2020–21 annual report our performance

Overview of services

The Australian Government and the states and territories entered into a National Legal Assistance Partnership Agreement (NLAP) in July 2020. This agreement expires in June 2025. The NLAP governs the manner in which Commonwealth legal aid services funding to the states and territories is to be used, as well as the broader goals and objectives of legal assistance services.

The previous National Partnership Agreement outlined benchmarks on which to report on, whereas the NLAP requires national performance indicators to be reported.

The NLAP national performance indictors are:

• legal representation services
• legal assistance services
• information and referral services
• community legal education
• facilitated resolution processes
• stakeholder engagement.

Table 3. Overview of Legal Aid Queensland services 2020–21

Queensland Government service delivery statement measures

Table 4. Queensland Government service standards 2020–21

Notes:

1. This measure demonstrates the effectiveness of the decision-making process for approval of grants of aid to clients.
2. This measure represents the importance to local suppliers of receiving accurate payments on a timely basis for services provided. LAQ relies on the work performed by private sector preferred supplier firms to deliver legal services. Accounts processed by the Grants Division are predominantly for legal representation and it demonstrates the effectiveness of the Grants Division to review and process all accounts within a 14-day period. Adherence to the 14-day payment terms is a contractual obligation and paying accounts on time greatly provides for the continuity and support for legal aid services to financially disadvantaged Queenslanders.
3. This measure reflects the unique criminal law duty lawyer service and the efficiency of this service as it calculates the average time spent with a client and converts this into a dollar figure based on the hourly rate. The 2019-20 and 2020-21 target/estimate of $66 reflects the cost of an average criminal law duty lawyer session (i.e. 30 minutes average session at the rate of $132 per hour paid to referred supplier firms) as provided by preferred supplier firms. The criminal law duty lawyer service is provided by both in-house lawyers and lawyers from LAQ’s panel of private sector preferred supplier firms.
4. This measure demonstrates the efficiency of the contact centre services, as it calculates the average time spent on a call through the contact centre and converts this into a dollar figure based on the hourly salary rate of contact centre staff excluding overheads. The 2020-21 target/estimate has been updated due to the 1.75% salary increase.