Next year marks the 35th anniversary of New Hampshire’s Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts Program, a unique partnership between New Hampshire’s financial institutions and civil legal services organizations that help thousands of Granite Staters get the civil legal help they need.
Started in 1982 by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the IOLTA Program requires attorneys to maintain interest-bearing trust accounts for clients’ funds that are very small in amount or will be held for a short time.
The interest generated on these accounts – a penny here, a penny there – is transferred to the New Hampshire Bar Foundation, which in turn grants it to several nonprofit organizations that offer free or reduced-fee civil legal services. (When an attorney holds a significant amount of a client’s money for a longer period of time, the interest is paid to the client.)
New Hampshire’s banks and credit unions have made charitable contributions of hundreds of thousands of dollars to civil legal services providers through higher interest rates on IOLTA Program accounts. We are especially grateful to our statewide Leadership Circle, a group of banks and credit unions that currently offer IOLTA Program rates of at least 2 percent: Bank of New Hampshire, Bellwether Community Credit Union, Mascoma Savings Bank, Members First Credit Union, Meredith Village Savings Bank, Merrimack County Savings Bank, Northway Bank, Passumpsic Savings Bank and Sugar River Bank.
Over the years, these financial institutions, and eight more that offer IOLTA rates of at least 1 percent, have made it possible for many thousands of people to access legal services they could never otherwise afford.
In 2015, the Bar Foundation funded nearly a million dollars in grants through the IOLTA Program. The grants funded legal services programs such as the Pro Bono Referral Program’s Domestic Violence Emergency Project, which coordinates volunteer representation of domestic violence survivors; the Legal Advice and Referral Center, which helps low-income people represent themselves in civil legal matters; and the Disability Rights Center – NH, which advocates for people with disabilities including children denied special education services.
Our program, New Hampshire Legal Assistance, received more than $500,000 in IOLTA funds in 2015. We used the funds to help more than 7,000 people with civil legal problems that impact their most basic needs, such as housing, food, medicine, and safety from abuse.
Connecting low-income people with lawyers is a linchpin of providing meaningful access to justice in New Hampshire; it also helps mitigate the many harmful effects of poverty.
The legal community, too, has stepped up to support the IOLTA Program.
By moving their required trust accounts to Leadership Circle financial institutions, volunteering for the Bar Foundation or standing against efforts to dismantle the program, the bar has consistently stood up for the IOLTA Program’s essential role in the profession’s commitment to access to justice. We are deeply grateful for these contributions to civil legal services in New Hampshire, and proud of the partnership we have been building for nearly 35 years.
The value of an investment in legal aid ripples through our economy: When we are able to help veterans obtain federal benefits they had been wrongly denied, they are able to buy groceries, pay utility bills and participate in the local economy.
When we can help a family fight a wrongful eviction, they do not need to turn to local homeless shelters, and when we can secure a protective order for a domestic violence survivor, she can be a more attentive and productive employee.
IOLTA funding helps our programs secure these and other benefits that are so important to low-income families and so important to our entire community.
(Sarah Mattson Dustin is the policy director of New Hampshire Legal Assistance, and a staff attorney in the Concord branch legal office. NHLA is a statewide nonprofit law firm representing low-income and elderly New Hampshire residents who cannot afford a lawyer. In addition to Concord, NHLA maintains offices in Berlin, Claremont, Manchester and Portsmouth.)