Independent review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership 2020–2025

About the NLAP

The National Legal Assistance Partnership (NLAP) is an agreement between the Commonwealth, state, and territory governments to fund legal assistance services. Under the 2020-25 NLAP:

The Commonwealth provides the money and decides how much should go to community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and Legal Aid Commissions.
States and territories administer the funding: managing distribution, developing state legal assistance strategies, coordinating collaborative service planning and collecting data. The current agreement does not require states and territories to provide extra funding to legal assistance services, but some choose to.
Community legal centres get around 14% of Commonwealth NLAP funding. Most centres get Commonwealth NLAP funding. Some get money from different Commonwealth funding streams. Some get no NLAP funding. Some get state or territory money. Some fundraise from non-government sources.

The current 2020-25 NLAP has recently undergone its mandatory mid-point review, and the final report for this independent review has been released.

NLAP Review Report: key points for the community legal sector

This is a summary of the key points made in the final report of the Independent review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership, prepared by Community Legal Centres Australia for the community legal sector.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

The review focuses on:
- a holistic assessment of legal need and adequacy of Commonwealth legal assistance funding
- effectiveness and challenges of service delivery
- data collection, performance monitoring, and reporting
Commonwealth, state, and territory governments appointed Dr Mundy to do the review, with ACIL Allen as consulting firm. Dr Mundy was Productivity Commissioner for the 2014 inquiry into access to justice and has been a community legal service director.
The Review refers to the next legal assistance partnership agreement, to commence 1 July 2025, as the Access to Justice Partnership or A2JP.

Chapter 2 – The National Legal Assistance Partnership

The NLAP has contributed to the overarching objective of integrated and effective legal assistance services but has not delivered efficient or appropriate approaches focused on outcomes. Further, it has not contributed to achieving the Priority Reforms or Socio-Economic outcomes of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
The reviewer has made his recommendations based on the following principles:
- Genuine partnership requires commitment from both levels of government
- A2JP must improve focus on outcomes; we need sustainable organisations not just funding for the services they deliver
- Less fragmentation in funding and service delivery will deliver whole of client perspectives and end-to-end servicing
- Barriers to collaboration, like competitive tendering, need to be removed
- Closing the Gap needs to be a focus.

Chapter 3 – Legal assistance landscape

Access to legal services generates benefits for individuals and the community. Implemented, the review’s recommendations will deliver economy-wide benefits.
There is a misdescription of community legal centres as assisting people who cannot afford a private lawyer and who are unable to get a grant of legal aid.
The Review asserts that there are 179 community legal centres nationally. (This is higher than the number in Community Legal Centres Australia’s membership and the report is not clear on how this number was identified). Community legal centres do early intervention and prevention work, policy, and law reform. The median age of community legal centres is well over 10 years.
Statistics from 2022 show that collectively legal assistance providers dealt with 730,000 matters. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (ATSILSs) dealt with 69% of criminal matters and Legal Aid Commissions (LACs) 21%. Community legal centres dealt with the highest proportion of civil matters (48%), followed by LACs (42%). LACs dealt with the highest proportion of family law matters (63%), followed by community legal centres (35%).
Relevant policy frameworks that should inform development of the A2JP include include Closing the Gap, Measuring What Matters: Australia’s Wellbeing Framework, National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children, National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse, National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children, Australia’s Disability Strategy, Disability Royal Commission, NDIS Review, Robodebt Royal Commission. Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, Reform of Australia’s system of administrative review, and Family Relationship Services Program.

Chapter 4 – Legal need

A legal assistance framework should be based on an objective assessment of legal need across geographies, populations, and problem types. This would allow governments to assess legal needs and allocate appropriate resources to meeting them.
In the absence of such a framework, NLAP does not define legal need or offer a method to measure it. Instead, it allocates funding based on an arbitrary multivariate function of disadvantage, demographic and economic drivers, and priority clients. As a result, funding distribution models under NLAP don’t provide an efficient level of funding for service providers.
The Review established a Technical Reference Group made up of representatives from ACIL Allen, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Behavioural Insights Branch (Attorney-General’s Department), NSW Law and Justice Foundation, Productivity Commission and Victorian Law Foundation, to provide expert advice on the status of legal needs data and analysis.
The Group concluded that existing data on legal need are incomplete and prevented meaningful national extrapolation. As a result, the Group strongly supported the need for a regular national survey of legal need (like the Legal Australia Wide Survey conducted by the ABS in 2008).
The Group noted that data capture platforms used across the sector are highly fragmented. The group assessed that data standardisation is more likely to come from consistent data recording practices across separate systems than from all providers migrating to a single platform. However, the Review’s findings and recommendations on CLASS and data (see Chapter 11 on outcomes and data below) directly contradict this assessment.
The Review outlines recent attempts to document legal need, including national and jurisdiction-based surveys, and service data. It notes that while providing some useful insights, services’ turn-away data likely provides, at best, the lowest estimate of the level of unmet legal need as it does not capture people with unmet legal need who don’t approach a service provider.
To ensure comprehensive data on legal need is available to direct decisions on legal assistance funding and service development, the Review recommends the Commonwealth direct the ABS to conduct a national legal needs survey, that collects data to measure legal need and unmet legal need, every 5 years (Rec 5).
The Review sets out qualitative evidence it received that demonstrates unmet legal need:
- In certain areas of law (civil and family law, including consumer credit, tenancy and housing, and disasters)
- In certain locations (generally increasing with remoteness, and disproportionately impacting remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities)
- Amongst specific groups (including current priority groups under NLAP and newly identified groups for inclusion in the next agreement).

Key recommendation: Addressing unmet geographic need (Rec 2). Governments should work with service providers and organisations like the NSW Law and Justice Foundation and Vicotria Law Foundation to better understand these geographic areas and determine the nature and cost of services needed to fill these gaps. Service funding should be delivered in the ‘step’ funding of AJ2P (see Chapter 7 – Funding Models).

The Review notes that over time, civil and administrative matters (particularly social security, consumer credit and tenancy) have become increasingly underfunded due to the greater focus on criminal and family law matters.

Key recommendation: increased funding for civil and family law assistance (Rec 5).

The Review recommends addressing this situation by delivering $459 million to legal assistance providers in 2025-26 to help meet civil and family law need. This $459m is an upwards revision of the Productivity Commission’s 2014 recommendation for governments should provide $200 million to enable legal assistance providers to better meet civil and family law need (both recommendations suggest that the Commonwealth should provide 60% of this funding, and state/territory governments 40%.
The Review notes that this recommendation will enable LACs to significantly relax their means tests for people seeking grants of aid for civil and family law matters, and that LACs should be able to determine whether they use this funding to recruit additional inhouse workers or distribute more grants of aid.
It also speaks to the value of early intervention and mediation to prevent civil matters becoming criminal matters, with particular focus on supporting specialist community legal centres, ATSILSs and FVPLSs.
However, this recommendation and associated commentary is somewhat confusing, and it is unclear to us how this funding is intended to flow and to which providers. We will seek further clarity from Dr Mundy over coming weeks.
The Review recommends governments deliver baseline funding to legal assistance providers to build preparedness and response capacity for disasters, as well as develop funding packages for immediate deployment in the event of disasters (Rec 6). However, it does not offer detailed recommendations on how this funding should be distributed or administered. The furthest it goes is to say that coordinated service responses should be developed with LACs and community service providers. In some cases, community legal centres should be identified as leads for disaster response, based on specialist capabilities.
The Review outlines the needs of existing priority groups under NLAP and acknowledges the evidence presented that people who experience multiple vulnerabilities are more likely to experience ‘legal problem clusters,’ and face additional barriers seeking legal assistance. As part of its consideration of existing priority groups, the Review recommends some specific programs and gaps that should be funded.
- Specialist Elder Abuse Services should be funded on an ongoing basis and the cost for this is captured in recommendations for baseline funding.
- As part of resetting baseline funding for ATSILSs and FVPLSs and other Aboriginal community-controlled organisations (ACCOs), adequate funding should be provided for outreach to prisons (by lawyers and other professionals).
- The costs associated with servicing regional, rural, remote and very remote (4Rs) communities must be included in the funding of legal assistance providers. These costs should be reflected in baseline funding.
The Review recommends that the AJ2P priority groups should be expanded to include four new groups (Rec 8).
- Women.
- LGBTIQA+ people.
- Veterans and defence personnel experiencing bullying and harassment.
- Recent migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
In relation to legal assistance services for women, the Review recommends the A2JP separates and quarantines funding for ‘women’s legal services’ be separated from the general community legal centre stream (Rec 7), and that the Commonwealth should deliver $0.25 million in funding from 2024-25 to Women’s Legal Services Australia to operate as the national women’s legal assistance peak.

Chapter 5 – Closing the Gap

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the highest legal needs of any group in Australia.

Key recommendation: AJ2P must address the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms (Rec 9)

NLAP has failed to deliver the 4 Priority Reforms and 19 Socio-Economic Outcomes (these align with the Closing the Gap targets) of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. The next agreement must deliver greater alignment with the priority reforms, and significantly increased funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services.
The Review suggests that the Productivity Commission’s evaluation findings in relation to the four Priority Reforms under the National Agreement apply equally to the NLAP:
- Commitment to shared decision-making has not been achieved in practice
- Government policy does not reflect the community-controlled sector’s value
- Transformation of government organisations has barely begun
- Lack of focus on enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led data.
NLAP arrangements have created several service barriers that significantly impede access to justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
- Partnerships and decision-making. NLAP has made little contribution to empowering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to share decision-making authority with governments or progress policy and service outcomes through formal partnerships (Priority Reform 1). Building ATSILSs and FVPLSs law reform and advocacy capacity is essential to addressing over-representation in the criminal justice and child protection systems. Legal assistance ACCOs should also be resourced through baseline funding to develop service partnerships with other ACCOs (e.g., in the health sector).
- Building the community-controlled sector. NLAP has not contributed to this outcome. Of greatest concern is most governments’ lack of fiscal commitment to building on the strength of community-controlled service providers. Lack of investment has contributed to poor remuneration, high caseloads, overwork, and burnout in the sector.
- Transforming government organisations. NLAP commits inadequate funding to the development of culturally sensitive services, including trauma-informed workforce models. As a result, 38% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers in mainstream legal assistance providers report experiencing workplace harassment in the past 12 months. Accountability is weak.
- Shared access to data. Data outcomes under NLAP have been generally poor. This has created barriers to data sharing between legal assistance ACCOs. AJ2P must embed a commitment to data sovereignty so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can own, access, control and make decisions about all justice-related data that belongs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Significant issues exist with culturally appropriate service provision. Early intervention and prevention, advocacy and law reform, and community legal education are inadequately funded. Interpreters, the Custody Notification Service, and Health Justice Partnerships are excluded from baseline NLAP funding.
ATSILS account for about 22% of NLAP funding. For FVPLSs changing administrative arrangements have significantly disrupted day to day service deliver. FVPLSs were originally advised their funding arrangements would be transferred under NLAP from 1 July 2023. The government has since deferred this decision until the new agreement commences in July 2025.

Key recommendation: All Commonwealth legal assistance provided by ACCOs to be funded under A2JP (Rec 10).

ATSILSs and FVPLSs identified pros and cons of bringing all legal assistance funding under NLAP. After careful consideration, the Review favours consolidating all legal assistance under one agreement with a clear governance structure and objectives, and adequate funding.
The AJ2P should promote shared decision-making when developing legislative and policy reforms and negotiating funding arrangements for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities’ access to justice.
Evidence the Review considered on proportion of services delivered by ATSILSs, community legal centres and LACs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (from state and territory NLAP reporting data for 2022) shows clear demand for ATSILS as preferred service providers for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
However, funding inadequacy has resulted in workforce and workload crises, service freezes, and diminished trust held by governments and communities in ACCOs. It also prevents ACCOs providing the full range of required services to people and communities.
Instead, governments have chosen to fund organisations with greater existing capacity (like LACs) rather than properly funding ACCOs, in the belief that leveraging existing scale will ensure funding reaches communities in need. This is inconsistent with the National Agreement and with article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The Review notes the practice of funding non-ACCOs is inconsistent with National Agreement principles and the National Framework, under which ACCOs are the preferred provider. The Review acknowledges that while it is important that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples retain the right to seek legal assistance from non-ACCO service providers, inadequate funding allocations are limiting the capacity of ACCOs to provide services to those clients who wish to engage with an Aboriginal controlled organisation.

Key recommendations:

Governments should commission and independent review of specialised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services delivered by community legal centres and LACs to ensure resource allocation maximises ACCO involvement (Rec 11). The Review does not provide a timeframe for the implementation of this recommendation.
States/territories should set up a consultative forum under AJ2P to discuss and agree how future funding for specialist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services should be distributed between service providers (Rec 12).
Culturally safe service delivery is fundamental to access to justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Holistic or wraparound service delivery, including early intervention and prevention services, is a key aspect of culturally safe services, and essential to achieving National Agreement commitments.
However, like other non-legal services ACCOs provide (including advocacy and law reform), early intervention and prevention services are excluded from core funding or receive short-term ad hoc funding. To maximise their potential beneficial impacts, adequate funding for early intervention and prevention services, and law reform and advocacy work, should be included in new baseline funding for ACCOs in 2025-26. The Review makes similar recommendations about funding for community legal education and enabling ATSILSs and FVPLSs to explore, establish and maintain cross-sector partnerships like Health Justice Partnerships
Interpreter services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are chronically underfunded, causing persistent shortages of qualified, culturally appropriate interpreters, particularly in the 4Rs. The Commonwealth and relevant jurisdictions should determine an adequate level of interpreter funding for legal services as soon as practicable (Rec 13).

Chapter 6: Funding facts

The reviewer faced some challenges in verifying sector funding. His focus has been on working out what funding is needed, rather than dictating which government should pay for what.
Based on available information, the Review estimates that in 2022-23 the legal assistance sector received a total of $1 513 million in funding.
- State governments provided $880 million (58%), the bulk of which is delivered to providers to support people with state/territory legal issues.
- The Commonwealth provided $632 million (42%), comprising $494 million (33%) via NLAP (baseline, bilateral schedules, and specific funding streams) and $138 million (9%) non-NLAP funding.
In terms of baseline Commonwealth NLAP funding, in 2022-23:
- Community legal centres received $57 million
- ATSILSs received $88 million
- LACs received $241m.
In 2022-23:
- Commonwealth funding for community legal centres totalled $135m (48% of all funding for the community legal centre sector), $105m of which flowed through NLAP and $30m through non-NLAP programs.
- States and territories contributed $147m (55%) to community legal centres. However not all states/territories contribute equally. The Review provides a breakdown of total funding delivered to community legal centres by Commonwealth (NLAP and non-NLAP) and state/territory governments in each jurisdiction. This analysis shows that state governments in Western Australia (57%) and Victoria (55%), made up a large proportion of community legal centre funding. Governments in South Australia (11%), the Northern Territory (13%), and the ACT (25%) made the lowest contributions relative to Commonwealth funding. The NSW Government contributed 44% of community legal centre funding, and the QLD Government contributed 39%.
The funding facts paint circumstances for community legal centres in a better light than other community-based providers (and even LACs to some extent). From 2013-14 – 2022-23:
- Total Commonwealth funding increased from $31m to $135m, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% 2019-20 and 23% from 2021-22. (Since 2014-15, real Commonwealth baseline funding has been largely stable, which suggests this funding has mostly kept pace with population growth over this period)
- Total (Commonwealth and state/territory) funding increased from $85m to $244m at a CAGR of 11% (a higher growth rate than all other providers) and our share of total funding increased from 9% to 16%.
Across all providers and jurisdictions:
- State and territory governments provided the highest proportion of legal assistance funding in Victoria (68%), New South Wales (66%), Western Australia (55%), ACT (55%), and Qld (51%).
- The Commonwealth contributed the highest proportion of funding in Tasmania (59%), South Australia (62%), and the Northern Territory (79%)
- Except in the NT, LACs receive the highest proportion of total funding in all jurisdictions, ranging from 60% in Western Australia to 80% in NSW
- Funding for community legal centres ranged from a low of 10% in NSW to a high of 22% in Victoria.
Overall, the chapter finds that ATSILSs and FVPLSs have fared the worst in terms of funding adequacy and contributions from state/territory governments. The Review finds that:
- increases to NLAP core funding for ATSILSs have been negligible and insufficient to keep up with inflation and increased operational costs. Over the past decade, inadequate indexation alone has resulted in a cumulative funding shortfall of $83m.
- Funding for FVPLSs has fluctuated over time, but the sector’s share of total legal assistance funding has remained stable at 5% over the past decade and has not grown in real terms since 2014.
However, Commonwealth and state/territory funding per capita to community legal centres is particularly low at $5 per person and $4 per person respectively (compared to $13 per person and $38 per person for LACs, $154 per Aboriginal person and $35 per Aboriginal person for ATSILSs, and $83 per Aboriginal woman and $55 per Aboriginal woman for FVPLSs).

General findings in relation to funding:

Indexation arrangements in NLAP and the NPA have not properly funded cost increases that service providers have experienced.
The Reviewer does not consider that funding allocated in 2013-14 was adequate, and so funding has remained inadequate (as well as inadequately indexed) since then.
Core funding of legal assistance should not rely on revenues from state/territory public purpose funds, which are likely to return to long-term trend of gradual decline as interest rates stabilise.

Chapter 7: Funding models

Key recommendation: The NLAP funding model is broken and should be abandoned (Rec 14).

It is a distribution model only (which closely resembles that used by the Commonwealth to distribute GST revenue to jurisdictions), which is more concerned with relativities between jurisdictions than actual legal need and costs of service delivery to marginalised people. In a sector where funding is highly constrained, such models will ‘inadvertently’ create competition between different needs.
Given the lack of transparency around the methodology underpinning the distribution model, providers have not been able to provide feedback, and trust/confidence has eroded over time.
Further, the Review received no evidence as to how the initial amount of funding to be distributed was determined. On the evidence received, current funding levels are insufficient to meet legal need or service expectations governments and communities have of legal assistance providers.
Funding indexation is largely based on forecast changes in price indices and so funding growth does not reflect changes in demand over time.
At minimum, baseline funding should grow by expected growth in price and demand.

Key recommendation: Reduce funding fragmentation (Rec 15).

Funding fragmentation should be addressed by consolidating most funding streams into baseline NLAP funding.
- Over the life of this NLAP, there has been a rise in funding delivered for new, term-limited programs.
- The Victorian Law Foundation found that on average providers received funding from 9 different streams, and 36% reported 10 or more funding streams.
- The process of incorporating successful pilots into baseline funding has not been successful.
The Review recommends that all governments should abandon competitive tendering (Rec 16) on the following grounds:
- Competitive tendering is expensive, less efficient than administrative distribution of legal assistance funding, and has led to misallocation of resources in some cases.
- Meeting grant outcomes distracts from service outcomes, can erode mission-driven cultures, and can drive providers to focus on contracted outcome and output measures at the expense of other activities.
- Competitive funding stifles diversity, innovation, and collaboration in the sector, and disproportionately affects smaller organisations.
- The Review received no evidence that competitive tendering has improved efficiency in the legal assistance sector (or that any level of material inefficiency exists with the sector.)
Ideally, determining total funding for legal assistance would be:
- guided by an assessment of legal need on a demographic and geographic basis.
- more closely aligned to the sector’s financial sustainability needs and identified areas of legal need.

Key recommendation: Funding levels for each community service provider should be reset to reflect the true costs of operating sustainable organisations (Rec 17).

Given there is insufficient data on legal need (to inform a truly needs-based funding model), the Review recommends governments adopt a base, step, trend approach (commonly used by utilities providers) for the next agreement. The Review recommends that priority should be given to resetting baseline funding for ATSILSs and FVPLSs, followed by community legal centres and LACs.
- Base: Determining the cost of providing existing services. Existing funding levels must be adjusted upwards to provide proper remuneration, wellbeing supports, appropriate IT systems (amongst other things)
- Step: Increasing the base to reflect the cost of new services, input costs, and regulatory requirements. e. funding to fill identified gaps in services, including new priority groups, addressing specific areas of geographic need, providing adequate funding for additional grants for civil and family law matters, funding for disaster preparedness and response, ongoing funding for successful pilots.
- Trend: Roll forward the sum of the base and step over the life of the agreement. e. provide adequate indexation that reflects both changing price and labour costs, and changes in demand over time.
- Pass through mechanisms: These allow for additional funding for unforeseen changes in demand or costs, e.g. costs associated with government policy changes (e.g. the Robodebt Royal Commission, the Disability Royal Commission, the review of Commonwealth administrative appeals and the introduction of coercive control laws across many jurisdictions).
The Review recommends the following programs should be included in baseline funding (only programs that community legal centres currently receive funding through included here):
- Indigenous Women’s Program (NIAA)
- Domestic Violence Units (LACs and community legal centres)
- Legal assistance for ‘vulnerable women (all providers)
- NDIS Appeals Program (LACs and community legal centres)
- Frontline supports to address workplace sexual harassment (all providers)
- Supporting people with mental health conditions to access the justice system (LACs, ATSILSs and community legal centres)
- Community Legal Support Program (ATSILSs and community legal centres)
- Elder Abuse Service Trials (LACs and community legal centres)
- Ongoing Health Justice Partnerships (community-based service providers)
Beyond recommending that resetting baseline funding for ATSILSs and FVPLSs should be prioritised, the Review does not set a timeline for completion of this process. The review does acknowledge that resetting baseline funding for all providers is not likely to be completed by the time the A2JP begins. It recommends that for these providers, indexation be set at 10% for 2025-26 (and 2027-28 if needed) (see Chapter 12 – Implementation, below).

Key recommendation: Indexation (Rec 21).

In relation to indexation, the Review found that the current NLAP has not grown in line with the rising cost of labour and has also failed to reflect changes in demand.
To address this, the report recommends funding should be indexed each year (from 2025-26) by the sum of the expected growth in demand (based on population forecasts) and the expected growth in prices in each jurisdiction.
- For the general and female populations, the Centre for Population’s forecasts should be used. For First Nations populations (total and female), ABS forecasts should be used.
- The Review recommends the 80:20 method adopted by some state and territory governments to calculate the price index: 80% forecast growth in the Wage Price Index and 20% forecast growth in the Consumer Price Index.
- All indexation arrangements should be based on jurisdictional forecasts where possible.

Chapter 8 – Same job same pay

The Review estimates there are about 9400 FTE positions in the legal assistance workforce. Around 50% (4900) work in Legal Aid Commissions, followed by community legal centres (3500), ATSILSs (1100) and FVPLSs (150-200).
The legal assistance workforce is highly feminised. National Legal Aid estimates 78% of the LAC workforce identify as female. Nationally, 70% of workers in community legal centres identify as female (though not sure where he got this figure from).
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are underrepresented in the general solicitor workforce but are represented at higher rates in the legal assistance workforce (4-10% of community legal centre sector workforce, 36%-43% of the ATSILSs workforce, and 55% of the FVPLSs workforce.)
Wages and conditions across the legal assistance sector are consistently lower than the private sector and some public sector employers. These discrepancies are largest for mid-late career lawyers. An absence of mid-career solicitors in the legal assistance sector, due to remuneration and workload issues, means there is no pipeline of people to fill senior roles.
Within the legal assistance sector, there are further large differences between the wages earned by LAC workers (across all role types) and people working in the community legal sector. Workers in the FVPLS sector earn the lowest of all legal assistance sector workers.
LACs also offer better entitlements than community legal sector providers. This can include higher levels of financial assistance to relocate to a new location for work, higher superannuation contributions, and better support and training opportunities.
Workers in the legal assistance sector often miss out on entitlements altogether, such as long service leave, due to frequent movement, which is driven both by short-term contracts and inadequate remuneration.
The disparity in pay and entitlements between LACs and community-based legal assistance providers results in workforce distribution that doesn’t always reflect community needs (with many early career lawyers and other professionals starting out in the community legal sector and then moving to LACs and the public or private sector to seek better pay.)
Staff attrition – driven by low wages, unrealistic workloads, short-term contracts, burnout, and vicarious trauma – is a significant issue across the sector. High rates of attrition reduce efficacy in service delivery and further strain an already overburdened workforce. It also discourages employers from investing in their employees. Impacts include:
- Reduced capacity to meet demand
- Lack of culturally appropriate service provision
- Increased costs to providers
To address these issues, the reviewer recommends governments:
- implement a portable entitlements scheme for the legal assistance sector, based on those currently operating in the construction and other industries (Rec 23)
- develop a legal assistance workforce strategy in collaboration with unions, and sector peak bodies. It recommended the Commonwealth allocate $5 million for this purpose in 2024-25 (Rec 24)

Key recommendation: the Commonwealth should provide additional funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26 to increase remuneration for all workers in community-based providers (community legal centres, ATSILSs and FVPLSs) (Rec 25).

The reviewer found that increasing wages and conditions – particularly for community-based legal assistance workers – will improve retention and the sector’s attractiveness to prospective employees. The Review recommended the Commonwealth invest $66m in 2024-25 and $69m in 2025-26 to close the pay gap for workers in community-based providers:
- Community legal centres: $35m in 2024-24 and $36m in 2025-26 ($71m over 2 years)
- ATSILSs: $25m in 2024-25 and $26m in 2025-26 ($51m over 2 years)
- FVPLSs: $6m in 2024-25 and $7m in 2025-26 ($13m over 2 years).
This recommendation comes with the caveat that service providers must demonstrate wages and conditions have been varied and approved through relevant industrial processes for the funding to flow.
The Review also identified additional significant challenges for the legal assistance workforce, particularly for community-based legal assistance providers.
- High, unsustainable, and unsafe workloads. Caseloads for many community organisations are 50% above sustainable levels. Without targeted intervention to increase employment levels, organisations will need to freeze services to new clients. Determining sustainable caseloads should be part of rebasing funding for community-based legal assistance providers.
- Short-term contracts. The passage of the Fair Work Amendment (Secure Jobs and Better Pay) Act 2022 means that any worker on a fixed-term contract must be made permanent after 2 years. Without secure, long-term funding, these permanent positions will become a liability for community-based providers.
- Workplace safety. Current funding levels are inadequate for organisations to offer support services to workers to manage vicarious trauma and burnout. The Review notes that recommendations to increase baseline funding in 2025-26 include provision for funding to support both workload and access to appropriate supports to manage risks.
- Premises and IT systems. Lack of capital investment prevent community-based providers from using fit-for-purpose and best-practice technologies for case management and reporting. The premises many community-based providers work from do not meet WHS standards. Recommendations to increase baseline funding in 2025-26 include provision for funding to meet organisations’ infrastructure, technology, and data needs.

Key recommendation: Establish a HECS-HELP forgiveness schemes for community-based providers (Commonwealth) and Legal Aid Commissions (state/territory governments (Rec 26)

The Review also examined the unique workforce challenges for 4Rs organisations. To address these challenges the Review recommends the Commonwealth Government introduce a HECS-HELP forgiveness scheme for 4Rs community sector lawyers commencing in 2025-26 and that state/territory governments establish similar schemes for LACs.

Chapter 9 – Delivering legal assistance

The Review notes that across the sector, there is not much community legal education being done, and data doesn’t really reflect what is done. Community legal education is useful, and it should be funded via baseline funding (i.e. not as a discrete stream).
Collaborative service planning is a good idea but hasn’t been effective. It will be improved by ending competitive tendering amongst legal assistance providers, preventing LACs from managing community legal centre programs, establishing jurisdictional fora focussed on services to women and services for First Nations people, and properly funding legal service providers to participate in collaborative service planning.
Holistic service provision improves outcomes for clients. Inadequate baseline funding is an impediment to good wraparound servicing. There should be no barrier to use of A2JP funds for employment of non-legal staff. A2JP should make clear that funding can be used for holistic service provision and the employment of non-legal staff (Rec 27).
Funding for many Health Justice Partnerships with time-limited funding should be rolled into baseline funding for the relevant service provider.
Lack of funding is undermining end-to-end servicing with community legal centres being restricted to advice instead of representation, or representation at first instance but referral upon appeal. Funding should be available to enable a service provider to remain with clients until the conclusion of a matter.
Law reform and advocacy has dropped to negligible levels, except for a few community legal centres, which focus on advocacy. The review recognises the value of law reform and advocacy but makes no recommendation as to the way in which this should be funded, other than to recommend that small jurisdictional community legal centre peaks in Tasmania, SA and the territories, be considered for funding.
The Review recommends that A2JP explicitly note the importance of advocacy and law reform and it should be funded as part of baseline funding (Rec 28).
There is very little Alternative Dispute Resolution being done, despite the value of this work, but better funding should help.
A2JP should recognise the critical role of technology in addressing legal need and establish a Justice Technology Innovation Fund, to be governed by a board of directors, and resourced through an initial Commonwealth $5m fund in 2025-26, plus support from states and territories. Funding should be provided in 2024-25 and 2025-26 to set the fund up (Rec 29).
The review contemplates an accreditation system for all legal service providers, although there is no specific recommendation and no mention of the community legal centres sector’s National Accreditation Scheme.

Chapter 10 – Administration and cost-sharing

The Review recommends the A2JP run for five years, although the mid-term review of the next agreement should contemplate even longer agreements in the future (Rec 30).
Service provider agreements, including for community legal centres, should also run for five years.

Key recommendation: LACs not to administer funding (Rec 33).

The Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) should take over the coordination of all Commonwealth legal assistance funding, even where bits continue to come from other departments. The AGD should develop an annual statement of Commonwealth legal assistance funding to be included in the Budget papers.
The AGD should create a consolidated database of all Commonwealth, state, and territory legal assistance funding. This would address the current problem that we cannot track what money is currently in the service system because government funding processes are so opaque.
The Commonwealth should provide better guidance to the states and territories about the outcomes it hopes to achieve through its funding. This could appear in the Outcomes Framework. The Commonwealth should also be a party to funding deeds with relevant legal assistance providers. Clearly this is intended to address the Commonwealth’s disinterest in our work over the current agreement, although exactly how this would work is unclear. It feels a bit more like a light-touch safeguard than something that will make a big difference in practice.
Importantly, LACs should not be permitted to administer community legal centre programs.

Key recommendation: The Commonwealth, states, and territories should agree and commit to minimum funding contributions over the life of the AJ2P. Commonwealth funding should not flow to states and territories to administer the next agreement (Rec 35).

Once governments have agreed funding outcomes to be achieved via legal assistance funding, they should work out who pays for what. If governments agree most or all of the review’s recommendations, they will need to share funding responsibilities. Minimum amounts to be provided by states and territories should be specified in a schedule to the A2JP.
Where the Commonwealth is the sole funder of community legal centres outside of the NLAP, it should continue to be the sole funder for the life of the A2JP. It must also set out its contribution to developing the replacement for CLASS. The Commonwealth needs also to pay for those costs that need to be met in 2024-25 (like the urgent wages boost for sector workers), although once the new agreement kicks in, these costs will be shared with states and territories.
State and territory governments should contribute to ATSILS funding, even though many currently do not. Where states have been contributing to ATSILS funding, lots of it has been project based, and this needs to be converted to baseline funding. Where states and territories refuse to fund ATSILS, the Commonwealth could consider directly funding these services directly (why send the funding through the states and territories if they are not helping?).
The review includes no real compunction for states and territories to fund community legal centres, although the report notes that the Commonwealth can provide between 25% and 90% of sector funding depending on the jurisdiction, and that this raises questions about how different jurisdictions will secure the outcomes flagged in the review. The jurisdictions are to agree outcomes and then agree funding. This one is pretty vague and not overly helpful.
Currently the states and territories get funding to administer Commonwealth funding under NLAP. This should stop. They shouldn’t get money just for applying money that benefits their residents. This money instead should go to service providers.

Chapter 11 – Outcomes and data

Key recommendation: The Commonwealth, states, and territories, should agree an Outcomes Framework for the legal assistance sector. The Commonwealth should allocate $0.5 million in 2024-25 to appoint consultants to develop the framework by 30 June 2025.

There must be an Outcomes Framework in place before A2JP begins. Progress to date has been unacceptably slow. There will be some challenges: advocacy is hard to measure, legal assistance service providers are not funded to do this work, and there are some risks data generated via the Framework could be used inappropriately (e.g. to make funding decisions).
The Outcomes Framework should be developed by consultants reporting to the Standing Council of Attorneys-General.
The Framework should build on work that has already been done, including by sector peaks, and it should shape legal assistance service provider reporting obligations.
A2JP reporting should be aligned to the ABS unit-level data exercise.
Current reporting does not generate data that is useful.
The Data Standards Manual (DSM) needs to be reviewed. The counting rules don’t pick up complexity or duration of service, there is inconsistent application, and it does not pick up costs involved in service delivery. The DSM review should be shaped by the Outcomes Framework (Rec 37).
CLASS has not delivered and should be replaced as soon as possible. However, the Review acknowledges that its development well-intentioned idea.

Key recommendation: The Commonwealth should fund development of a legal assistance sector-wide data collection platform to provide a national data repository that can collate data from other front-end data entry applications (Rec 38).

The review recommends the Commonwealth build a legal assistance sector-wide data collection platform. It is not clear how this recommendation connects with the CLASS recommendations – for example, CLASS clearly needs to be replaced before the Commonwealth could build a system for the entire legal assistance sector. Indeed, there is some confusion within this section overall. The key points are probably that CLASS needs to be replaced and that the Commonwealth must take overall responsibility for establishing a system to ensure data collection.
Data collection is burdensome. Services need to be funded to collect data.
Jurisdictional reporting should be annual, not twice-yearly.

Chapter 12 – Implementation

The review recommends significantly more investment in legal assistance, but all governments. But not everything can be done at once.

Key recommendation: The Commonwealth should deliver indexation of 4.5% in 2024-25 at a cost of $14.7 million in 2024-25. If the process to reset baseline funding for all providers is not completed by start 2025-26, funding levels should be set 10% higher than in 2024-25 until ‘rebasing’ is completed (Rec 39).

The review recommends that $215m be allocated urgently, in the 2024 budget (which has just passed), of which $66m is earmarked for better remuneration for community sector workers ($35m for community legal centres). Clearly, we need to advocate for the part of this amount which was not received in the May budget.
The review also recommends some spending ($4.6m) on ‘architecture reforms’ begins in 2024-25. This would include spending on the legal needs survey and outcomes framework. Importantly, it includes funding for WLSA of $250k.
The rest of the new money to flow into A2JPis described as ‘phased’. It is dependent upon governments doing some work and collecting some data to inform decision-making regarding what ‘baseline’ funding should look like in the future. These phased injections include those relating to new services in areas of geographic need. ATSILS and LACs have frontrunner status here, although the report notes that community legal centres may have strong claims in certain circumstances.
The recalculation of baseline will take time, but the priorities are to be ATSILS and FVPLSs. The only community legal centres afforded priority here are those funded solely by the Commonwealth. For community legal centres more generally, calculation of our new baseline will need to be led by states and territories.
Indexation has been woeful and should be calculated at 4.5% for 2024-25. If this had been done in the recent budget, the review suggests we would have received $3.2m. Instead, we got 4% indexation calculated on only some of our income and this amounted to $2.4m.
Determining baseline could take years. While baseline is assessed, legal assistance service providers, including community legal centres, should have their incomes indexed at 10%. This might have to happen for 2025-26, 26-27 and even 27-28. The 10% is in addition to the standard indexation, so in fact we might get something closer to 15%.

NLAP brief