The Rural Lawyer Shortage

Unmet Needs

/ Bruce Cameron

Nursery_stock_in_rural_Washington_County,_OregonThe small towns and rural areas of Oregon have a problem and are looking for a few lawyers willing to put up with flexible hours, a good work/life balance, and opportunities to build a satisfying career in order to solve it. What they have are unmet legal needs, what they want a lawyers willing to take on the challenge.

Based on research done by the Oregon State Bar, there is a significant age discrepancy in the rural attorney population – young lawyers (those under 40) make up less than 25% of the rural bar while older lawyers (those over 60) constitute upwards of 50%. The end result is that over the next 5 to 15 years rural areas and small towns are looking at losing a significant proportion of their lawyers through retirement.

Fortunately, the Oregon State Bar is working on finding ways to address this issue and to encourage young lawyers to develop permanent practices in these areas and they are doing it at an ideal time – as Richard Spier, Oregon State Bar President, points out, there are opportunities in rural Oregon for lawyers willing to make the move; there are established lawyers willing to provide mentorship, referrals, introductions, and advice and there is often more work than the established lawyers can handle.

see also: Outside the Urban Box by Cliff Collins

No Lawyer, So What

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

Puzzled woman - how much of an impact does a lack of lawyers really have?So, the rural lawyer population is dwindling and there is a legal desertification creeping across small town USA – so what, it can’t be that big a deal what with the internet, on-line legal services and all.

Yet, as Maria Kefalas points out in her book “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America,” the lack of lawyers (and other professionals) is one of those 10,000 cuts that can slowly kill a community. It seems that when little, common place things start to get a bit more difficult –  things like: getting a divorce, managing a business, resolving civil disputes, or defending criminal cases – small towns take a hit; a lack of lawyers isn’t the death-blow, but it is a symptom of a potentially terminal disease.

This legal desertification can have a real economic impact. Based on a 2013 study by Dr. Joseph C. Von Nessen, your average lawyer has an economic multiplier of 1.6 or to put in slightly more concrete terms: if a lawyer spends $1000 a month to run his practice, the community sees $1600 in total economic activity. Granted, Dr. Von Nessen’s study only covered South Carolina and the numbers for your particular state may vary but the point is, lawyers feed small town economies.

Then there are the governmental costs; a lack of local lawyers means that small town governments and public entities (school boards, county commissioners, etc.) must pay outside lawyers to travel into town to handle local affairs. Rural courthouses are not exempt from these travel expenses – trying a case locally can mean paying for the judge’s, prosecutor’s, and public defender’s drive time. These costs can strain local budgets in the best of times.

Now the lack of a lawyer may not be much of a problem for those small bedroom communities that cluster around cities like chicks around a hen; after all the daily commute puts lawyers within easy reach. But for those small towns out beyond suburbia’s sprawl, where the drive time into the “city” is measured in hours, local lawyers matter.

 

Doing, Not Waiting

/ Bruce Cameron

Rural Law OfficeWhile the senior leadership of the Georgia Bar Association work on plans for a lawyer incubator (a small pilot program) and a rural lawyer assistance plan (now in the hands of the state legislature), the bar’s Young Lawyers Division have launched the Succession Planning Pilot Program with the idea of matching successful, practicing, small city or rural lawyers with young lawyers and recent graduates looking for positions.

The program leverages existing resources available at the state’s law school’s career services and addresses two of the chief concerns of a fledgling rural lawyer – the lack of mentors and the need to develop a sustainable practice – while giving established rural lawyers a pipeline of interested, qualified successors.

A Rural Lawyer tip of the hat to small town lawyer Sharon Edenfield for bringing this idea to fruition.

Mom, Apple Pie & Rural Lawyer Assistance

/ Bruce Cameron

Even if one counts judges, prosecutors, public defenders, county and city attorneys and all the other categories of lawyers not generally available to the general public, there would still be 6 counties in Georgia that lack lawyers and a couple of dozen counties with fewer than 5 lawyers (see this article).

So, on Saturday, the State Bar of Georgia Board of Governors approved a plan to attract private civil attorneys to rural areas by offering state-funded repayment of law school loans to any attorney who moves to an underserved rural community. Even through the plan was described as “a great idea”, “a great idea”, and “mom & apple pie” it’s passage was not without some debate (see this article).

Frankly, these types of assistance programs are a good first step, but there needs to be more in place if young lawyers are going to succeed in rural practices; things like mentorship programs and community buy-in. It also would help if there were clear ethical guidelines on the use of technological innovations like client portals and virtual law offices. There needs to be an effort made to show the potential rural lawyer that practicing in a county that’s more pine barrens that people can be profitable, not just sustainable; that it can be a career rather than a set number of years of pro bono and ramen before moving on to better things and bigger law.

My hat’s off to the Georgia Bar for taking that first step. I wish them success and I hope they continue to help young lawyers build rural practices.

Fugit Inreparabile Tempus

/ Bruce Cameron
photograph of a sundial

Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts, and ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds, Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all. Fast flies meanwhile the irreparable hour, as point to point our charmed round we trace.

Ol’ Virgil (the roman poet, not my local mechanic) sure had it right, since my last post, a great deal of time has escaped, irretrievably; a consequence of too many commitments and an inability to say no as often as I should. So, what I failed to note during the last quarter of 2014.

In December, the AP ran a story on the various efforts currently under way to attract lawyers to practice in rural areas. The focus of the story is on South Dakota, but programs in Nebraska and Arkansas get a brief mention as well. It’s great to hear that programs like the one in South Dakota are starting to produce results.

From the University of St. Thomas Law School, comes word of a law student’s discovery of the joys of small town practice. Ms. Price paint’s a great picture of the pros of clerking in a small town and how practicing in a small town is more of a labor of love than anything else.

Then there’s the flip side to all this – as Danielle Paquette reports, the lack of incoming rural lawyers means that the existing rural bar is delaying retirement and many rural clients are looking at two hour drives just to talk with a lawyer. In Nebraska, 12 counties have no lawyers and the Nebraska Bar Association along with the Nebraska Legislature is trying to do something about it. Their solution is twofold – a Rural Practice Loan Repayment Assistance Program and a better sales pitch – seems no one is telling law students about the opportunities that exist.

A tip of the hat to Justice Thomas G. Saylor – he started out as a small town lawyer and is now the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Well, there was the odd gig as a county prosecutor, a deputy AG, and Supreme Court Justice along the way, but still not bad for starting out in rural Pennsylvania (see story here).

I’ll also note the passing of John Doar, a small town lawyer who died last November at the age of 92. Mr. Doar began his career in the small town of New Richmond, WI before moving on to the Justice Department and then to a New York law firm. In the 1960’s, Mr Doar helped shape the civil rights movement, as an assistant attorney general, he was the prosecutor in US v. Cecil Price et al. and he escorted James Meredith when Mr. Meredith became the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi. Mr. Doar was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.