We are using part of the Public Purpose Fund for investments that support positive social and environmental outcomes, improve access to justice and generate financial returns.
Our Impact Investing program will help direct capital towards solutions that prevent legal problems, address unmet legal need and make legal and justice services more accessible.
Our approach to Impact Investment
Impact investing intentionally generates positive, measurable social or environmental outcomes alongside a financial return.
For VLSB+C, this means investing in initiatives that can:
- address the underlying causes of legal problems
- respond to unmet legal need
- strengthen the systems and services that help people understand and use the law
- improve access to justice.
The program brings together investment capital, research, specialist expertise, partnerships and VLSB+C resources to support lasting change in our community.
The change we want to support
Through the program, we aim to contribute to:
- a stronger justice innovation ecosystem
- fairer and more accessible legal and justice systems
- better social, environmental and justice outcomes for people and communities
- greater public trust and engagement with the legal and justice systems
- a growing justice impact investment market in Australia.
This includes helping promising initiatives become investment-ready, supporting effective solutions to grow and encouraging more investors to consider justice-focused investment opportunities.
How the Impact Investing Program works
The program will see up to $100 million invested across 2 streams, over the next 5 years:
- Impact Investment Fund of up to $90 million
- Access to Justice Impact Investment Sub-Fund of up to $10 million.
Impact Investment Fund
The Impact Investment Fund will make investments that address significant social or environmental challenges that directly or indirectly improve access to justice, while also achieving sustainable financial returns. Investments will address the drivers of unmet legal need, including but not limited to:
- housing
- education
- employment
- health
- financial wellbeing
- climate and environmental pressures
- infrastructure and essential services.
By supporting better outcomes in these areas, the fund aims to help prevent legal problems and strengthen people’s ability to understand and engage with the legal system.
Access to Justice Impact Investment Sub-Fund
Within the broader fund, $10 million has been allocated to investments focused on directly improving access to justice.
The sub-fund may support initiatives such as:
- affordable legal services
- consumer-facing legal technology
- tools that help people find and navigate legal services
- technology that makes legal services more efficient
- court technology
- other products and services that improve access to justice.
The sub-fund may accept higher risk, longer timeframes, lower returns or other non-standard investment terms where this helps unlock significant impact that might not otherwise occur.
Learn more
The Victorian Legal Services Board (The Board) and Commissioner is the independent regulator of Victoria’s legal profession. The Board is the trustee of the Public Purpose Fund.
The Public Purpose Fund is a statutory fund that supports legal regulation and access to justice in Victoria.
The Fund is primarily financed through interest earned on Victorian lawyers' and law firms’ trust accounts. Investment income, practicing certificate fees and fines are other sources of financing to this Fund.
Impact investing gives us another way to use the Fund responsibly, delivering measurable benefits to people and communities while generating investment returns.
The Victorian Legal Services Board (the Board) oversees the Impact Investing Program as part of its management of the Public Purpose Fund.
The Board has appointed Australian Impact Investments (Aii), a specialist impact investment adviser, to help identify, assess and manage investment opportunities that align with the program's financial and impact objectives.
Potential investments will be considered against both financial and impact objectives.
Assessment will include factors such as:
- alignment with VLSB+C’s objectives
- the outcome the investment is seeking to achieve
- who or what will benefit
- the scale and significance of the expected impact
- the risk of unintended negative impacts
- financial and operational capability of the investment
- the strength of its approach to measuring and reporting impact
- the financial risks and expected returns.
Suitable investments will be subject to due diligence and VLSB+C’s established investment governance and approval processes.
Australian Impact Investments are identifying and advising the Board on investment opportunities for the Impact Investment Fund.
Expressions of interest seeking investments for the Access to Justice Impact Investment Sub-Fund will open in due course
Impact investments seek both a measurable positive impact and a financial return. They are different from our grants, which seek measurable positive impact with no requirement for capital repayment.
Our holistic approach to supporting access to justice means it is possible that grant funding or other support may help an initiative become ready for investment.
Read more about our grants program.