Rural justice: Kansas seeks to lure young lawyers from cities to countryside

(CN) — One-third of rural Kansas attorneys are over age 60. If they were to retire, 87 of the Sunflower State’s 105 counties would become legal deserts, a Kansas Supreme Court justice told reporters Friday.

“The problem is serious, and it is not going to get better without intervention and affirmative action,"Justice Keynen “K.J.” Wall Jr. said during a news conference at the Cloud County Courthouse in Concordia in rural north-central Kansas.

Joined by Chief Justice Marla Luckert, the pair outlined their findings for why young lawyers avoid rural Kansas — and what could be done about it. It’s all part of the state’s Rural Justice Initiative, set up on Luckert’s order two years ago to study these issues.

“The loss of resources, we all recognize, means that there are people who have unmet legal needs,” Luckert said. For small Kansas communities, losing attorneys “meant they had lost people who before had been contributors to the economic and civic and even cultural fabric.”

This was also a Sixth Amendment issue, Wall added.

“We are approaching a constitutional crisis with the attorney shortage in our state,” he said, noting that the right to counsel was guaranteed under the U.S. and state constitutions. “If our rural communities cannot get legal representation in comparison to urban markets, that’s an issue that impacts equity and justice.”

As in many states, Kansas attorneys tend to be concentrated in urban areas. In Kansas, that means many more attorneys in and around cities like Topeka, Kansas City and Wichita.

By contrast, two counties in western Kansas, Hodgman and Wichita, have no active attorneys, the initiative’s 2022 data indicates. Hodgman’s population is 1,723 and Wichita County’s is 2,152. Compare this to Sedgwick County, home to Wichita city, which has 1,200 lawyers for around 528,000 residents. Or suburban Johnson County next to Kansas City, which has 3.424 for about 622,000.

The barriers to getting lawyers into rural areas mainly came down to financial, practical and cultural considerations, Wall told reporters.

The financial reason has everything to do with law-school debt. Kansas has two law schools: one at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and another at Washburn University in Topeka.

Prior to 1980, only 25% of law school grads had any debt whatsoever. Today, 93% carry debt, with an average debt load of $125,00. Starting salaries for rural attorneys are lower, and their income is more dependent on production.

There is also a fear by budding lawyers that they may not get enough mentorship from more seasoned attorneys in rural areas.

“Are they going to be left alone on an island?" Wall said. “This is a concern that is pervasive among the law students that we interviewed.”

The cultural issues — many of them beyond the scope of the initiative — came down to things like child care, housing and spousal employment opportunities. Wall said there was also a myth that young lawyers must leave their hometowns and go to the big city to truly make it.

Such myths “may be dissuading individuals away from pursuing opportunities in a rural legal firm,” he said. “Those are myths that we are going to have to address head-on.”

The report offers a number of solutions, including a student loan reimbursement program, a tuition reimbursement program and a rural attorney network, which would link law students to mentorship opportunities.

Like the chief Justice, Wall pointed out that lawyers in smaller communities serve other roles as well, including as economic drivers and leaders who serve on boards.

The lack of rural lawyers is an issue in other Great Plains states as well. In Nebraska, Kansas’ neighbor to the north, the State Bar Association’s Rural Practice Initiative says 12 out of the states 93 counties have no lawyers, while 18 have three or fewer.

It’s alsoan issue in Oklahoma, to Kansas’ south. Meanwhile, both South and North Dakota also have programs to recruit attorneys to practice in rural areas.

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