Justice at a disadvantage

The most disadvantaged Victorians experience legal problems at the highest rate, severity, and duration, and have the highest unmet legal need. However, looking beyond disadvantage, there remains widespread unmet legal need and low legal capability across the whole of the Victorian community.

Our short paper, Justice at a disadvantage, explores this interplay of disadvantage, legal need, and legal capability in Victorians experiencing legal problems, drawing on data from the Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS).

Hear directly from the authors of the paper, Dr Hugh McDonald and Grants Director, Melanie, Rygl, as they discuss the findings and implications of disadvantage on legal problems, and the work there is to do on improving access to justice.

Key findings

Disadvantage compounds legal problems

Each additional form of disadvantage increases the likelihood of facing legal problems. Legal problem rates rise from 38% among those with no disadvantage, to 66% among those with five or more indicators.

There are an estimated number of multiply disadvantaged adult Victorians of more than 1.5 million.

A small group faces a large share of legal issues

Only 12% of Victorians experience three or more indicators of disadvantage, yet they account for 25% of all legal problems.

Between no disadvantage and high disadvantage, housing problems doubled, government and public services tripled, and problem frequency increased between four-fold and seven-fold for injury or illness, family, debt or money, and government payment problems.

Legal problems hit harder for disadvantaged Victorians

Severity and impact rise sharply with disadvantage. People with higher disadvantage are far more likely to experience every consequence of a legal problem we measured, including stress, ill health, family breakdown, job loss, and housing instability.

Disadvantage limits resolution

Those with higher disadvantage find it harder to resolve problems themselves and rely more on legal and public services to resolve their legal problems.

However, despite seeking help more often from services, their legal issues last longer with 43% still unresolved after three years.

Legal need goes beyond disadvantage

While disadvantage intensifies legal need, one in four Victorians without any disadvantage also face unmet legal need and low legal capability. This “missing majority” shows that access to justice challenges extend across the whole community.

What next?

To reduce unmet legal need and strengthen legal capability across Victoria, policy and service responses must take a dual focus: addressing the compounded barriers faced by the most disadvantaged Victorians, while also improving access to justice and capability across the broader community.

This could look like:

• Tailored service design that aligns legal assistance and justice processes with the complexity, capability, and lived experience of people experiencing multiple forms of disadvantage.
• System-wide collaboration that extends beyond traditional legal institutions to include health, social, and community sectors, recognising their critical role in identifying and responding to disadvantage.
• New approaches to access to justice that move beyond conventional service models to meet people where they are and respond to the diverse ways legal problems emerge and are resolved.
• Investment in evidence and evaluation to deepen understanding of legal need and capability, and to inform adaptive, data-driven service and system reform.
• A whole-of-community capability approach, expanding the lens beyond disadvantage to build awareness, confidence, and accessibility across the ‘missing majority’ who experience unmet legal need.

Frequently asked questions

What were the indicators of disadvantage used in the analysis? How were they measured?

For the analysis of this paper, we used data from the Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS), which explored how Victorians experience, understand, and deal with legal problems in their everyday lives. It measured legal need and legal capability in Victoria for the first time.

To determine the level of disadvantage, we used a simple count measure of the number of indicators of disadvantage a PULS respondent had. The eight indicators of disadvantage used are:

• non-English main language and low English proficiency (i.e. did not speak English well or not at all)
• not working and looking for employment or not working due to ill-health or disability
• single parent
• low educational achievement (i.e. less than Year 12 or equivalent)
• long-term illness or disability
• moderate or severe mental distress
• low income (i.e. in the lowest annual household income quintile of $0 to $39,988)
• financial stress (i.e. being unable to eat, heat or cool home because of a shortage of money).

How can I use this research?

This short paper provides data-based evidence that can help services, researchers, and policymakers understand how varying levels of disadvantage play a role in people's experience of legal problems, and the implications of low legal capability in the broader Victorian community. It can be used to inform service design, identify unmet need, support advocacy, and guide further research into access to justice.

What is the Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS), and how was it conducted?

The Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) is a global first, large-scale face-to-face survey into how Victorians understand, experience, and navigate everyday legal issues. It was conducted through interviews with a probability sample of Victorians, asking about a wide range of common problems with a legal dimension, from consumer issues to employment, housing, and family matters.

How many Victorians participated in the survey, and how representative are the findings?

Using probability sampling, 6,008 adults were selected across Victoria to take part in the PULS. The large number of survey respondents gives us scope to explore the data in a wide variety of ways, with the ability to look at individual problems or social and demographic groups in detail.

Probability sampling ensures that every adult Victorian living at a residential address had the chance to be included in our sample, allowing us to generalise the findings to Victoria as a whole.

Where can I learn more about PULS and relevant publications?

You can find our PULS reports, the dataset, and related publications on our PULS project page, alongside resources that explain the methodology and key findings in more detail.