Recruitment & Retention
Real stories, real people, and why we need you.
I have to live at home with my family. I drive a 12-year old car. I don't travel, have a cell phone, or cable TV. All my money goes to the debt. I can't save much and dropped my dental coverage to have extra money. If I didn't have so much debt, I could be saving for a future. At times my focus would be better if I didn't have to worry about meeting my school loan debt.
I left legal services after two years because of my debt burden. I went for better money at a small/medium firm, hated it, and came crawling back to legal services. I simply couldn't make ends meet the first couple of years out of law school. I absolutely would not have left if we had had law school loan assistance.
It has impacted my life as a supervisor of younger attorneys who could not afford to stay in legal services - or start in legal services after clerking here and expressing a desire to do so - lost great people.
These are just a few of the stories of the daily struggles faced by legal aid staff in Ohio. They exemplify the challenge Ohio's legal services delivery system faces in attracting and retaining highly qualified new lawyers. As in other parts of the country, non-competitive salaries and lofty law school loan obligations have taken a significant toll on the system's human capital.
Consistent with its commitment to equal access to justice and its mission to assure that resources, programs and services exist statewide to serve the unmet civil legal needs of Ohio's poor, Ohio's IOLTA program - the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation (OLAF) - has invested in several statewide initiatives to recruit and retain high-quality legal aid professionals.
In addition to significant increases in base funding for legal services, the foundation has taken a holistic and realistic approach to helping its grantees recruit and retain attorney staff members. The Foundation's specific initiatives include the recruitment and sponsorship of Denis Murphy Fellows; a Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP); and, a statewide leadership development project.
Read more about the impact of OLAF's Loan Repayment Assistance Program in the recently published report Making a Critical Difference: Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation's Loan Repayment Assistance Program.