Low pay scale forces many to opt out of providing legal aid: QLS president
The Queensland Law Society (QLS) has called on the Standing Council of Attorneys-General (SCAG) to tackle the current legal aid funding crisis, noting the importance of ensuring that private practitioners can sustainably deliver legal aid services.
According to the law society’s media statement, amid this crisis, private practitioners increasingly have to pick between prioritising vulnerable clients or their businesses. The QLS stressed that legal aid funding should be a national priority, given that it is a shared responsibility among the Commonwealth, states, and territories.
Genevieve Dee, QLS president, noted that many lawyers who take on legal aid work are small business owners, small firm lawyers, or sole traders in regional and remote areas who must deal with rent, utilities, other overhead expenses, and cost-of-living pressures.
“While access to justice is a core value for lawyers, the current pay scale is so low that many will be forced to opt out of providing legal aid or have already done so,” Dee said in the media statement.
“Their ability to provide legal aid services to the most vulnerable people in our state, from family law to farm debt mediation, is under threat unless something is urgently done to address the low rate of pay for this work,” she added.
“Legal aid funding is a fundamental access to justice issue,” said Sarah-Jane MacDonald of MacDonald Law, in the media statement. “Without it, many people simply won’t be able to access legal representation.”
Based in Toowoomba, MacDonald emphasised the pressures that low legal aid pay rates have heaped upon lawyers’ shoulders.
“Lawyers are being asked to deliver complex legal services for a fraction of the cost, and that simply won’t be sustainable for many over the long run,” she said. “In many regional and remote areas, there are no in-house Legal Aid Queensland lawyers at all, which means private practitioners like us are solely responsible for delivering these services.”
According to MacDonald, apart from performing legal work, private practitioners may also need to hire, train, and expend efforts to retain competent staff members, which can be even more challenging in regional areas.
“The current rate of pay makes it even harder, because we simply can’t compete with the salaries or conditions offered by government or city-based roles,” she said.
In advance of Queensland’s most recent election, the law society asked all parties to raise the legal aid pay rates for practitioners to the same level as what the pertinent court scales provide.
In its media statement, the QLS shared that private practitioners take on over 70 percent of approved legal aid matters, but get only a third of the rate they would ordinarily receive in a private practice context.
QLS noted that the University of New South Wales Social Policy Centre recently surveyed legal practitioners and determined that about 20 percent intended to decrease or halt their legal aid work in the next five years, while 11 percent planned to stop within the next 12 months.
