The New Hampshire Bar Foundation has awarded more than $1.5 million in Interest on Lawyers Trust Account (IOLTA) grants to organizations providing or facilitating access to the civil justice system for low-income people, and for educational programs operated by the NH Bar’s Law-Related Education program.

The Foundation awarded a total of $1,505,977 in IOLTA grants this year to various justice programs. The IOLTA grants program continues to provide the majority of funding for New Hampshire civil legal aid organizations, enabling thousands to obtain access to justice.

The IOLTA program, which provides funding for charitable purposes from the interest earned by pooling small or very short-term deposits in lawyers’ trust accounts, did not dip in the past year. Despite overall low interest rates in the economy, New Hampshire’s IOLTA Leadership Banks maintained interest rates of 2 percent or better, accounting for 87 percent of the revenue for the IOLTA program.

Bar Foundation officials cited the cooperation of those leadership banks, which continued to offer higher interest rates for IOLTA deposits and suggested that revenues may have remained high because of the volume of transactions, such as home sales, occurring during the past year.

In 1984 the Bar Foundation awarded $123,300 in grants. Since then, the Bar Foundation has distributed more than $19 million dollars to assist with legal services and public education regarding the courts and the law.

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