective hourly rate on reports is below their clinical rate. That is the finding worth acting on.
This is general information about pricing, not financial or legal advice. Legal aid rates are set by regulation and change. Published private rates are examples rather than benchmarks. Confirm current figures before relying on them.
Sources: Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5 · Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 · RCOT, independent practice
Related: Should an OT bill for travel time? · Case manager or expert witness? · What insurance do you need?