A proposal to strip $70 million from the Legal Services Corp. isn’t the only thing weighing heavily on the minds of legal aid providers.
Many of their programs have already sustained significant reductions in state support and declines in money from Interest On Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) during the past three years. Federal, state and IOLTA money are the financial foundation of most legal aid programs in the country — and all are hurting. “It just devastating,” said Betty Balli Torres, president of the National Association of IOLTA Programs. “The cuts are coming from everywhere.”
