Client-first strategy

Our purpose is to make a meaningful difference for clients and the community through effective legal services and collaborative leadership in a strong and dynamic legal assistance sector. To do this, we need to put people with legal needs at the centre of all of our work and thinking. We need to better understand their needs and preferences and work with them to improve our services. That's why we have created our Client-first strategy.

For the purpose of the strategy, clients are defined as people in Victoria who have a legal need. Our vision is for people in Victoria to get the legal and related assistance they need and have a say in how it's provided.

What does client-first mean?

In the context of our work, being client-first or client-centric means:

recognising and valuing the diverse perspectives and experiences of people with legal needs
listening to and involving people with legal needs in designing improved access to justice
using different ways to gain insight into client experience to design more impactful services
addressing how we organise or structure our services to improve the client experience.

How we developed the strategy

We asked people who have used our services about their experience through interviews and focus groups, as well as our client satisfaction survey. We looked at what people told us they valued, what they found difficult and what could be improved. We also consulted with our staff and partner organisations involved in legal aid work to inform the strategy.

As a result, we have developed this strategy, which will drive us to provide more ways for people with legal needs to tell us what is important to them. We will use their feedback to create new ways of providing legal assistance so that our services:

are easier to use and understand
are reliable, dependable and predictable
are designed to reflect what is important to people who need assistance
provide people with ways to help themselves and connect with other services and supports
are more likely to produce better outcomes and experiences for people with legal needs.

What we want to achieve

Through this strategy, we want to:

Create and nurture a client-first culture. We will build our ability to apply client-first ways of working to the way we design, deliver and evaluate our services.
Enable clients to participate in decisions that affect them. We will improve information and support before, during and after we provide services to clients and involve more client perspectives in the design and delivery of our services over time.
Strengthen and better connect entry points to improve navigation and access. We will work to make our services easier to find and use.
Reimagine service models, including more holistic approaches and stronger partnerships. We will look for ways to recognise and better respond to people’s multiple legal and other needs, and work with our partners to offer more connected services.

Putting the strategy into action

We will achieve these objectives in three ways:

involving client voices in our improvement projects in criminal law, family violence, online services and other areas we work in
authorising leaders, managers and staff to do things differently to improve the experience of clients
building our skills and confidence to listen to and involve people affected by our services and programs.