From scholarships to specialized courses, law schools are creating pathways for students to bridge the justice gap in underserved rural communities.
As you consider law school, are you wondering if there will be ample job opportunities when you graduate? Have you given thought to where you’d like to practice law?
If you’re mapping your long-term career goals, keep in mind that legal deserts exist in many rural areas and that there’s a shortage of legal professionals to fill that void.
A legal desert is a community or area where there are not enough lawyers, prosecutors or judges to meet demand. In some communities, legal professionals are approaching retirement and there is not an adequate pipeline in place to fill these positions.
The scarcity of rural lawyers is not a new phenomenon. More than a decade ago, Roy Ginsburg, a legal consultant with more than 40 years of experience as a practicing lawyer, wrote an article called “Be a Small-Town Lawyer” discussing the virtues of rural practice. In a follow-up article last year, he examined what had changed in the intervening years and concluded that very little was different.
Ginsburg’s first article said 14% of Americans lived in rural areas but only 2% of attorneys practiced in those areas. His findings were not very different from the 2020 map stats from the ABA.
A 2020 American Bar Association study found that 40% of all counties in the U.S. have fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents, with 52 U.S. counties having no lawyers.
Fortunately, many law schools are addressing this deficit with classes and programs designed to teach students about rural law practice.
Lisa Pruitt is a professor at University of California Davis School of Law. Her work explores the legal relevance of low population density, including how it changes with gender, race and ethnicity. Pruitt was recently elected president of the Rural Sociological Society, and she teaches a course that focuses on rural difference and rural disadvantage.
“It sensitizes students to some of the differences and the challenges of working in rural places,” she said. “[Hopefully] it is going to endow them with more cultural sensitivity if they don’t already have it, because a fair number of the students who show up in the course have some exposure to rural America and they already value rural people and places.”
Such sensitivity is necessary, she said, to help connect with clients and integrate with rural communities. Pruitt recently co-authored an opinion piece with Emilie Peine, a professor of international political economy at University of Puget Sound. It spoke of the need for empathy for students from rural backgrounds.
“Nationally, rural students are underrepresented in higher education, particularly at prestigious and urban institutions, and their college completion rates lag behind those of their metropolitan counterparts,” they wrote. “This means it is critically important to be aware of how broad, negative attitudes about rural people and places can alienate students who identify as rural.”
Hannah Catt, a professor at Purdue Global Law School, teaches a course called Rural Legal Services. In 2022, Catt worked with Shaun Jamison, associate dean of academics at Purdue Global Law, to develop the course. It covers a wide variety of topics, from agricultural law to general practice in rural areas.
“We start early with initial discussion about agricultural law topics, how those impact rural communities and how you can provide those services to clients in rural areas,” she said. “But I don’t want students walking away from the course thinking that if you’re going to be an attorney in rural practice, you’re going to be an agricultural lawyer, which is a common misconception.”
Catt said the course progresses into studying general practice in rural communities, so students can gain exposure to practical legal skills and practical legal documents.
Students are assigned tasks such as drawing up a sample farmland lease or writing a simple will and power of attorney document. Class discussions include conversations about estate planning and its importance in succession planning.
The final project for the class requires each student to interview someone who practices law in a rural area, whether in private practice or as a prosecutor, public defender or legal aid provider. Catt said the assignment helps students understand how and why someone got into rural practice, as well as the challenges and opportunities of working in a rural setting.
“They dive into a specific community and talk about the demographics and how that interacts with what they learned from [their interview subjects],” Catt said. “They’re having conversations with practitioners so that they’re not going into this with rose colored glasses, thinking that it’s going to be a perfect method of practice.”
Jamison said the mission of Purdue Global Law is to allow people to stay in their communities while learning about the law so they can, in turn, serve their communities. He said online law school provides access to legal education with a realistic price point.
“If we want to recruit people from urban areas that maybe don’t have as much connection, having a bridge course to help them be better prepared is a really good thing,” he said.
In September, University of Georgia School of Law announced an initiative to address the legal needs of rural Georgians. Dean Peter “Bo” Rutledge said the school hopes to alleviate the shortage of rural lawyers by increasing financial assistance to students who hope to practice in small communities.
“We have worked to address the issue of rural deserts by creating pipelines,” he said. “We have been building a portfolio of scholarships targeted at students that come from, or intend to return to, legally underserved parts of Georgia.”
UGA School of Law’s commitment includes providing summer stipends for up to 10 students working in a prosecutor’s or public defender’s office in non-metropolitan areas for little or no pay.
Students from these areas receive financial help while exploring the options for a professional life close to home. It also provides an incentive for students from urban areas to spend a summer exploring the possibility of a rural career.
UGA also has a post-graduate fellowship program that provides financial support for lawyers who plan to practice in public defender or prosecutor offices in rural areas. It is designed to address the various financial needs of recent graduates who may face less competitive starting salaries and sometimes pricey professional training.
“Part of what makes the post-graduate fellowship program so promising is the law school’s commitment to provide donor resources to overcome student-specific barriers by paying for bar prep costs, which a typical public employer will not do,” Rutledge said. “[We commit] to providing a degree of debt relief, which is something that we piloted the past two years and has been wildly successful with our alumni.”
Rutledge said he hopes UGA School of Law’s approach is a blueprint for other schools wanting to help alleviate legal deserts in their respective states.
Pruitt, from UC Davis, said she would like to see more schools set up pipelines to help funnel graduating students back to the rural areas they came from.
“A lot of the lawyers who do wind up practicing in rural areas grew up in rural places and they may have a love/hate relationship with their rural upbringing,” she said, “but often they’re more likely than urban people with urban upbringing [to be] the ones who go back.”
An important factor to consider when deciding where to attend law school is whether a pathway exists to the region where you want to practice law.
Research what pipelines particular law schools offer for rural lawyering. Call the admissions office and ask about scholarships or financial assistance for those planning to practice law in rural communities.
For the aspiring rural lawyer, this information can help make the decision of where to attend law school an easier one.
Read this article in the digital issue of Winter 2025 preLaw magazine.
