Triennial Review of Legal Aid

Current state

The current model used by the Ministry to procure and contract private legal aid services is structured around dealing with individual lawyers on individual cases.     

Contracts to provide legal aid services are with individual lawyers (rather than firms), and remuneration is structured around paying lawyers, either fixed fees and/or hourly rates, for specific tasks and activities they provide on cases.

Problem or opportunity

Significant structural changes to how legal aid lawyers are paid have not been made since fixed fee schedules were introduced in 2012.

This review provides an opportunity to revisit how the Ministry procures services from legal aid lawyers. Bulk funding has been recommended in several external reviews of legal aid but has not been progressed. Until alternative approaches are trialled, we will not know if we are delivering legal aid as efficiently and effectively as possible.

What we are considering

We are considering bulk funding as an alternative funding model. Bulk funding would involve contracting groups of lawyers, or firms, to provide a specified volume of cases for a fixed price.

We are interested in trialling implementation of a bulk funding approach. The purpose of a trial would be to assess whether bulk funding could be an effective and efficient method to purchase legal aid services. A trial would help build an understanding of what the benefits of bulk funding might be for legal aid lawyers and for the Ministry. Qualitative and quantitative evidence from the trial would be used to inform future decisions about contracting and procurement arrangements, and if appropriate, the design of a bulk funding model.

Although we are yet to determine how a trial might work most effectively, we are considering testing bulk funding for proceeding types with:

• high volume
• low complexity
• short duration
• relatively consistent case cost and
• fewer ATG applications.

Initial analysis

Initial analysis has identified the following potential benefits of bulk funding for legal aid services:

• improved cost certainty for providers and the Ministry
• support for the development of approved junior lawyers if a head contractor within a firm is responsible for delegating and overseeing their work
• reduced administration for providers as they would submit fewer invoices and need fewer interactions with the Ministry
• improved service coverage, for example by enabling access to legal aid in remote areas
• help to address issues around provider sustainability and coverage
• reduced administration and improved timeliness for legal aid cases.