Kidder: The Future of Rural Lawyering
In The Future of Rural Lawyering: How Law Schools Should Embrace a General Practice Legal Clinic Model to Address the Current and Future Legal Needs of Rural and Smaller Communities, Melissa L. Kidder (Director of Law Clinics and Externships and Assistant Professor of Law, Ohio Northern University) discusses how a general practice model within law school in-house clinics can help bridge the gap and facilitate new lawyers into rural and smaller communities.
The author lays out a current crisis facing many rural communities — the rapidly declining attorney population — and how this crisis contributes to a well-documented gap in access to justice and legal services in those communities. For example, the author focuses on South Dakota where 65 percent of active bar members can be found in only four cities. Similar examples can be found in Arkansas, Iowa, and even in states where lawyers are more populous such as Texas and California. Though these states have more lawyers per capita, many counties still have so-called “legal deserts.”
The author emphasizes a lack of lawyers in rural communities can lead to harmful results, such as loss of family property, individuals with disabilities going without needed benefits, and individuals facing housing or eviction issues. Of the 10 million rural Americans that live at 125 percent of the poverty line, at least 75 percent experienced at least one civil legal problem in a year—most often concerning a healthcare or consumer/finance issue.
Law schools have implemented several initiatives to counter this problem, including so-called “incubator” programs in thirty-three states and four countries. These incubator programs aim to provide avenues for new law graduates to receive hands-on training and mentoring while providing increased access to pro bono legal services. The author identifies several benefits to incubator models, but notes that these programs have also given rise to an increase in specialty clinics.
The author provides an in-depth review of the clinical program at Ohio Northern University, which operates as a general law firm clinic model. While the program described appears to address all of the issues listed in the article, the author admits it will likely take a more comprehensive approach to solve the rural lawyer crisis. However, while not a perfect solution for every law school, the author argues a general practice clinic may be one way law schools could promote and better train new lawyers to practice in rural and smaller communities.
