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As an attorney, Jane Lorentzen knows the stress her clients endure as their cases go to trial or they face life-changing legal proceedings. Increasingly, those using Iowa’s legal system are likely to find it more stressful as reduced judicial budgets cause delays in proceedings. At the same time, state court fees have been significantly increased, which will put further strain on an already overburdened pro bono and legal aid system.

“Litigation is stressful,” said Lorentzen, president-elect of the Iowa State Bar Association (ISBA), who on Tuesday will be sworn in as the association’s president. “We would rather see our clients’ disputes resolved in a timely manner than just be delayed and delayed, and we’ve seen that happen.”

The Iowa Judicial Branch’s funding has taken a beating due to the state’s budget shortfall, which has forced the Supreme Court to order cost-cutting measures and the Legislature to enact significant court fee increases that went into effect late last month. Supreme Court Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and State Court Administrator David Boyd, who declined interview requests, are currently deliberating about what cost-cutting measures the courts will take to deal with the projected fiscal 2010 funding shortfall.

In addition to soliciting input on its Web site for cost-saving and efficiency measures the courts could take, the Judicial Branch is also participating in a comprehensive review of all state budgets, which is being conducted by a legislative task force.

The ISBA has convened a separate task force that plans to submit its recommendations to the Legislature by the time it reconvenes in January, Lorentzen said.

Cost shifting

The state court system faced a $15.4 million deficit in revenues for fiscal year 2010, which begins July 1, as the legislative session was drawing to a close last month. The Iowa Supreme Court was able to cancel two planned full-day closures of all state courts that had been scheduled for June 5 and June 19, however, after Gov. Chet Culver signed a bill that provided $670,000 in supplemental funding for the remainder of fiscal 2009.

That legislation also increased the Judicial Branch’s fiscal 2010 appropriation from $149 million to $160.1 million, which reduced the shortfall for the coming fiscal year from $15.4 million to $4.2 million. The increased appropriation, however, was made possible by the Legislature’s approval of a number of increases in court fees that went into effect May 27.

In many instances, cost-cutting measures – such as reductions in judges’ travel budgets, furloughs of state court employees and temporarily closing clerk of court offices – merely shift the burden without providing real savings, said Lorentzen, an attorney with Hopkins & Huebner P.C. in Des Moines.

A furlough, for instance, “delays the ultimate resolution of a dispute, which pushes cases back,” Lorentzen said. “Lawyers get burdened with the increased backlog, as do the judges. Plus, it transfers the burden of the cost-saving measures to the state employees, because they’re the ones who go without pay. It has a disproportionate impact on those state employees who bear the burden of that furlough day.”

Travel restrictions on judges can have a similar cost-shifting effect.

“When you place restrictions on judges and their ability to travel and they can only remain in their county of residence, the citizens in those counties who hire a lawyer have to pay for their lawyers to travel to another county to get a matter heard before a district court judge,” Lorentzen said. “Necessarily, the lawyer is going to charge for the time they spend traveling, and that’s going to increase the cost to the litigant.”

Brad McCall, a Grinnell attorney and president-elect of the Iowa Association for Justice, agreed that travel restrictions on judges have had a significant impact on rural residents. The association represents about 800 trial attorneys in the state.

“I personally have been involved in situations where witnesses had to travel to another county, and that can be a huge impact, particularly on people who don’t have adequate financial resources,” he said.

Additionally, “Closing the clerks’ offices, even for one day, clearly has an impact on the ability of people to access the judicial system. As an association, our official position is that it is absolutely essential for its smooth functioning for the judicial system to be adequately funded.”

More aid needed

The ISBA’s board of governors voted during the legislative session to support the increase in court fees, Lorentzen said.

“I think it’s important to note that our filing fees have not been increased for some time, and when we studied other states, our filing fees were significantly lower than other surrounding states, with the exception of one state,” she said. “So I think what we’ve done is just kind of bring our filing fees more in line with those in surrounding states.”

Lorentzen acknowledged that the fee increases will have an unintended consequence of shifting the burden to lower-income residents who can least afford legal services, and will create more demand for legal aid and pro bono services.

McCall said his association did not take an official position on court fee increases. “I think in hindsight it might be the lesser of some alternative evils that the court could have taken,” he said. “Obviously, that’s going to limit access to the courts of those without adequate financial resources, but hopefully it will soften the impact of the budget cuts and result in not having to take such actions on a long-term basis.”

Iowa’s code of ethics for attorneys sets an aspirational goal of 50 hours of pro bono work per lawyer each year. The Volunteer Lawyers Project and other free legal services initiatives have seen a “huge increase” in demand over the past year, Lorentzen said.

“Our lawyers have responded to the demand, but they can only do so much,” she said. “We cannot possibly do enough to manage this budget shortfall.”

Iowa Legal Aid, a nonprofit organization that provides legal assistance to low-income residents, is at a five-year peak in cases handled, said Dennis Groenenboom, its executive director.

“At this point we are seeing an increase in the number of people coming to us, and we are seeing, not surprisingly, more people that we have to turn away or underserve,” he said. Last year, Iowa Legal Aid completed nearly 22,000 cases,assisting an estimated 51,000 clients. However, it had to turn away about 17,000 people, “and that number is going to increase,” Groenenboom said.

Shorter-term solutions

Fully one-third of the cases handled by Iowa Legal Aid are related to family law, typically involving domestic abuse. The instances of domestic abuse also tend to increase during recessions, he said. And from January 2008 to January 2009, the number of people contacting Iowa Legal Aid regarding home foreclosures increased 300 percent.

“We will continue to serve those cases where they come in with domestic abuse,” Groenenboom said. But the organization will have to focus more on short-term fixes, such as assisting with securing protective orders, rather than longer-term solutions, such as assistance with divorce cases, he said. “And more people will be getting advice rather than representation in court.”

The nonprofit organization receives both federal and state funding, including proceeds from the Iowa Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program, a charitable program of the bar association. Because the IOLTA funds are based on activity by attorneys, the recession has shrunk those funds by 37 percent from a year ago, or about $300,000, Groenenboom said.

State funding, which makes up about 25 percent of Iowa Legal Aid’s $2 million budget, was reduced by 2.5 percent. Increased federal funding, however, nearly made up both of those shortfalls, he said.

“So at this point we are not looking at staff reductions,” he said. “The turnaways will be due to increased demand.”

Attorneys’ pro bono services have remained fairly consistent at approximately $2 million worth of services provided annually, Groenenboom said, figuring a value of $140 per hour for lawyers’ time, “There are lots of volunteers out there; about 2,900 lawyers across the state volunteer,” he said. “Not all of them take a case every year, but most of them do.”

To seek a broad consensus of attorneys’ opinions regarding these issues, the Iowa State Bar Association is in the process of forming the Task Force for the Enhanced Delivery of Legal Services Throughout the State of Iowa. Co-chairing the task force will be two ISB past presidents, Decorah attorney Marion Beatty and Alan Fredregill, a Sioux City attorney. Bob Rafferty, an attorney and consultant, was approved by the governor last week to advise the task force.

“We will be populating that task force with lawyers from all over the state of Iowa, from all eight (judicial) districts, who practice in many different areas of law,” Lorentzen said. “That task force will then prepare and report and hopefully submit that to the Legislature.

“Certainly, we don’t mean to tell the (Supreme) Court how to conduct their business; they’re in the best position to do that,” she said. “But we may be able to offer some ideas that perhaps haven’t been thought about before.”