In a confidential report to government this year, Legal Aid NSW warned the delivery of legal aid was "increasingly under threat" and recommended an immediate increase in the base hourly rate for private solicitors from $150 to $210, with a proportionate increase of 40 per cent for barristers. It said a $236.8 million funding injection over four years would help "avert the crises experienced in other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, where private lawyers have withdrawn their services and created a crisis in the justice system". The government will instead deliver $88 million in extra funding, under which the base hourly rate of $150 for solicitors will be increased incrementally over the next four financial years until it reaches $195 per hour in 2023-24. Barristers' fees will also increase in the same period. Under the staged rollout, a $10 increase to the solicitors' hourly rate will take effect each financial year from July 1 next year until 2023-24, when it will increase by $15. The government said "structural changes" would also be made from January to enable lawyers to be paid for a greater number of hours of pre-trial work, including prison visits and preparation for serious criminal matters. Travel allowances for lawyers covering long distances to regional courts will also be increased.

Private lawyers in NSW had warned that once their actual working hours and overheads were taken into account, the present hourly rates and restrictions on the number of hours' work that could be claimed resulted in them making less than the minimum wage in some cases. Mr Speakman said the funding would "enable greater access to legal representation for disadvantaged people and help create a more sustainable system for small country law firms supporting communities through the worst drought in a century". He said the increase would result in private lawyers receiving fees "comparable with [the rates in] other states and territories". Private solicitors acting in legally-aided matters in Victoria, South Australia and Queensland receive between $171 and $204 an hour across criminal and family law matters, compared with $150 in NSW. Solicitors acting on behalf of NSW government departments receive up to $290 an hour. The NSW Law Society, which represents the state's 34,000 solicitors, welcomed the funding.

Loading Law Society president Elizabeth Espinosa said "this funding will benefit vulnerable people in our community, people at the lowest end of the poverty threshold, who are struggling to deal with family violence, criminal and debt matters, who will now have better access to legal advice". But shadow attorney-general Paul Lynch said the government had been "happy to allow the system to fall into crisis" and the funding was "way too little, way too late". "Pretending that this provides any real solution is illusory," Mr Lynch said. In June, the NSW Bar Association took the extraordinary step of advising its members they had "no obligation" to take on legal aid cases while the Berejiklian government did nothing to address the "abysmal" state of funding. It declined to comment on Thursday.