Access to Justice and Legal Needs Program

The Access to Justice and Legal Needs (A2JLN) research program is a rigorous and ongoing assessment of the legal and access to justice needs of the NSW community — especially socially and economically disadvantaged people — and we are committed to making this information easily accessible.

The program objectives are to examine the ability of disadvantaged people to:

• obtain legal assistance (including information, basic legal advice, initial legal assistance and legal representation)
• participate effectively in the legal system (including access to courts, tribunals, and formal alternative dispute resolution mechanisms)
• obtain non-legal assistance, advocacy and support (including non-legal early intervention and preventative mechanisms, non-legal forms of redress and community based justice)
• participate effectively in law reform processes.

The program has researched the issues through the following approaches:

• Expressed legal need
  Data collected every day by not-for-profit legal service providers such as Legal Aid NSW, LawAccess NSW, community legal centres (CLCs) and other services provides a valuable source of information about those in the community who seek legal assistance for their legal problems, the types of problems they experience, and the pathways they take to resolve them.
  
• Unexpressed (Unmet) legal need
  Policy-makers and service providers often ask whether those seeking legal assistance represent the majority of people with legal needs. Modelled on leading recent international research, the Foundation’s legal needs surveys are providing the first empirical insight into both expressed and unexpressed need (that is, need for which assistance has not been sought) in the community.
  
• Reports on particular disadvantaged groups or issue.
  As the first two methodologies are unlikely to adequately cover some particular disadvantaged groups or some particular issues affecting these groups, the third methodological stream of the A2JLN program includes qualitative analyses of the legal needs of selected groups.

In progress

Legal Australia-Wide Survey (LAW Survey).
This large-scale national legal needs survey has involved telephone interviews with a representative sample of 20,716 residents across Australia. It is the largest survey of its kind ever conducted worldwide, and measures both legal need that is ‘expressed’ through the use of services and ‘unmet’ legal need. For information on progress, subscribe to the Foundation's e-bulletin.

Published reports

Emerging issues

Recruitment and retention of lawyers in regional, rural and remote NSW
This first major study aimed to better inform strategies to improve access to lawyers for disadvantaged people in regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas. The research revealed some unexpected findings, including a lower than expected level of vacancies among public legal assistance solicitor positions in NSW, with some country areas having lower vacancy rates than the state average. However, looking across a broader range of indicators, there were considerable regional differences in recruitment and retention difficulties, with some (particularly remote) regions having substantial problems, while others did not. The study concluded that region-specific strategies to address recruitment and retention difficulties, rather than ‘RRR-wide’ solutions, were more likely to be effective. See also the summary report of this study.

Service provider analysis

Data digest: a compendium of service usage data from NSW legal assistance and dispute resolution
services, 1999–2002 (2004)
Data Digest Online: set of interactive, online reports allowing the integration, presentation, comparison
and mapping of legal assistance data, available through password-protected access

Quantitative surveys

The legal needs of people with different types of chronic illness or disability (Justice Issues Paper 11, 2009)
NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas: Campbelltown (Justice Issues Paper 4, 2008)
NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas: Fairfield (Justice Issues Paper 5, 2008)
NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas: Nambucca (Justice Issues Paper 6, 2008)
NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas: Newcastle (Justice Issues Paper 7, 2008)
NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas: South Sydney (Justice Issues Paper 8, 2008)
NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas: Walgett (Justice Issues Paper 9, 2008)
Justice made to measure: NSW Legal Needs Survey in disadvantaged areas (2006)
Bega Valley pilot (2003)

Qualitative research

By the People, for the People? Community participation in law reform: summary report (Justice Issues Paper 14, 2011)
By the People, for the People? Community participation in law reform (2010)
Taking justice into custody: the legal needs of prisoners (2008)
Taking justice into custody: the legal needs of prisoners: summary report (Justice Issues Paper 2, 2008)
On the edge of justice: the legal needs of people with a mental illness in NSW (2006)
No home, no justice? The legal needs of homeless people (2005)
The legal needs of older people (2004)

Integrated Methods

Cognitive impairment, legal need and access to justice (Justice Issues Paper 10, 2009)
Fine but not fair: fines and disadvantage (Justice Issues Paper 3, 2008)
Pathways to justice: the role of non-legal services (Justice Issues Paper 1, 2007)

Preliminary reports

Access to justice background paper (2003)
Access to justice roundtable (2003)
Public consultations report (2003)