Ruth Ann Schmitt, the longtime executive director of the Lawyers Trust Fund (LTF), has announced her retirement effective June 30, 2015. LTF’s board of directors has selected LTF Deputy Director Mark Marquardt as her successor.

Beginning in 1981, Schmitt worked to develop the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program in Illinois. When LTF was incorporated by the Illinois State Bar Association and The Chicago Bar Association as a not-for-profit corporation in 1983, she became its first executive director and helped implement IOLTA. Under Schmitt’s leadership LTF has become the largest Illinois-based source of funding for civil legal aid, distributing over $135 million in total grants since 1984. Throughout her tenure Schmitt has made the Lawyers Trust Fund a force for innovation and improvement, with the goal of creating a more efficient and effective legal aid system for low-income Illinoisans.

Marquardt will become LTF’s acting executive director on April 1. Schmitt will remain as executive director emeritus/transition adviser until June 30.

More information is available here.