Legal assistance received by over 430,000 clients in 2023–24
There were 432,274 clients who received completed legal assistance services funded under the National Legal Assistance Partnership (NLAP) in the 2023–24 financial year, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Samantha Hall, ABS head of legal statistics, said: ‘The number of legal assistance clients with a completed service rose by one per cent, or 5,344, in the 2023 to 2024 financial year.’
Almost a third (139,193 clients) received more than one service in that year.
In total, 819,370 legal assistance services were completed for clients throughout 2023–24.
‘This experimental dataset is a snapshot of the clients receiving services from Legal Aid Commissions, Community Legal Centres and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services. It also looks at the type of assistance clients received.
The most common type of legal assistance was legal advice, which was provided to almost three in four, or 318,765 clients’ said Ms Hall.
This data only reports on services from legal service providers that were funded under the NLAP. 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 would like to thank the Australian and State and Territory Governments and the legal assistance services sector for their ongoing efforts in creating this second national publication and working to improve the data for future releases.
Media notes
- The statistics in the publication are deemed by the ABS to be experimental. Users of these data should exercise caution in interpreting and drawing conclusions from the results.
- For the purposes of this publication, the scope of services is limited to those completed during the reference period 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024.
- 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 inclusions and exclusions of the scope of this dataset and 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.
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- The National Legal Assistance Partnership (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)
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