Court weighs legal services for poor (fwd)

P. Myers (mpwr@u.washington.edu)
Wed, 14 Jan 1998 10:47:01 -0800 (PST) 

someone with more legal acumen please explain this one to me...I'm having
trouble understanding the oppositionality!  PatM

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 9:15:59 PST
From: UPI / MICHAEL KIRKLAND <C-upi@clari.net>
Newsgroups: clari.local.texas, clari.usa.law.supreme, clari.usa.law
Subject: Court weighs legal services for poor

  	  				 
	WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court has heard argument  
on special lawyer accounts -- sometimes compulsory, sometimes voluntary -- 
used in every state to provide legal services to the poor. 
	In a challenge brought by conservatives, a lower court has ruled that  
the compulsory program set up by the Texas Supreme Court is invalid. 
	Every state funds legal services for the poor through ``interest on  
lawyers' trust accounts,'' or IOLTAs. 
	Lawyers often have to hold money for clients, but the sums sometimes  
are so small that the interest on such funds would not cover the costs 
charged by the bank to maintain the account. 
	The one Texas IOLTA program is compulsory. A conservative Washington  
think tank is challenging the Texas account, saying the interest belongs 
to clients, not the poor. Conservatives charge that much of the $100 
million generated annually by such accounts goes for political 
litigation. 
	Speaking for the Texas Supreme Court today, lawyer Darrell Jordan  
told the justices that if Texas lawyers can create a benefit for clients 
by using non-IOLTA accounts, they must do so even under the IOLTA 
program. 
	Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, representing the Clinton  
administration, backed Jordan and the constitutionality of the IOLTA 
system. 
	But speaking for the conservative Washington Legal Foundation, which  
represents a Texas legal client, lawyer Richard Samp told the justices, 
``It has been the common law rule for 250 years that if interest is 
generated (on money) that interest belongs to a client.'' 
	The Supreme Court should rule in the case before spring.  
 (No. 96-1578, Phillips et al vs. Washington Legal Foundation et al)