Legal Aid in Northern Ireland: Annual Statistics to March 2025 published today
Date published:
The Legal Services Agency Northern Ireland today published Statistical Bulletin 2/2025 'Legal Aid in Northern Ireland: Annual Statistics to March 2025'. It is an Official Statistics publication.
This bulletin presents legal aid statistics for Northern Ireland since 2019/20, covering applications granted and authorised expenditure for criminal and civil cases, alongside applicant and supplier characteristics.
Summary
Key findings from the bulletin include:
- At 61,573, the number of legal aid cases granted in 2024/25 represents the lowest annual total over the past six years, down 3.6% on 2023/24 (63,881) and 17.1% lower than in 2019/20 (74,298). This continued reduction reflects more stringent verification of capital threshold as part of the financial eligibility test associated with applications for civil legal services.
- A total of Pound 119,990,900 was authorised from the legal aid fund in 2024/25. This represents the highest annual total on record, and a 45.5% increase on 2019/20 when expenditure totalled Pound 82,453,572.
- In 2024/25, Pound 68.0m (56.6% of total legal aid expenditure) was authorised to solicitor firms, with Pound 51.5m (42.9%) authorised to barristers. The remaining expenditure can be attributed to third party providers.
- Focusing on profit costs alone (excluding VAT and disbursements), the 2024/25 split in expenditure between solicitor firms and barristers narrows to 52.1% and 47.4% respectively.
- Of the Pound 51.5m paid to barristers in 2024/25, a greater proportion was authorised to Junior Counsel (60%) than Senior Counsel (40%).
- In 2024/25, taxed expenditure accounted for 28.2% (Pound 33.8m) of all legal aid expenditure, the vast majority of which (Pound 30.9m) was authorised in relation to civil proceedings.
- During 2024/25, the legal aid grant rate for males (45.9 grants per 1,000 population) was two-and-a-half times that of females (18.5 per 1,000 population). Despite displaying similar grant rates for civil cases (10.3 and 10.5 respectively), males were over four times more likely to be the recipient of legal aid in criminal cases (35.6 vs 8.1).
- In 2024/25, a total of 431 solicitor firms registered on LAMS to provide legal aid services in Northern Ireland. This equates to a rate of 22.4 firms per 100,000 population.
