Community Legal Centres Australia released its annual State of the Sector report, More than legal services: preventing crises, strengthening communities, at Parliament House today. The report highlights a year of high-impact work supporting people to untangle hundreds of thousands of legal problems and empowering communities with the tools to prevent crises. Funding progress and a new five-year funding agreement are also highlights.

Key findings include:

• Community legal centres assisted over 190,000 people in the past year
• Community legal centres turned away more than 390,000 people due to funding shortfalls, including at least 3,000 people impacted by domestic and family violence every week.
• Domestic and family violence support is the single largest area of need, making up 40-50% of the sector’s work, rising to 70-80% for rural, remote and very remote centres.
• Community legal sector staff travelled over 1.2 million kilometres to reach and help people in regional and remote areas.
• Community legal centres’ preventative legal education programs reached over 161,000 people in the past year, empowering people to avoid legal problems or resolve them quickly and independently when they arise.

Community legal centres provide free legal and related help for victim-survivors of family violence, people experiencing homelessness, parents resolving family law matters, people affected by floods and bushfires, people experiencing harassment or exploitation at work, low-income renters, people who need financial counselling, and others on low incomes.

The impact of chronic underfunding over the last decade has pushed many local services to the brink of closure and led to poor pay and conditions for staff supporting local community members. 

Community Legal Centres CEO Tim Leach said that Australia’s 165 community legal services continued to play a vital role in preventing and resolving a range of legal issues and crises.

“We welcome the certainty provided by the new National Access to Justice Partnership agreed by Australia’s Attorneys-General. We also welcome the additional funding announced across the legal assistance sector, particularly significant increases for specialist Women’s Legal Services and Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services.”

“The 2023-24 State of the Sector Report shows us that even with this additional investment, legal need in the community will still far exceed the capacity of community legal services. For the past two years, our sector has been forced to turn away over 1,000 people in crisis every day. It shows us that pay disparities and under-resourcing of frontline legal services will continue.”

“These things will not change significantly without further action. Investing in community legal centres is an investment in people and communities. We have yet to see the required investment from federal, state, and territory governments.”

“We will continue our advocacy at all levels and build on progress this year to ensure everyone in the community can access the legal support they need to be safe, avoid and resolve crises, and move forward in life.”

Samantha Schulte, a former community legal centre client, said that she had never thought of herself as someone who’d need a community legal centre until she needed to reach out for domestic violence support.

“The first time I was ever validated in my experience as a victim of domestic violence was when Caxton Legal Centre believed me. That was the first time I heard someone say, ‘Sam, this is real, and it is wrong. This should not have happened to you. This is serious, and it is important.” 

“When people come to be involved with the legal system, it’s because their needs haven’t been addressed. Community legal centres help with the immediate legal problem. Still, they look beyond people’s legal matters and into the future, too, and provide holistic support which improves outcomes for vulnerable people, like domestic violence victims.”

“I was a shell of a person when I made it to Caxton. They believed and validated me and gave me all the support I needed over five years.”

“I never in a million years would have thought this would happen to me. I didn’t think of myself as needing a community legal centre. But now I don’t think I’m the exception. I know there are thousands and thousands of other people in similar circumstances.”