From the YLD President, 0217 GABJ, GSB Vol. 22, No. 5, Pg. 10

From the YLD President

Vol. 22 No. 5 Pg. 10

Georgia Bar Journal

February, 2017

Addressing the Scarcity of Rural Lawyers

It is a privilege for me to live and practice law in Statesboro, a relatively small town in rural Georgia. As a solo practitioner, I am able to work with clients on a wide range of legal issues while staying active in a number of professional and community organizations.

Compared to many towns its size, Statesboro has a vibrant economy, thanks in large part to the tremendous growth in recent years of my alma mater, Georgia Southern University. And the people of our community are well served by a strong local bar and judiciary. I am one of more than 90 active members of the State Bar of Georgia who are based in Statesboro.

This is not the case in some small towns and rural areas in Georgia, or elsewhere in the United States for that matter. According to recent estimates nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, but only 2 percent of small law practices are located in those communities. Even that number is dwindling, as an increasing number of small-town lawyers reach retirement age without having anyone to take over their practices.¹

This causes a significant number of rural Americans to travel long distances to meet with an attorney for even the most routine of legal services—an economic and logistical hardship for the working class and lower-income residents of those areas. When people cannot find or afford a lawyer, this widens the justice gap; legal needs go unmet simply because of where someone lives.

For several years now, the legal community—including Georgia’s—has been working to address the lack of lawyers in rural areas. In 2012, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution encouraging governments and bar groups to seek solutions to the problems associated with the loss of lawyers and access-to-justice issues in rural America.

Data from the ABA’s Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Section shows an increase in law school graduating class size over the last three decades, so the problem is not a lack of new attorneys.² Active membership in the State Bar of Georgia has been on the increase of approximately 1,000 new members in each of the last several years. The challenge is to find ways to steer adequate numbers of these new attorneys toward consideration of practicing law in our state’s rural communities.

Senior lawyers in small towns and rural areas can be...