IOLTA

Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA)

Form: SCR 78.5 (Trust Account Reporting) Certification of Compliance and Consent

Deadline Approaching to Report IOLTA Compliance

This year, when submitting annual bar fees and required disclosure forms to the State Bar of Nevada, all attorneys must also verify and report that their current IOLTA trust accounts are compliant with Supreme Court Rule 217. This means IOLTA trust funds must be in a participating financial institutions.

All a lawyer is required to do to be compliant with the rule is:

Place IOLTA account(s) only with a participating financial institution as verified by this list;
Report that information on the member dues statement; or
Claim a waiver only if the lawyer does not have a participating financial institution within 20 miles by checking the exemption box in the SCR 78.5 disclosure section of mandatory documents and hand writing the word "rural"

List of SCR 217 Participating Financial Institutions

Nevada’s IOLTA program is managed by The Nevada Law Foundation (NLF) as the tax-exempt foundation designated by the State Bar Board of Governors. The NLF is responsible for, among other things, providing the state bar with this list of participating financial institutions.

FDIC Coverage

IOLTA Enrollment Form (PDF)

For more information or questions about the IOLTA program:

Phone: State Bar of Nevada IOLTA hotline 702-317-1407

Email: iolta@nvbar.org

NLF: 702-384-1204

Information about the new IOLTA program

Current text of Rule 217 effective October 3, 2010

On January 16, 2010, new revisions to Supreme Court Rule 217 for Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA) accounts went into effect, later amended effective June 3, 2011. These new rule provisions require Nevada lawyers to create or maintain their IOLTA accounts ONLY at financial institutions which, in addition to other minimum qualifications in SCR 217 and SCR 78.5, offer interest rates under one of the three indices set forth in SCR 217, subsection 2.

The third index for interest allowed under SCR 217, subsection 2, is currently set at .75% APY by the Access to Justice Commission.

Newly revised SCR 217 continues to define IOLTA (trust) accounts as those accounts set up by a Nevada attorney to hold clients’ funds which are nominal in size or are to be held for a short period of time.

Lawyers may as before maintain dedicated trust accounts for other than nominal or short-term funds, without interest or with interest to inure to the benefit of the client only, in any bank approved under SCR 78.5 for non-IOLTA trust funds.

Issued by State Bar: January 29, 2010

Last Revised: March 4, 2011