1. Fixed Fees Survey results
06 Dec 2013 — By Dianne Martin, Barrister
ADLSi LAWNEWS
Some of the EJP students who assisted with conducting the survey. Pictured from left
to right are Michelle Kim, Jarinda Engelbrecht, Gayathiri Ganeshan, Christine Lee
and Joanne Lee. (Not pictured: Rosemary Judd, Ian Ko, Sally Wu and Helen
Thompson.)
“The introduction of the new fees framework is intended to provide greater certainty for
legally aided clients, legal aid providers, and for the government around payments for legal
services. It is also intended to be more administratively efficient, and to provide a more
sustainable base for legal aid.”
These were the words of the then Acting Deputy Secretary, Legal Services, Stuart White on
10 February 2012 referring to the newly announced consultative fixed fees policy and
framework for family legal aid. Some 13 months out, do family legal aid practitioners
consider that these intentions have been achieved?
Background
It will be remembered that consultation over family fixed fees closed on 9 March 2012.
Practitioners were given a very short timeframe to consider the ramifications of this radical
overhaul of legal services and the impact of it on both them and their legally-aided clients.
The new system was implemented on 23 July 2012.
What is probably less known is that the fixed fees policy development took place in an
information vacuum, without reference to the types of litigant bringing proceedings in the
New Zealand Family Court. The numbers of new substantive applications filed each year by
applicants who were self-represented, and those who were legally-aided, was not information
the Ministry of Justice could put their hands on at the time.1
ADLSI Family Law Committee’s “Fixed Fees Survey” initiative

2. Aware of increasing concerns about the operation of fixed fees in the family law context, the
ADLSI Family Law Committee in September this year conducted a survey of members of
ADLSI who identified themselves as family practitioners.
Survey data reveals, from the inside, the family law practitioner’s view of the impact of fixed
fees on family legal aid providers, family legal aid practices, and their legally-aided clients –
both after the first year of operation, and prior to the changes arising from the Legal Services
Amendment Act 2013.
These changes had the effect of further tightening eligibility, and implemented a user charge,
requiring legal aid applicants to pay $50 to providers directly. So far as ADLSI is aware, no
other like survey has issued to date.
Survey respondents
107 practitioners responded to the survey. Overall, the number of practitioners who
responded is roughly equivalent to 10% of the total number of listed providers of family legal
services (1,000 nationally, according to information from the General Manager of Provider
Services).
Of the respondents to the survey:
• 78 were designated providers under the family fixed fee schedules.
• 65 were providing the legal services for which they were designated as a provider.
• 99 of respondents were providers of family legal aid services before the introduction
of fixed fees.
Proportion of practice legally aided and types of fixed fee work
74 respondents answered the question “What percentage of your family legal practice is
legally aided?”. 25 answered “less than 20%”, 24 answered “between 20 and 50%”, 13
answered “between 50 and 80%”, and 12 answered “between 80 and 100%”.
70 respondents identified the specific fixed fee schedules they were providing legal services
in relation to: 64 in Care of Children Act 2004 cases, 54 in Domestic Violence Act 1995
cases, 46 in care and protection cases, 41 in paternity and 41 in relationship property, 16 in
adoption, 9 in maintenance, 12 in protection of personal and property rights.
Only 42 of 73 respondents to the question “Have you provided legal services in ‘Fixed Fee
Plus’ Cases?” answered yes. The main identified case-types for fixed fee plus grants were
care of children/guardianship (39), care and protection (18), domestic violence (21), and
relationship property (17).
30 respondents answered the question “Are you providing the same family legal aid service/s
under fixed fees as you provided under the former scheme?” in the affirmative, and 50 in the
negative.
Are practitioners doing less legal aid work under fixed fee arrangements?

3. A series of open-ended questions were designed to find out whether practitioners were doing
less legal aid work under fixed fees and if the scope of their service delivery had changed in
any way, and why.
Auckland University law students involved in the Faculty of Law’s Equal Justice Project
(EJP), analysed the open-ended questions and reported to the Committee on the results.
The EJP is a youth-run pro bono initiative which strives to promote human rights and support
practitioners, interest organisations, and community groups who share its goals of promoting
equality, inclusivity, and respect for human dignity. The students relished the opportunity
provided by this project to get a glimpse of current issues facing family practitioners working
at the coalface.
The students divided practitioners into two categories, “long-term providers of family legal
aid” and “short to mid-term providers of family legal aid”. 38 practitioners had been
providing family legal aid services for over 10 years. These were designated “long-term
providers”. 71% of long-term providers were considering stopping legal aid work.
Figure A shows the specific contributory factors to a decision to stop legal aid work.
Figure B shows the same information for the short to mid-term providers (0-10 years in
practice; 8 practitioners).

4. Impact on service delivery
The overall response rate to the question “If the scope of your service delivery has changed,
please tell us why?” was 50.5%. 44% said they were no longer undertaking as much family
legal aid work under fixed fees as they had prior to the introduction of the scheme. 9% said
they had stopped doing family legal aid work altogether or that they will stop the work in the
near future. 9% said that communication to and with clients was reduced due to financial
considerations. 3.7% said a lot more work was being done by secretarial or support staff
under fixed fees to save costs on practitioner time. 15% said the scope of their service
delivery had not changed since the inception of fixed fees.
Many practitioners provided detailed qualitative responses raising considerable concerns
about access to justice for their legally-aided family clients since the introduction to fixed
fees.
ADLSI wishes to thank the Family Law Committee for undertaking this survey, the students
of the EJP for their assistance, and all those practitioners who took the time to respond and
thereby help provide a useful picture of how fixed fees are operating in the family law and
legal aid environments.
Readers are able to access the ADLSI website to view the whole survey at
www.adls.org.nzhttp://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/adls-media/2805590/Equal-
Justice-Project-ADLSi-FFF-Survey-Analysis-v2.pdf.
1 The ADLSI Family Law Committee made an Official Information Act request seeking this
information from the Ministry of Justice on 16 December 2011. Specifically, the Committee
sought breakdowns by type of litigant (self-represented or legally aided) in new substantive
applications filed pursuant to the Care of Children Act 2004 (COCA) for the years January
2000 to date 2011. On 5 January 2012 the Ministry of Justice responded “Information not
available for some questions”. Information held by the Ministry of Justice could be accessed
at an “individual case level” only, requiring “substantial collation”. Hence, the request was
declined on the basis of s 18(e) of the Official Information Act.