The Akron Legal News

Recession devastated legal aid funding

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: April 7, 2014

Last November, the Ohio State Bar Association Council of Delegates approved a resolution affirming that equal access to justice cannot be achieved without adequate funding for Ohio’s legal aids.

The council urged federal, state and local legislators to adopt laws ensuring full and adequate funding for legal aids across the state.

That move was in response to legal aid’s rapidly worsening funding crisis.

According to intake statistics, Ohio’s civil legal aid providers have had such a dramatic decrease in resources that for every one person they agree to help, they have to turn away three others.

All of Ohio’s six legal aids are non-profit organizations supported by grants, donations and United Way funding.

Another source of revenue is the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, which distributes funds to the legal aids based on the amount of the population living below the poverty line in the counties they serve.

The OLAF is also a private 501(c)(3) organization created by the legislature in the 1990s in order to address the results of a state-wide study that documented the amount of unmet civil legal needs among Ohio’s low-income and vulnerable populations.

The foundation distributes funds gained from interest on lawyer trust accounts, or IOLTA, and money gathered from a civil filing fee, which is currently $26 in the state of Ohio.

“Those funds are paid into a fund called the Legal Aid Fund, which the foundation is responsible for distributing to the legal aids that serve all of Ohio’s 88 counties,” said Jane Taylor, director of pro bono and communications for OLAF.

The individual legal aids also get funding from the Legal Services Corporation, a federal entity that was created by Congress in the 1970s and gets an appropriation from the federal budget.

Despite all these sources of revenue, Ohio’s legal aids have been struggling to make ends meet and they are some of the most overlooked victims of the recession.

During the last several years, interest rates paid in IOLTA have been at historic lows and the drop has impacted legal aid services significantly.

“To say that the loss of IOLTA interest rates has been devastating may even be putting it mildly,” said Taylor. “Since the economic recession, IOLTA funding has dropped about 90 percent.”

The filing fee revenue did not drop so significantly, according to Taylor, but overall, OLAF’s funding for civil legal aid declined by 54 percent between 2007 and 2012.

“As you can see, it’s very significant,” she said. “It’s had an impact on services.”

Federal funds have also taken a hard hit.

William Dowling, an Akron attorney and board member for OLAF, wrote in this month’s issue of Ohio Lawyer that In 2010, federal funding for legal aid hit its all-time high.

By 2013, sequestration cuts resulted in a loss of almost 20 percent to federal legal aid funding.

Now, government appropriations for legal aid are only $40 million more than in 1980 and, when adjusted for inflation, they are currently at an all-time low.

Dowling wrote that increased resources for legal aid “means fewer families in shelters, more children safe at school and at home, and more veterans getting the benefits they have earned by their services.”

Taylor noted that the common misconception is that people only need lawyers for criminal cases, but legal aids mostly work on issues that impact standards of living within communities.

According to OLAF’s annual report for its 2013 fiscal year, family, housing and consumer law are among the top services provided by legal aid in the state.

Fourteen percent of legal aid cases help build healthy communities and 12 percent help ensure economic stability for the state’s most at-risk populations.

Taylor said that the funding crisis has forced legal aids to work “harder and smarter,” but there is only so much they can do with more people qualifying for aid and fewer resources than ever before, and the crisis doesn’t only impact the poor.

“Having lawyers for everyone, even those who can’t afford to hire a lawyer, it affects access to justice for everyone,” said Taylor.

If people who can’t afford a lawyer come to court alone and try to handle their own case, Taylor said it diminishes the efficiency of the entire process.

“It takes more time and then everyone’s cases are slowed down; it really affects the ability of everyone to resolve disputes using the courts,” said Taylor.

She also noted that the public’s faith in the justice system is at risk without adequate funding.

“If people are unable to access the courts because of the unavailability of legal services or because their case is held up, it impacts the confidence that people have in the rule of law and the idea that the courts will work to resolve disputes for everyone,” she said.

In his essay, Dowling wrote that simply recruiting lawyers willing to do pro bono work is not enough.

Legal aids are in need of funds and more than ever, financial support and increased legislative advocacy are what will help the organizations keep their heads above water.

For now though, it seems that the legal aid slogan of “justice for all” is quickly turning into “justice for some.”

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