PA IOLTA Board's Law School Clinical and Internship Programs Grant

About PA IOLTA
The core mission of the Pennsylvania Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) Board is to support the provision of civil legal services to the Commonwealth’s poor and disadvantaged. The IOLTA Board is a not-for-profit organization operating under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
How Does the IOLTA Program Work?
The IOLTA program is simple. Clients and others frequently transfer moneys to attorneys to hold. When the amount is large or if the funds will be held for an extended period of time, attorneys invest them for the benefit of the client. But when the funds are small or expected to be held for a short time, they cannot practically be invested to benefit the client. Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct 1.15 requires attorneys to deposit nominal and short-term fiduciary funds in interest-bearing IOLTA accounts. The attorneys’ banks transfer the interest earned on IOLTA accounts to the Pennsylvania IOLTA Board.
How is the Money Used?
Upon approval of the Supreme Court of PA, the Board makes grants annually to non-profit organizations, law school clinical programs, and administration of justice projects that provide civil legal services free of charge to the poor and disadvantaged.
Grants
The Pennsylvania IOLTA Board carries out its mission to financially support the delivery of civil legal aid to low-income and disadvantaged Pennsylvanians through the careful administration of various revenue sources, both court-directed and legislatively-directed. Upon approval of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the IOLTA Board makes grants annually to qualified legal aid organizations across the state, Pennsylvania’s nine law school clinical and externship programs, and administration of justice projects, all of which provide legal assistance to low-income individuals and families facing a civil legal crisis where basic human needs, such as shelter, food, medicine and safety, are at stake.
The grants are conditioned on five requirements:
first, that the grants be used to address the unmet civil legal needs of the poor and disadvantaged;second, that the program be designed to develop the professional identity and responsibility of law students, including the professional responsibility to render public interest legal service; third, that the grant proposal must demonstrate that the law school consulted with local pro bono or legal aid programs or other entities providing free or low-fee legal aid to the poor or near poor in the development of its proposal; fourth, that the programming involves live-client experience; and fifth, funding participation by the law school or parent university.

Eligibility

Grants are made to each of the eight law schools operating in Pennsylvania to help support clinical and/or externship programs that provide free civil legal assistance to indigent persons.