Assessing Availability of Public Legal Aid: Evidence from Finland

This paper discusses eligibility to and availability of public legal aid in the context of Finland. In particular, we look at which socioeconomic characteristics correlate with being an eligible public legal aid client on one hand and conversely identify several barriers to access that prevent otherwise eligible, often low-income, clients receiving legal aid on the other. We combine three data sets including results from interviews conducted in 2021 with Finnish civil servants, legal counsels and private lawyers within the public legal aid infrastructure, Finnish Legal Register Centre's data on all public legal aid clients between 2016-2018 as well as Statistics Finland's administrative registry data consisting of socioeconomic information on all Finnish citizens. Finally, we provide a discussion on our policy-relevant findings in terms of frictions in matching clients in need to public legal aid services, which are in Finland provided by both private lawyers and public legal aid attorneys.