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 Center’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