Anyone familiar with the Constitution knows that if you're accused of a crime and can't afford a lawyer, the government will provide one for you.
But what if you want to divorce your abusive spouse but don't have a job or a clue about navigating the courts?What if you can barely make ends meet and are struggling against foreclosure on the home you've worked so hard to keep?What if the company you bought an appliance from is threatening to sue because you fell behind on payments?Tens of thousands of Texans face problems like this but can't afford a lawyer to guide them through the civil legal system.Over the past decade, Texas has developed a structure for providing legal aid to low-income residents, but it's taken continual effort to keep the funding intact. Unlike 2009, when the Legislature approved an appropriation to replace funding that unexpectedly tanked, legal aid supporters this session are proposing several fee hikes that have merit.Texas' largest legal aid providers are three agencies that include Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas, which serves 114 counties, including Tarrant, with 100 lawyers in 16 offices. About 2,000 lawyers also donate time to help people seeking assistance from Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas, said Executive Director Errol Summerlin.Clients must be U.S. citizens or legal residents and not have income more than 125 percent of the federal poverty level: $13,613 annually for an individual, $27,938 for a family of four. About 5.7 million Texas residents qualify for legal aid.The agencies receive $33.5 million through the federal Legal Services Corp., but Congress is proposing cutting LSC funding by almost 17 percent for the current fiscal year. Legal Services of Northwest Texas already is planning to eliminate paid law school internships and not fill six attorney vacancies.The other major source of legal aid funding, which goes by the acronym IOLTA, is pooled trust accounts that lawyers hold for clients. The interest earned goes toward legal services. The Texas Access to Justice Foundation provides IOLTA grants to about 40 organizations.But the recession slashed IOLTA revenue from about $20 million in 2007 to $5.8 million last year -- and it's only that high because 90 banks have agreed to pay 1 percent interest on IOLTA accounts, above the puny going rate.Lawyers also are required to pay $65 a year to a legal-aid fund; they donated $700,000 more last year, and the State Bar of Texas estimates that lawyers provide more than 2.5 million hours of free work. Even so, the system can handle only 20 to 25 percent of those in need, advocates say.To temporarily fill the IOLTA gap in 2009, the Legislature appropriated $20 million for the 2010-11 biennium and approved fees and fines that generated $6 million more.This session, a bipartisan collection of bills has been filed to generate the revenue IOLTA accounts aren't. Proposals include increasing District Court civil filing fees by $10 ($6.6 million over the 2012-13 biennium); adding costs for filing county records and for misdemeanor convictions in justice and municipal courts ($58 million to $68.9 million, split between legal aid and indigent criminal defense); and dedicating court-ordered restitution in consumer-protection lawsuits to legal aid in consumer cases (possibly more than $1 million).Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht made a persuasive argument for the added fees: "The people who can get in ought to help the people who can't so it's available to everybody," he said in an Editorial Board interview."The strength of the rule of law is it's there for everybody, not just rich people."Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
