Year-on-year trends – a snapshot

Annual Report 2023–24

Legal advice and assistance

We provided 121,220 advice and minor assistance services, a 2.8% increase on the previous year.

We offer free, targeted legal advice across many areas of law at our 25 offices and two satellite offices, and advice clinics, which are offered primarily over the telephone, covering the whole state. In some circumstances, our lawyers will also provide minor assistance by writing a letter or helping clients fill out court documents.

Legal representation

We provided representation in 50,644 matters, a 14.4% increase on the previous year. Our in-house lawyers acted in 16,301 matters, and we funded private lawyers to act in 34,343 matters.

Legal Aid NSW represents eligible clients in criminal law, family law and civil law matters. In most cases, our legal representation services are means-tested, and most people who receive a grant of legal aid will be required to pay a contribution toward their grant of aid.

*Legal representation includes grants of aid, extended legal assistance and early resolution assistance

On-the-spot help in courts and tribunals

We provided 225,683 duty services, a 9.6% increase on the previous year. Of these services, 137,840 were provided by Legal Aid NSW lawyers, and we funded private lawyers to provide the remaining 87,843 services.

We make duty lawyers available in courts and tribunals throughout NSW to provide free legal help and representation to eligible clients.

Family dispute resolution

We held 3,307 conferences, a 20.1% increase on the previous year.

We helped parties reach an agreement in 72.6%* of conferences.

Legal Aid NSW is the largest provider of legally assisted dispute resolution mediations in Australia. We provide family dispute resolution services to help separating families resolve disputes, such as parenting, adoption or property matters, early on in proceedings and without the need to go to court.

*This includes family law conferences in both NSW and Commonwealth jurisdictions. The Commonwealth-only settlement rate was also 72.6%. The percentage of Commonwealth-only matters was 99.0%.

Hotline for young people

The Legal Aid NSW Youth Hotline provides legal advice, minor assistance and information to young people aged under 18. Lawyers are available from 9am until midnight on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends and public holidays.

Resources and community legal education

We distributed 431,452 factsheets, brochures and other legal information publications, a 2.6% increase on the previous year. Pages on our website that provide legal information for the public were viewed 2.81 million times and had 1 million unique visitors. We provided 1,721 community legal education sessions, a 15.4% decrease on the previous year.

*This includes visitors to our website’s My Problem is About, LawPrompt, Representing Myself and Guided Pathways sections, as well as webpages that reproduce the content of our legal information publications and our Legal Words webpage.