If you are not Bill Gates, the idea of legal aid can be quite appealing. The price of private lawyers to do legal work is now so high that it is practically impossible for individuals to afford legal services unless they are very wealthy or part of a larger organisation such as a company which can afford such services by banding resources together. Legal aid is funding for legal services which is provided by the government for free. However, there are only very specific instances in which legal aid is available. In the first place, you must have very few assets and virtually no income or savings. Legal aid is always means tested and because it is so popular, it is very strictly means tested. Also, legal aid is only available for very specific types of cases. It is available for certain serious criminal offences, cases involving child protection and some types of family law cases. The types of cases which legal aid is available in relation to other matters varies between the states in Australia and also changes based on the yearly budget allocation of legal aid from the state budgets of various governments. Legal aid lawyers also handle a very large caseload which means that it is very difficult for them to give you their undivided attention to your case. However, if you have a very serious case and you meet the means test, legal aid can be very useful.

In New South Wales, a large part of the legal aid funding system comes from the interest on the trust accounts of private solicitors. The interest earned by these accounts is paid to the law society each year and this money is then forwarded to legal aid for the purposes of the funding the cases which have been described above. So even if you do not have very many assets or any income, there is still only a small chance that you will be able to get legal aid. However, there are other possible alternatives. Some lawyers do do cases on a pro bono basis and you can sometimes arrange no win no fee arrangements with lawyers in particular types of cases such as workers compensation and personal injury where there are firms that specialize in doing only this exact type of work. In some commercial cases there are matters which can attract the attention of litigation funding companies which offer short term loans for legal fees in order that a piece of litigation can be commenced and the litigation proceeds are then shared with the lender. This practice is, however, not encouraged by the many of the professional associations for lawyers around Australia because of the commercial pressure that it put litigators and the courts under. So there are a number of alternatives you can look into if you wish to fund litigation and cannot do so out of your immediate economic circumstances. In terms of legal aid, some times the legal aid agency will allow a private lawyer to act as your legal aid lawyer and pay the amount of the grant to the lawyer for acting on your behalf. If you have a question about obtaining legal aid services, we can help you with looking into getting a private representation at a legal aid rate. Please do not hesitate to contact us if this is the nature of your inquiry. Another option which you may look into is the low cost online legal services which are now available if you click on the link below, you be able to ask a lawyer a legal question for a fraction of the cost of an ordinary legal consultation and we encourage you to do this if the costs of legal services is a very big issue for you.