Panels, monitoring and compliance
Welcome to Legal Aid NSW Panels
Panel applications from new law practices are now welcome.
Legal Aid NSW works in collaboration with Law Practices and Barristers (Legal Practitioners) to provide quality legal services to socially and economically disadvantaged people across the Criminal, Family and Civil law areas within New South Wales.
In order to undertake direct representation or to be briefed in a legally aided matter, law practices (sole practitioner, law firm, incorporated legal practice and unincorporated legal practice) and barristers are required to be a member on the relevant panel.
A law practice and/or barrister can apply for appointment to panels and register all employees who will undertake legal aid work, where they meet the individual panel requirements, on a single application form.
Once appointed to a panel, panel members (law practices) are required to comply with Legal Aid NSW Quality Standards, a single document consisting of the Practice Standards, Client Service Standards, Panel Requirements and Law Practice Requirements.
Legal practitioners who are not in private practice or are employed by a Community Legal Centre (CLC) or the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) cannot apply for appointment to a panel.
For more information about your law practice becoming a panel member, see Applying to a Panel.
To find out whether you or your employees meet the criteria for appointment to a panel, see Legal Aid Panels for an overview of all panels. On this page you can click on the area of law for more comprehensive information regarding individual panel requirements.
Appointment to a panel does not confer an entitlement to work.
Only a limited number of offers are made to panel members. Offers of work made via Grants Online to a panel are usually matters that are unable to be conducted by the In-house Practice or where the initial application for funding was not submitted by a panel member. Further information is available in the Grants Allocation Guidelines.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have a question that perhaps our website doesn’t answer?
Have a look at our FAQs for Private Lawyers and Law Practices (PDF 246KB). It has tips and answers to common questions about applying/updating panel membership, changing law practices plus many more. If you can’t find an answer to your question please contact us directly on the details below.
Panel enquiries
If you have any enquiries about a panel or the application process, or using the Application website, please contact the Private Lawyer Quality Standards Unit by e-mail at panels@legalaid.nsw.gov.au or on 02 9219 5662.