Exploring the potential of administrative benefits data to evaluate the impact of legal services

The United Kingdom has been a pioneer in mapping the legal problems people face, yet surprisingly little causal evidence shows how access to legal assistance changes outcomes. Practitioners and a substantial body of qualitative research point to legal help as transformative for people unable to navigate the legal system on their own. Yet, the evaluation research demonstrating how, and for whom, it matters most remains scarce (Sandefur and Burnett, 2023). The gap is narrower and more specific: we lack robust causal evidence showing the impact of providing or withholding publicly funded legal assistance. This is the kind of evidence needed to support cost-benefit analysis and investment decisions in a way that is now routine in healthcare, education, and employment policy. 

Since 1949, legal aid has funded legal advice and representation for people who cannot afford a lawyer, and the UK has invested heavily in understanding who needs it. Following the landmark Paths to Justice survey (Genn, 1999), the government commissioned a series of national surveys to map the legal problems people encounter and how they try to resolve them (Pleasence et al., 2004a; 2006; 2010), a tradition continued today by the biennial Legal Needs Survey (Legal Services Board and The Law Society, 2024). This body of research has established that people on low incomes are disproportionately likely to experience clusters of interrelated legal problems (Pleasence et al., 2004b). These problems tend to concentrate around everyday issues most closely tied to poverty and material hardship: housing, debt, and welfare benefits, areas commonly referred to by practitioners as social welfare or poverty law. Left unresolved, these ‘mounting problems’ tend not to stay contained. Instead, they cascade into worsening housing insecurity, deteriorating health, reduced capacity for work, and deepening poverty (Pleasence et al., 2007).