Foundation to boost pay for legal aid attorneys.

In an effort to stunt rampant turnover and create a more stable work environment, The Florida Bar Foundation is poised to spend millions to boost the salaries of legal aid attorneys statewide and open up its loan repayment assistance program to all lawyers working at the state's civil legal aid providers.

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Foundation President Bruce Blackwell said the goal is to make a career in legal services more attractive to people who leave law school with great intentions, but with significant educational debt.

"I think this program is really going to pay great dividends," Blackwell said. "It definitely sends a very strong signal to the lawyers who want to provide legal aid services that there are people around the state ... interested in their plight and are assisting them so they can continue to serve the underserved."

As part of the plan, Florida's 28 legal aid providers will also be required to institute a written salary plan that will ultimately provide a starting salary for legal aid lawyers of at least $46,000 by 2010.

A new Foundation study found the median starting salary of a Florida legal aid attorney is currently $38,500 and that 54 percent of the state's 377 legal aid lawyers have between $70,000 and $79,000 in educational debt.

The survey also found the percentage of legal aid attorneys with educational debt and the amount of debt increases sharply for the most recent law school graduates, with 100 percent of the 2006 graduates having debt--and at a median of $110,000.

Paul Doyle, director of legal services for the Foundation, said the big change in the Foundation's Loan Repayment Assistance Program is that it will now be open to any legal aid staff attorney with law school debt, and maximum benefits per year will increase from $6,400 to $7,500.

Kathleen McLeroy, the Foundation's president-elect and chair of its Legal Assistance to the Poor Grant Committee, said the plan had its first reading before the Foundation's board in December and will come up for a final vote in March, with the new grants being retroactive to January 1.

"The disparity was beginning to be unmanageable. We felt we would continue to lose good lawyers who otherwise would stay, but for the fact that their salaries were so compressed relative to the market, and exacerbated by the fact that young lawyers come in with student debt--they could not afford to meet their student obligations and continue as legal service attorneys," McLeroy said.

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