Legal aid stats — COVID-19 dip in latest data
A summary document published at <www.justice.govt.nz> (Justice Statistics data tables: Notes and trends for 2021/2022 (September 2022)) includes a section on legal aid that begins (at 7):
"In 2021/2022, there were 65,338 legal aid grants in total. This decreased 16% from 2020/2021. The total expenditure for legal aid decreased 5%, from $211.7 million to $200.1 million."
Regarding criminal legal aid (excluding Public Defence Service cases):
"In 2021/2022, there were 46,866 criminal legal aid grants. This decreased by 17% from 2020/2021. The amount of criminal legal aid expenditure increased each year between 2012/2013 and 2020/2021; however, in 2021/2022 it decreased by $7.9 million (6%).
"The majority of these criminal legal aid grants were to people aged 19 to 29 years (34%) or 30 to 39 years (35%)."
Regarding family/civil legal aid:
"In 2021/2022, there was a 11% decrease in the number of family legal aid grants and an 8% decrease in civil legal aid grants compared to 2020/2021. Expenditure decreased by 3% for family grants (from $56.7 million to $54.9 million) and increased by 8% for civil grants (from $7 million to $7.5 million)."
Regarding legal aid for Waitangi Tribunal proceedings:
"The number of Waitangi Tribunal grants increased by 21% between 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 (from 136 to 165 grants). However, expenditure decreased over the same period (12%), from $20.7 million to $18.2 million."
The legal aid summary concludes by saying: "These decreases can largely be attributed to COVID-19 impacts on the justice system and are not expected to be sustained decreases." This is expanded on in the general introduction of the summary document (at 1):
"COVID-19 heavily affected several areas of the justice system, impacting trends in the data since the initial outbreak in 2019/2020. The Delta and Omicron outbreaks in 2021/2022 had the largest annual COVID-19 impact on justice statistics including reduced court inflow and reduced court events. The reader should bear this in mind when drawing conclusions about the trends in recent years, especially 2021/2022."
More information is available in Legal Services at [LA3.08(1)] on Westlaw New Zealand.
Kevin Leary is a Senior Legal Editor in the New Zealand Analytical Law team at Thomson Reuters. He has more than 20 years' experience as an editor of bound books, looseleafs, precedents and their digital equivalents.