Advocates in Indonesia do not generally provide free legal assistance to poor persons. Advocates largely believe that these matters should be handled by non-governmental organizations, and it is these organizations that have been the drivers of legal services to the poor, not lawyers. Indonesia also faces some confusion between ‘legal aid’ and ‘free legal assistance’, as both terms can be translated as ‘bantuan hukum’, and the historical conflation of these two terms has not supported identification of a lawyers’ responsibility in access to justice. Historically the state did not have an obligation to provide legal services to poor persons, although this changed in 2011 with the Law on Legal Aid, which created a state obligation to provide legal aid. This law is a major step forward, but there are indications that state-paid legal aid services from the ‘legal aid organizations’ recognized under the law will now take centre stage, and that pro bono will not develop. Access to justice in Indonesia therefore continues to search for meaning: literally in the sense that neither legal aid nor pro bono are clearly understood, figuratively, as there is no vision of how to proceed, and practically, as many barriers impede current programmes.