Judicial Branch

• Citation: Vol. 94 No. 1 Pg. 8
• Year: 2025
• Pages: 8

Judicial Branch No. 94 J. Kan. Bar Assn 1, 8 (2025) Kansas Bar Journal February, 2025

Judicial Branch

Rural Justice Initiative

By KJ Wall, Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

A year and a half ago, I wrote to you about this states critical shortage of rural attorneys. The situation was dire then and remains so today. But now we have a plan.

When last I wrote, the work of the Rural Justice Initiative Committee was Just getting off the ground. As chair of that committee, I've spent the past 18 months working with an extraordinary group of stakeholders to tackle this crisis head-on. Today, I write to share what we've learned and our vision for the path forward.

As the Committee gathered information, the depth of the crisis became even clearer. While nearly half of Kansas's population resides in rural areas, only 20% of Kansas attorneys practice there. More striking still: more Kansas attorneys work in Kansas City, Missouri than in all rural Kansas combined. In 99 of Kansas's 100 rural counties, the per-capita attorney population is about half of the nationwide average. In 39 of those counties, it's one-fourth or less. And two counties have no attorneys at all.

The future looks even more concerning. Rural Kansas attorneys are on average older than their urban counterparts, and as they age toward retirement, were struggling to replace them. Less than half of Kansas law school graduates from the class of 2022 remained in the state. Were not Just failing to attract new attorneys to rural Kansas—were struggling to keep Kansas law graduates in Kansas at all.

Through surveys, listening sessions, and data analysis, we identified three main barriers keeping attorneys from rural practice:

1...