On the recordDecember 21, 2010
I rise this evening to talk about a program that is of great importance to our citizens across America who are struggling to access legal services. There is a program that is called the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts or IOLTA. This is a very interesting arrangement that I was not familiar with until I came to the Senate. Essentially, IOLTA is interest on lawyer trust accounts, and it works like this. When lawyers need to put money into a trust account, they are putting it in that account on behalf of a client or on behalf of an estate. It is not allowed under the law for the client to earn interest. However, there is an arrangement that has been made over the years in which banks agree to pay interest on those accounts, since they are accessing those deposits--those funds--but the interest gets donated to legal services for poor Americans across the United States of America. So it is a win-win.
