# Cabinet puts €22m a year into legal aid solicitors and barristers

> From 2030 the cabinet will spend €22m a year on legal aid solicitors and barristers, State Secretary Claudia van Bruggen told parliament, to tackle a shortage of training places.

Politics · published 2026-11-13 05:42 · https://nlnow.nl/a/cabinet-to-put-22m-a-year-into-social-legal-aid-lawyers/

The cabinet will invest €22 million a year from 2030 in legal aid solicitors and barristers (sociale advocatuur), State Secretary Claudia van Bruggen (Justice and Security, D66) said on Thursday in a letter to parliament. The money is meant to resolve the shortage of training places.

The cabinet wants 3,000 legal aid solicitors to have joined or stayed in the profession over ten years. The money will pay for, among other things, a training allowance and higher rates for legal aid solicitors.

Van Bruggen is convinced the investments will help counter "the urgent threat of a shrinking number of legal aid lawyers and the shortage of training places".

The €22 million comes from an annual pot of €45 million, available from 2030, for strengthening the rule of law. The amount will rise to that level over the coming years.

The rest of the pot will go on law centres (€10 million) and on lowering court fees (griffierechten, €13 million). Legal aid solicitors and barristers therefore get nearly half of the money set aside for the rule of law.

**Social lawyers get the largest share of the €45m rule-of-law pot** (€m a year; source: Letter to parliament from the State Secretary for Justice and Security)

- Rule-of-law pot from 2030: 45
- Social legal aid lawyers: 22
- Lowering court fees: 13
- Social-legal services: 10

## Background

- **sociale advocatuur**: Social legal aid lawyers (sociale advocatuur) are lawyers who advise and represent people with legal problems in areas such as social security, benefits, debt, housing, employment and immigration, often for clients who have little money. Their work is largely publicly funded through the legal aid system, so clients usually pay little or nothing themselves. The branch depends on a steady supply of lawyers trained in these fields.
- **griffierechten**: Court fees (griffierechten) are the fees people pay to the court registry (griffie) when they start a court case or an appeal, for example in civil, administrative and certain other proceedings. They are set by the government as fixed amounts and are one of the costs of going to court. Because they can discourage people from taking legal action, changes to them are a recurring topic in discussions about access to justice.

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