LEAR (Legal Entity Appointed Representative)

The LEAR is the person your organisation formally appoints to manage its identity on the portal. They confirm and update the legal data, and (the part that matters day to day) they control who inside the organisation may do what: who can create a proposal, who can submit it, who may sign a grant agreement or a payment request.

The appointment is made by the legal representative of the organisation, not by the researcher who wants to apply. It requires a signed and stamped appointment letter, a copy of the person's identity document, and supporting evidence of who is entitled to sign for the organisation. Those documents go through a validation process with a human on the other end.

It takes days to weeks, and it is the single most common reason a first-time applicant cannot submit on the day of the deadline. The proposal is written, the consortium is ready, and nobody in the organisation has the right to press submit. Start this the week you decide to apply, not the week you finish writing.

The role is permanent rather than per-project. Once appointed, the LEAR serves for every future proposal and grant, which makes the choice of person consequential: a LEAR who leaves the organisation without a successor being appointed can freeze its ability to submit anything.

In practice the LEAR delegates. Account administrators handle the day-to-day role assignments so the LEAR is not a bottleneck, and larger organisations put the role in a research support office rather than with an individual academic. That is the arrangement to aim for.