The Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) is ground-breaking research to help us better understand legal capability, attitudes and experience of the law in the Victorian community. 

The PULS is a large-scale, face-to-face survey, exploring how people understand, experience and navigate law and everyday life problems with a legal dimension (‘justiciable’ problems). It is made up of a predominantly face-to-face sample of 6,008 respondents across Victoria employing the best survey methods available to yield the highest quality data. 

This report is the first of three volumes. It explores legal need in Victoria, how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them and how they progress and conclude.  

The PULS findings in this volume develop and amplify what we know about Victorians and their legal problems. The data show that Victorians with a civil legal problem are likely to have more than one, and that problems can last years. The relationship between problems and social disadvantage is persistent, and is also clear in those who have experienced natural disaster. It also shows one in five Victorians seek advice for their legal problems from legal services, and just under half are unhappy with the outcomes. The need for reform in policy and practice is clear.

The second volume of the PULS report provides an overview of levels of a range of different dimensions of legal capability across the Victorian population. It will also explore the socio-demographic factors associated with different levels of legal capability.

The third volume of the PULS report will draw upon the full PULS survey dataset to investigate more fully the drivers of problem resolving behaviour and problem outcomes, by incorporating the new legal capability measures into the statistical models of problem resolving behaviour and outcome reported in this volume.