The latest Legal Aid NSW annual report shows how the organisation adapted its services and service delivery modes to meet the needs of our clients.
Legal Aid NSW delivered 563,485 services in 2019–20, with 58.2% of those services being delivered in rural and regional areas (includes Newcastle and Wollongong) and 18.3% of services being provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients. The percentage of services provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has increased every year for the past five years, with this year’s service rate being the highest ever.
The report also provides information about key Legal Aid NSW initiatives during the financial year, including the formation of a Disaster Response Legal Service to assist communities affected by natural disasters, a new family law telephone mediation service to assist families with parenting arrangements during the pandemic, introducing new digital applications to enable clients to more easily engage with us, and increasing the fees we pay private lawyers that do legal aid work along with other changes to processes to make it easier for private lawyers to work with us.
