The Simplest Way to Support Legal Aid

Many people do not realize that the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program is a significant source of funding for civil legal services in our community. As a DC Bar Foundation board member and the treasurer, I am excited for the opportunity to connect with the Foundation’s grantee partners and other stakeholders to talk about the IOLTA program and some of the work we are doing to maximize the impact of the DC Bar Foundation’s IOLTA account.

IOLTA was first launched in 1981 by the Florida Bar Foundation, and it is a program that increases access to justice for individuals and families. The program allows attorneys to pool small or short-term client funds in interest-bearing accounts. While the individual deposits won’t generate meaningful interest, the accumulated interest that is generated from the pooled funds in a lawyers’ trust account adds up and can be used to support civil legal aid. The DC Bar Foundation has administered DC’s IOLTA program since 1985 when it was created by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

The interest generated from these accounts allows the DC Bar Foundation to provide general operating support grants to legal aid organizations to use for non-programmatic purposes, such as training and case management system updates. The revenue also helps support areas such as family law, consumer rights, health services, and housing. For instance, the Children’s Law Center (CLC) has a medical-legal partnership with Children’s National Health System and other health providers to eliminate the root causes of children’s health problems. In a recent Washington Lawyer article about the Foundation’s IOLTA program, CLC’s Chief Legal Officer LaShanda Adams said that “We are able to lessen the number of emergency room visits for children with asthma. Across multiple cases, we saw a drop from an average of seven visits per child per year to fewer than one after we successfully resolved their housing conditions.”

The Foundation’s board understands how important IOLTA funds are to grantee partner organizations, and the finance committee has prioritized efforts to continue to increase revenue. Most recently, we have reached out to banks that maintain large IOLTA accounts, but that offer notably lower interest rates than other banks with IOLTA accounts. The DC Bar Foundation is sharing information with banks on the benefits of offering interest rates that are comparable to peer institutions. Benefits like highlighting banks to law firms in DC and banks being able to publicize with their own regulators the funds that are delivered from IOLTA accounts to support legal services in the local community.

Lawyers admitted to practice in the District of Columbia are required to hold IOLTA-eligible funds in an interest-bearing trust account remitting to the DC Bar Foundation, with some limited exceptions. If you are an attorney, I strongly urge you to consider using a bank with high interest rates or encouraging your current bank to increase their rate. The Foundation has several Prime Partner banks where the current minimum prime partner bank rate is 3.56%. The higher the interest rate the more support we can provide to grantee partner legal services organizations.

In FY25, the DC Bar Foundation awarded $2 million in general support grants to 32 organizations, and as we look ahead, we want to be able to continue to support the civil legal aid services that help vulnerable residents across all 8 Wards. By being diligent with where we hold our IOLTA accounts, we can make this possible.

Sincerely,

Meredith Fuchs

DC Bar Foundation

Board Member and Treasurer