Legal Aid Ontario’s financial eligibility guidelines

Legal Aid Ontario provides legal help for financially eligible low‑income Ontarians. When you apply for our services, you must undergo a financial eligibility test. This test allows us to determine whether a client qualifies for our services.

Financial eligibility for an individual is based on three components: the family unit, the income of the family unit, and the assets of the family unit. If the individual tested has income above the cut‑off levels and/or assets which exceed the exemption level, legal services may not be provided.

Our financial eligibility guidelines changed when the Legal Aid Services Act (LASA, 2020) was passed into law on July 8, 2020 and came into effect October 18, 2021. LASA, 2020 ushers in a modern approach to the management and administration of legal aid in Ontario. Our policies that govern financial eligibility, including the way we calculate household income and the parameters that this income must fall within, have been updated to help us better serve our clients.

For more information about legal aid eligibility, please review our guidelines:

Archived versions of our past financial eligibility guidelines may be found below. Please note that these links reference outdated guidelines that no longer apply to our current financial eligibility testing. They are for archive purposes only: