News

The Law Society has published its review of access to justice and legal aid provision, making recommendations for far-reaching changes.

Our key recommendations include:

• an increased tax on alcohol with the money going to the legal aid fund and other criminal justice agencies
• addressing inefficiencies and poor decision making in the justice system and across government that generate legal aid costs
• a review of civil procedure, particularly in respect to low value cases
• reducing legal aid bureaucracy and giving practitioners greater autonomy to deliver services and come up with innovative means of delivery

Download the full review (PDF, 312kb)
Read the press release

Reasons for the review

Access to justice is a social good: the ability to participate in public redress or resolution systems is a measure of the health of any system of government, particularly a democracy and is essential to the effective maintenance of the rule of law. In recent years, a significant gap has grown between the rights and remedies granted by government and the available means of accessing them. The Law Society was instrumental in setting up the legal aid system, and now, 60 years on, has concerns about access to justice, the funding of legal aid, costs, contracting decisions and sustainability.

The Law Society believes that the government's obligation to society to ensure access to justice has to begin with the realisation that decisions as to funding should flow from an assessment of need rather than from an arbitrary budget allocation.

Our key message to government is that you do not make savings to the legal aid budget by cutting the legal aid system, but by tackling the drivers of need for legal advice, such as waste, poor administrative decision-making, needlessly complex justice systems, and unnecessary and unclear laws.