Nearly 800,000 legal assistance services reported in a year
More than 792,600 legal assistance services were completed across Australia in 2022-23 using funding provided under the National Legal Assistance Partnership Agreement (2020-25), according to new experimental national statistics released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Sarah Hinde, ABS head of legal statistics, said: “This new dataset gives a snapshot of the types of services provided by Legal Aid Commissions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, and Community Legal Centres, and the legal problems for which clients seek assistance.”
“For example, the reported data shows that over half of the services completed in 2022-23 were legal advice, meaning there were about 409,970 services where a client sought advice to help them to resolve their legal problem.
“Almost a quarter, or 180,527 services, were duty lawyer services, where a lawyer is assigned to provide free legal assistance to people with a matter before a court or tribunal,” Dr Hinde said.
There were 426,930 clients that received a completed service, meaning their legal matter was ‘closed’ or finalised during the period. Of these, just over half were female (222,370) and 46 per cent were male (194,919).
These new statistics are included in the first experimental release of Legal Assistance Services, which features data about clients who received legal assistance services during the 2022-23 financial year, and the nature of these services.
"Today’s released data fills a gap in available legal assistance statistics and represents the foundation of a national evidence base. This will, over time, inform service planning and delivery for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians who would otherwise experience barriers to accessing legal assistance.
“From here, the ABS will continue working closely with the legal services sector and governments to expand and improve the available statistics,” Dr Hinde said.
This data only reports on a portion of the services provided by Legal Aid Commissions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and Community Legal Centres. It does not reflect the complexity of the services or the resources used to deliver them, and shouldn’t be reported as such.
The ABS has partnered with the Australian and state and territory governments to collect the data as described in the National Legal Assistance Partnership Agreement (2020-25). We would like to thank the legal assistance services sector for their ongoing efforts in creating this first national publication and working to improve the data for future releases.
Media notes
The statistics in the publication are being presented for the first time and are deemed by the ABS to be experimental. Although the selected statistics presented are suitable for the first release, further assessment is required to ensure data quality and comparability across the sector. Users of these data should exercise caution in interpreting and drawing conclusions from the results. Detailed information is provided in the Methodology.
A client is defined as a person, group or organisation who received one or more completed legal services from a given service provider during the reference period.
The ABS data is based on the data reporting requirements of the National Legal Assistance Partnership Agreement (2020-25) (NLAP), under which the sector is required to report on a sub-set of all services they provide (where they were provided using Commonwealth NLAP funding) including the following service types:
- Legal advice
- Legal task
- Non-legal support
- Facilitated resolution processes
- Ongoing legal support
- Duty lawyer
- Representation (including court/tribunal, dispute resolution, and ‘other’ representation).
Excluded from the NLAP reporting requirements are:
- Services not funded under NLAP
- Information and referral services
- Services for the community, including community legal education, community education, law and legal service reform and stakeholder engagement.
For the purposes of this publication, the scope of services is limited to those completed during the reference period 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023.
The comparability of data across the sector is impacted by a range of factors, and therefore the statistics in the publication are presented separately for the three sub-sectors: Legal Aid Commissions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, and Community Legal Centres.
Extensive explanatory material is included in the Methodology, covering the various data quality and comparability issues that provide essential context for using/interpreting the statistics.
When reporting ABS data you must attribute the Australian Bureau of Statistics (or the ABS) as the source.
For media requests and interviews, contact the ABS Media Team via media@abs.gov.au (8.30am-5pm AEST Mon-Fri).
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The National Legal Assistance Partnership Agreement (2020-25) can be found on the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department website: National Legal Assistance Partnership 2020-25 | Attorney-General's Department (ag.gov.au)