Funding for Legal Aid in Oregon

The total budget for statewide legal aid programs in Oregon is about $19 million.  Legal aid programs receive funding from about 80 different sources. 

State court filing fees are currently the single largest source of funding for Oregon’s legal aid programs.  Other large sources include the federal Legal Services Corporation and the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA) funding received through the Oregon Law Foundation.

State Filing Fee Funding

• Oregon was the third state to begin funding legal aid through state court filing fees – the state legislature passed the legal aid filing fee bill in 1977.
• The bill authorized courts to collect “additional filing fees each time a civil action was filed in district or circuit court in counties where there were nonprofit legal aid programs” and provided that “these filing fees went directly to the legal aid programs for the purpose of defraying the operative costs of such programs.” 
• The Oregon legislature increased the filing fee allocation for legal aid in 1989 and in 1997 in response to cuts in federal funding.
• Now more than 30 states fund legal aid though filing fees.
• More than a third of the funding for Oregon’s legal aid programs comes from filing fees.