Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: Building the Next Generation of Rural Lawyers
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Maria Duvuvuei
Communications Strategist
(202) 295-1542
WASHINGTON – Programs that are creating a pipeline of new rural lawyers were featured on the latest “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Host Lee Rawles was joined by Ana Laurel, Staff Attorney at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA); Kate Rosier, Assistant Dean at Arizona State University’s (ASU) Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the Executive Director of its Indian Legal Program; and Anthony Schutz, Associate Dean for Faculty and Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska.
A recent report from Legal Services Corporation’s (LSC) Rural Justice Task Force, “Justice Where We Live: Promising Practices from Rural Communities,” dives into a multitude of programs and approaches that address the biggest challenges to accessing civil justice in rural areas, like the digital divide, distance and transportation obstacles, building community trust and a shortage of attorneys.
The scarcity of attorneys in rural areas, often referred to as “legal deserts,” is a major concern for access to justice. Rosier described a Navajo reservation roughly the size of West Virginia where there are only two or three public defenders and the Office of the General Counsel is down 17 attorneys.
“It really puts a strain and a heavy weight on the system to try to keep everything fair when people are going without representation,” said Rosier.
To address these challenges, programs across the country are encouraging rural students to become lawyers or guiding law students to try rural practice.
Laurel grew up in a small, rural town in Texas. She knew she wanted to help people, and she suspected that she could by being a lawyer, but the path forward was not clear.
“When I went into law school, I thought maybe I would be a corporate attorney and do pro bono,” Laurel said. “I knew I wanted to make a difference, [but] I didn't know how — I didn't have the language for it.”
While attending law school at ASU, Laurel received an email about summer job opportunities and saw that LSC’s Rural Summer Legal Corps had a fellowship position available in Port Lavaca, Texas – her hometown. She did not know much about legal aid, but once she got the position at TRLA, she found it was the perfect way to use her legal career to make a difference in her community.
“As someone who is from here and who knows this community intimately well, and who knows the people and they know me – I feel like I am uniquely positioned to come back here and do this work,” Laurel said.
After Laurel's first fellowship, she was able to return to TRLA as a fellow once again through Equal Justice Works’ Disaster Recovery Legal Corps. Now, she is a full-time staff attorney at TRLA providing legal services in the same rural place where she grew up.
Schutz serves as director of another program that aims to generate rural lawyers. The Rural Law Opportunities Program (RLOP), which recruits rural undergraduate students at four Nebraska colleges and universities who are interested in pursuing law. The students are given scholarships, and they must uphold certain academic standards as well as attend lectures and events at University of Nebraska College of Law, where they receive presumptive admission upon successful completion of the undergraduate program.
Schutz explained that two of the biggest barriers to pursuing rural law practice are the perceived lack of amenities in rural areas and the prospect of lower salaries at the outset of a rural legal career. RLOP is able to ease the latter concern by enabling students to complete their undergraduate degrees without taking on debt. As for the former, he said that the program targets rural students because they are more likely to want to live in rural areas in the future.
“Recruiting people from rural places helps avoid those perceptions,” said Schutz. “To the extent healthcare, education and housing are issues, we tend to find that those concerns fade or maybe they're sort of valued differently when we're talking to a group of people that is already in those sorts of places and is willing to return to those rural places.”
Rosier and her colleagues at ASU have worked to boost the participation of students from tribal nations in law through the Pathway to Law Initiative for more than a decade. The program provides information about law school and law careers, application assistance, LSAT test prep and mentorship from American Indian law students and legal professionals.
“We're trying to encourage students to think about law, but also to demystify the application process,” Rosier said. “A lot of our native students either have had no experience with lawyers or they've had very negative experiences, so what we're trying to do is show them that there's so much more that they can do with a law degree.”
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.
Learn more about LSC’s work in rural America at www.lsc.gov/rural.