Legal Aid in Northern Ireland: Headline Statistics 2024/25

Date published: 29 May 2025

This bulletin presents headline 2024/25 legal aid statistics for Northern Ireland (alongside 2023/24 equivalent figures), focusing on applications granted and authorised expenditure for criminal and civil cases.

Summary

Key findings from the bulletin include:

• In 2024/25, a total of 61,573 cases were granted legal aid. Of these, over two-thirds (67.5%; 41,570) were criminal cases with 32.5% (20,003) representing civil cases granted by the Agency.
• At 61,573, the number of applications granted in 2024/25 shows a 3.6% reduction on 2023/24 (63,881).
• 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.
• A total of Pound 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 on the previous year when expenditure totalled Pound 114,007,192.
• In 2024/25, authorised expenditure was split fairly evenly between criminal (50.8%) and civil (49.2%) cases.
• While criminal expenditure increased by 15.1% between 2023/24 and 2024/25, civil expenditure fell by 3.3%.
• In 2024/25 just under Pound 68.0m (56.6%) of legal aid expenditure was authorised to solicitor firms, with just over Pound 51.5m (42.9%) authorised to barristers.