Highest annual total authorised from the legal aid fund
Date published:
New official statistics published 29/05/2025 by NISRA statisticians in the Department for Justice reveal 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 5.2% increase (£5,983,708) on the previous year when expenditure totalled £114,007,192.
In 2024/25, a total of 61,573 cases were granted legal aid. Of these, over two thirds (67.5% or 41,570) were criminal cases with (32.5% or 20,003) representing civil cases granted by the Agency.
At 61,573, the number of applications granted in 2024/25 demonstrates a decrease of 3.6% from the 63,881 applications granted in 2023/24.
Key findings:
- While the number of criminal grants in 2024/25 (41,570) decreased by 6.1% compared with 2023/24 (44,260), the number of civil grants increased by 1.9% (from 19,621 to 20,003) during the same period.
- In 2024/25, authorised expenditure was split fairly evenly between criminal (50.8%) and civil (49.2%) cases. Of the £119,990,900 authorised expenditure, criminal expenditure totalled just under £61million and civil expenditure totalled just over £59million.
- While criminal expenditure increased by 15.1% between 2023/24 and 2024/25, civil expenditure fell by 3.3%.
- In 2024/25 just under £68.0m (56.6%) of legal aid expenditure was authorised to solicitor firms, with just over £51.5m (42.9%) authorised to barristers.
About the publication:
The report details information on the number of legal aid applications granted and corresponding expenditure on civil and criminal cases; and by types of provider (solicitor firms, barristers and third party payees).
This publication is the third in a series of Official Statistics to be released by the Legal Services Agency Northern Ireland (LSANI).
Further information:
For the HTML full version report please visit: Headline Statistics
Infographic PDF: Legal Aid Headline Statistics 2024-2025 - Infographic