Through a toll-free number and multiple in-person locations such as courthouse offices, duty counsel and community legal clinics, the organization provides more than one million assists to low-income Ontario residents each year.

[12] The creation of the community legal clinic system sought to alleviate this problem by providing low-income Ontarians with dedicated resources to help them resolve these matters.

[14] Over the next decade as OLAP grew and the organization expanded the number of legal clinics, operation costs began to increase substantially.

By the early 1990s and at the peak of the recession, OLAP was issuing more than 200,000 certificates a year and covering a broad range of criminal, family, refugee, and other civil claims.

[15] Faced with a recession, the province responded by freezing funding[16] and reducing the legal aid certificate program by $27.5 million.

To address some of these issues, the Government of Ontario committed in 2014 to raising the eligibility thresholds to "allow over one million more people to qualify for legal aid services".

In February 2008, the organization was criticized in an 87-page report by the Ontario Ombudsman for mishandling of funds in the legal defence of Richard Wills.

[23] There has been growing concern that Legal Aid Ontario's financial eligibility criteria lags behind not only other provinces but also the low-income cut-off.

[25] To rectify this, Legal Aid Ontario has committed to increasing the financial eligibility threshold by six per cent each year, starting in April 2017 until it falls in line with the low-income cut-off.

In addition, his Honour observed paragraph 60 that the litigant "conducted herself as if her Legal Aid certificate amounted to a blank cheque – unlimited resources which most unrepresented Respondents would be hard-pressed to match."

The Honourable Mr. Justice Pazaratz further raised concerns on March 13, 2017, in the matter of Abdulaali v Salih, 2017 ONSC 1609 (CanLII)[28] again criticized the misuse of Legal Aid Funds by Family Law litigants.

In the first paragraph of the order, the Honourable Mr. Justice Pazaratz states that "The next time anyone at Legal Aid Ontario tells you they're short of money, don’t believe it.

The Honourable Mr. Justice Pazaratz again in paragraph 31, frustrated by the wasteful use of taxpayer money and frustration with counsel stated: "To add motivation, I explained that if they didn't come to their senses I would formally request that the Area Director of Legal Aid Ontario attend before me to justify the obscene expenditure of tax money on a simple case with such an obvious solution."