Peters et al.: Understanding Rural Legal Deserts to Inform Public Policy
In Understanding Rural Legal Deserts to Inform Public Policy: Identifying and Describing Lawyer Gaps in Non-Metropolitan Counties, David J. Peters, Emma Bartling, and Emily Meyer (all Agricultural and Rural Policy, Iowa State University) analyze the current trends of lawyer shortages in rural “legal deserts”—areas lacking sufficient legal services—across the United States. In doing so, the authors put forth an alternative calculation and classification of legal deserts that differs from that of the American Bar Association.
Legal deserts are a growing area of interest in rural scholarship, yet empirical data and current research reach conclusions that only reflect the situation in a small number of communities. These authors instead focused on a total of 2,307 non-metropolitan counties across the continental US. To determine where legal deserts exist, the authors calculated a lawyer gap rate per 10,000 residents based on local demand for lawyers less the local supply, using employment in private practice law offices from the US Census Bureau. This method avoids the inclusion of legal professions whose services are not available to the public while also accounting for the complex socioeconomic conditions driving the demand for legal services in different communities.
Instead of setting a statistical cutoff, the authors separated the counties into seven “classes” based on the results found. This approach acknowledges the varying degree to which communities can be legal deserts. The first three classes were deemed legal deserts and identified as either “critical,” “urgent,” or “emerging,” depending on the shortage of lawyers. In total, the counties constituting legal deserts in the first three classes made up around 50% of the counties surveyed.
Many states have attempted to respond to growing legal deserts through policy interventions varying from rural practice incubation and loan repayment programs to licensed legal paraprofessional programs (LLPs) and advice for self-represented individuals. The authors conclude that while state-sponsored financial incentives, such as loan repayment or practice subsidies for rural lawyers are popular, they do not address all aspects of the legal desert issue. Instead, the authors argue that LLPs provide the best long-term solution due to the lower barriers to entry and the ability of such programs to recruit individuals from legal deserts. The authors hope that future research will continue to use a continuum-based approach to legal desert classification while focusing on factors beyond financial barriers to rural law practice.
