This report provides a comprehensive national snapshot of the valuable services provided by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services.

While technology and the way information is available to people have changed markedly since the Legal Australia-Wide (LAW) Survey was conducted in 2008, this paper reports important evidence concerning Australians’ use of self-help resources (SHRs) for legal problems at that time based on new analysis of LAW Survey data.

This paper provides an overview of the options for, and challenges of, conducting legal needs surveys in Australia. It highlights the factors which must be taken into account when designing a cost-effective survey to support the delivery of effective legal assistance services.

Women experiencing domestic and family violence are ten times as vulnerable to legal problems as the rest of the population, according to this research. In a twelve-month period, respondents who had experienced domestic and family violence had twenty legal problems on average, compared to only two legal problems for the rest of the population.

This paper was developed to support Legal Aid NSW undertake a review of their client intake and triage services. It provides a conceptual basis for further investigating and developing a systematic triage service model.