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 £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 £82,453,572.
- In 2024/25, £68.0m (56.6% of total legal aid expenditure) was authorised to solicitor firms, with £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 £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% (£33.8m) of all legal aid expenditure, the vast majority of which (£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.
Notes to editors:
- This bulletin presents legal aid statistics up to March 2025 and builds upon summary statistics released through a separate headline bulletin on 29th May 2025. It provides a more granular breakdown of the number of applications granted and associated expenditure for both criminal and civil cases. Applicant and provider characteristics are also explored.
2. With an immediate focus on 2024/25, comparisons are made, where possible, back to 2019/20 - the year in which the Legal Services Agency Northern Ireland (LSANI; ‘the Agency’) launched its new digital case management system (LAMS) as part of an extensive transformation program.
3. Data underpinning this publication have been extracted from LAMS as annual snapshots. While the Agency is responsible for adjudicating on applications for civil legal services, the grant of criminal legal aid is a judicial function. Accordingly, data covering the grant of criminal legal aid, while recorded on LAMS, are ultimately sourced from the case management system (ICOS) within Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunal Service (NICTS) and shared between the two organisations through a daily interface arrangement.
4. Prior to 2019/20, legal aid was primarily a paper-based operation, with only a subset of information stored electronically. The respective case management system (Phoenix) has since been decommissioned meaning that comparable data to those contained within the bulletin are less likely to be available.
5. It is envisaged that the next statistical release in this series, containing data for the 2025/26 year, will be available in May 2026.
6. Official Statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. They undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure that they meet customer needs and are produced free from any political interference. They are also subject to restrictions in terms of pre-release access.
7. The bulletin is available in HTML format from either the Legal Aid section of this website or by contacting:
Information and Analysis Unit
Legal Services Agency Northern Ireland
3rd Floor, AIB Building
92 Ann Street
Belfast BT1 3HH
E-mail
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