- Published:
- Thursday 27 March 2025 at 3:57 pm
Australia’s first ever national census of private lawyers doing legal aid work has provided critical insights to inform our ongoing work to better support panel practitioners in Victoria, as well as broader advocacy to boost resources to the sector.
National Legal Aid’s (NLA) Legal aid private practitioner 2024 census gathered the responses of 1010 private practitioners and barristers, including 239 from Victoria, for a first-of-its-kind spotlight on lawyers who deliver legal aid representation.
Among the key findings nationally:
- private lawyers deliver more than 70 per cent of the over 150,000 legal aid grants each year across Australia
- they express high commitment to doing legal aid work and the majority are highly experienced (54% have delivered legal aid for more than a decade)
- more than half (51 per cent) feel undervalued and a third plan to do less legal aid work in the next 5 years
- overwhelmingly, private practitioners call for improved funding, both for the legal aid system overall and for the grants that enable them to deliver legal aid.
NLA launched the census results in Sydney, on Gadigal Country, at an event attended by our CEO Toby Hemming and other legal aid commission (LAC) heads in February.
‘The participation of private practitioners in the mixed model of legal assistance is essential to legal aid services being delivered effectively and efficiently,’ said Toby.
‘The census results highlight for the first time, at a national level, the full breadth of their work supporting the most marginalised people in our community and the importance of ensuring they are properly equipped to do their critical work.
‘I want to thank all our panel members and barristers for their valuable contributions and for sharing their feedback – we are listening and doing our best to continually improve your experience delivering legal aid work.’
On behalf of all eight LACs, NLA is urging the Standing Council of Attorneys-General to commit to a review of LAC fees and grants structures.
This comes off the back of analysis that shows panel practitioners receive about a third of market rates when doing legal aid work.
Learnings from Victoria
A key difference for Victoria compared to other jurisdictions in the census was that more than half of private practitioners reported that most or all of their current case load is legal aid cases.
This was the highest of any other state or territory.
‘The reliance many of our panel practitioners have on legal aid work demands that we do more to strengthen our support to practitioners and continue to build knowledge and capability sharing to deliver quality legal aid services to clients,’ said Associate Director Emma Hunt, from our Grants and Quality Assurance team.
‘We know that our panel members are deeply committed to legal aid work, and we are committed to delivering more efficient grants management to improve their grants experience and address ongoing feedback about the excessive administrative burden of doing the work.’
Among other key findings for Victoria:
- Victorian practitioners assisted the highest number of older people, CALD people (equal with Western Australia), people experiencing homelessness, people with disability or mental health issues
- Victoria had the highest proportion of practitioners who plan to be doing legal aid work in 12 months' time
- Victoria reported high positive results for questions relating to access of practice resources that help lawyers respond to clients' needs
- Victoria had positive high uptake of our continuing professional development opportunities, but lowest scoring on perceptions of non-legal supports for clients.
Our 2019-20 Corporate Plan committed us to undertake a private practitioner satisfaction survey every two years, and subsequent surveys were held in December 2020 and December 2022.
This is the first ever national census. It is intended this will be carried out every two years nationally into the future.
Identifying trends, taking action
Similar to the national results, the main concerns of Victorian private lawyers revolve around funding.
We continue to hear calls to improve the administrative burden of our grants processes and systems.
Notably, we scored lowest for reasonable administration and reporting requirements, as well as the ease in becoming a panel member.
Legal Practice Director Sonia Law said work continues to improve the private practitioner experience, including access to professional support, creation of Practitioner Support Officers in our Panels and Practitioner Engagement team to provide training in fees and guidelines and ATLAS and regular regional network meetings to encourage engagement and communication.
‘We are also progressing on our plans to design a new grants management system to replace ATLAS, which is no longer meeting the needs of either practitioners or our staff,’ said Sonia.
‘We look forward to updating members about this significant project, while continuing to prioritise practitioner feedback in the design so we can deliver a system that works for all its users.’
In a limited fiscal environment, we were also able to introduce a range of new fees and increase to existing fees that took effect at the start of the year.
The changes are designed to recognise the value of the work performed by private practitioners, the need to increase the number of practitioners available to increase access to justice in regional areas, and changes in court procedures.
Over the course of 2025, we will continue to work with our panel practitioners and explore opportunities to advocate for funding to support further changes to our fee structures and amounts.
More information
Our Grants and Quality Assurance (GQA) team is responsible for administering grants of legal assistance and managing our practitioner panels. The GQA unit is organised into five teams:
- Operations
- Panels and Practitioner Engagement
- Legal Assessments
- Quality Assurance
- GQA legal, advisory and client contributions.
Contact GQA at grants@vla.vic.gov.au or (03) 9269 0600.
Updated