In order to fulfill its mandate and realise its mission, the Legal Aid South Africa uses four broad channels:

• Justice Centres
• Cooperation agreements
• Special litigation
• Other cost effective and efficient ways of accessing justice.

Justice Centres
Access to justice is provided through Justice Centres. A Justice Centre works like a law firm, where legal aid applicants can go for legal assistance. Each Justice Centre has a principal attorney, who is the head of the Justice Centre, professional assistants, candidate attorneys, and paralegals. A Justice Centre offers legal assistance for defined criminal and civil matters. Services offered by Justice Centres include advice, referrals and litigation.

Cooperation agreements
Legal Aid South Africa has cooperation agreements with various universities that have law clinics. Through the law clinics, the universities, in conjunction with the Legal Aid South Africa, provide legal assistance to their communities. Legal Aid South Africa currently has cooperation agreements with Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Venda, Stellenbosch University and University of Port Elizabeth.

Special litigation
There are some special cases that, if taken to court and won, would have a major impact on the South African law. These types of cases often involve groups of people taking legal action together and therefore require special teams of legal representatives to assist them. The legal representatives may be from the Justice Centres or they may be private attorneys.

Legal Aid South Africa considers such cases strictly on a case-by-case basis and once certain criteria are met, then Legal Aid South Africa makes funding available from a special fund. The fund, which creates the capacity for the bringing of impact litigation, is particularly important against the backdrop of the Constitution, which, for the first time, introduced class actions in to the South African with respect to constitutional violations of the bill of rights.