An ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry is looking at the effectiveness of the ACT's policy response to domestic and family violence.

After a string of high profile deaths, the ACT government introduced a $21 million domestic violence package funded by a $30 levy on all households.

Legal Aid's chief executive Dr John Boersig and head of legal practice Heidi Yates told the committee the level of attention domestic violence had received had led to a 15 per cent rise in the number of clients seeking help for it in the past year.

In 2016-17, 22 per cent of all advice given or legal tasks undertaken by Legal Aid related to family violence or personal protection orders.

A 2016 review of its family law practice revealed 80 per cent of litigation files involved family violence.

Liberal MLA Giulia Jones asked if this was the "new norm".

Ms Yates said that workload was unlikely to fall anytime soon.

She likened the cultural change to that achieved through the public safety campaigns for seatbelts and drink driving.

"I think community understandings are changing and they're changing across all age profiles in relation to being able to identify what's OK and what's not OK and what healthy relationships look like and what they don't," Ms Yates said.

"I would expect this would lead to a continued demand to what we're currently seeing if not an increased demand because people are able to identify what's happening is not OK, whether that's a young man recognising that he wants to change his behaviour and seeking help or whether it's someone coming to us having been subjected to violence and needing immediate safety, I think it's a really positive movement."

Dr Boersig said he did not think the level of clients was an indicator of increasing violence but rather reflected higher levels of reporting.

"Given the number of people we are now seeing coming through for assistance, I don't see this [issue] going away for a long time," Dr Boersig said.

Legal Aid used its submission to the committee to highlight the "lost opportunity" it saw for family violence perpetrators who were let off on their first offence.

"Legal Aid regularly appears for family violence offenders in circumstances where it is their first offence and the offence is of relatively minor technical criminality," it said.

"These offenders are unlikely to see any significant sentence that might assist to bring about behavioural change. Such offenders are typically sentenced to a simple good behaviour order. Some of them are given no conviction and sent on their way.

"We would like see the exploration and consideration of how this cohort of offenders could be dealt with in a way that might secure the beginnings of behavioural change."

Legal Aid suggested offering offenders the chance to take part in programs at the point of initial police intervention or as part of bail conditions.

"We note that we are unaware of any current program specifically designed for this kind of offender with interventions typically (and not inappropriately) designed for more high-risk serious family violence offenders," its submission said.

"We regularly deal with matters where parents of young adults and partners contact police because they simply feel they have reached their limit and have nowhere else to turn.

"These clients commonly do not want their partner or child charged with a criminal offence but are seeking some sort of intervention to assist their loved one to begin to reflect on and change their behaviour."