The Public Understanding of Law Survey

The PULS is a Victoria-wide survey to understand how people see, understand and engage with the law.

Discover how people understand and engage with the law

The Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) is ground-breaking research to help us better understand legal capability, attitudes and experience of the law in the Victorian community. 

The PULS is a large-scale face-to-face survey exploring how people understand, experience and navigate law and everyday life problems with a legal dimension (‘justiciable’ problems). It is made up of a predominantly face-to-face sample of 6,008 respondents across Victoria employing the best survey methods available to yield the highest quality data. 

This report is the first of three volumes. It explores legal need in Victoria, how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them and how they progress and conclude.  

The second volume of the PULS report provides an overview of levels of a range of different dimensions of legal capability across the Victorian population. It also explores the sociodemographic factors associated with different levels of legal capability.

The third volume of the PULS report draws upon the full PULS survey dataset to investigate more fully the drivers of problem resolving behaviour and problem outcomes, by incorporating the new legal capability measures into the statistical models of problem resolving behaviour and outcome reported in this volume.

Learn more about PULS

Visit the PULS website to get the latest reports, resources and to learn more about what we are achieving with the PULS.

Project publications

Explore the knowledge, skills and attributes that are required to effectively understand and use the law.

This first volume updates the broad picture of access to justice and legal need, explores how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them, and how they progress and conclude.

Keep in touch

Email or send an online message to our teams.