Re: Court weighs legal services for poor (fwd)
Andrew Rose (arose@macromedia.com)
Wed, 14 Jan 1998 11:55:41 -0800 (PST)
For instance, if you want to hold your rent from your landlord because they
aren't fixing the roof, you need to deposit the rent in a trust fund,
usually after seeking legal aid. Or if a lawyer asks for a retainer to
cover expenses that money is deposited. Or if an insurance company sends a
lawyer a check for $50,000, legally, it needs to be deposited immediately.
Interest from all these accounts go for legal protection for the poor.
What these conservatives are seeking is for the interest to be given to the
client rather than to the poor. This would defund that program, which the
conservatives probably see as a benefit. I think a progressive position
might be to allow that interest to be returned to the client, and to seek
other funding for legal access for the poor. Not sure where it would come
from, and I have no idea how this system came to be.
that "justice" system is expensive that's for sure.
>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)
>