In 2020, the American Bar Association published a profile of the legal profession that highlighted the decreasing number of attorneys practicing in rural communities across the U.S.
According to the report, there were, at the time, 54 counties or county equivalents in the U.S. that had no lawyers. Another 182 had one or two of them. Nearly 1,300 counties had less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. Many of these areas are parts of legal deserts, or places where residents have to travel far to access routine legal services.
“Wyoming is no exception to this trend,” Laramie attorney Kelly Neville, the past president and treasurer of the Wyoming State Bar, told lawmakers in the Joint Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
“As our baby boomer generation attorneys are winding down their practices and starting to go into retirement, we are seeing Wyoming communities increasingly underserved by the number of attorneys that are there and available to serve the citizens.”
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With the possibility of this shortage becoming more acute, lawmakers are taking a look at potential solutions that could compel lawyers to practice in the state’s underserved communities.
Those solutions could potentially involve new legislation for the 2024 session; the Joint Judiciary Committee requested on Tuesday a bill draft based on language from South Dakota statute that would create a rural attorney incentive program. The committee still has two more meetings to consider that draft legislation before it can potentially be considered in next year’s session.
The Wyoming State Bar has more than 1,600 active members in the state, according to data from the association. A whopping 70% of these lawyers work in just five Wyoming communities — Cheyenne with 32%, Casper with 12.5%, Jackson with 11.5% and Laramie and Sheridan with the remaining 14%.
The availability of lawyers in smaller Wyoming communities is lacking, to say the least. There are eight counties in the state — Converse, Hot Springs, Lincoln, Uinta, Goshen, Weston, Big Horn and Crook counties — that have fewer than 1.2 lawyers per 1,000 people. Another eight have fewer than 3.9 attorneys per 1,000 people.
Not all of these attorneys necessarily offer services in the areas that people need, and roughly 60% of attorneys in underserved areas are over 55 years in age. Many don’t have a successor lined up.
What’s more, 70% of lawyers in the eight counties with the lowest attorney-to-population ratio reported having issues with representation conflicts, compared with 33% in the largest eight counties, Alan Romero, a University of Wyoming law professor, said.
These rural areas have serious legal needs: People need lawyers to help them with social security and workers compensation matters, Neville said. They need wills, medical powers of attorney and financial powers of attorney. They need assistance with adoptions, divorces and custody matters. They need help dealing with estates when a parent passes away.
There have been some initiatives in the state to address the attorney shortage in rural areas. In 2009, the University of Wyoming’s College of Law established its Rural Law Center, which aims to prepare students for rural practice and service.
The Wyoming State Bar also donated $50,000 to the University of Wyoming Foundation to make the Wyoming State Bar Rural Practice Opportunity Fund. The donation was matched by state funds for a total of $100,000. That endowment will fund stipend and salary matches as well as travel and living expenses for law students taking part in the University of Wyoming’s Legal Liftoff Program and externships with rural attorneys in the state, with the aim of exposing students to rural practice opportunities. Neville said the state bar expects to distribute awards starting in summer of 2024.
Wyoming can look to other states to see examples of what might work here. Neighbors like North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho and Montana have incentive programs to draw attorneys to rural areas, a memo from the state’s Legislative Service Office explains.
The legislatures of North and South Dakota made rural attorney incentive programs that are run by their judicial branches. Idaho has a scholarship fund through the University of Idaho College of Law to help students develop connections in rural areas. And the Montana Legal Services Association, a private, nonprofit law firm, runs a Rural Incubator Project that encourages lawyers to offer affordable services to low-income residents of rural communities.
For the past decade, Wyoming’s legal community has focused much of its attention on South Dakota’s model. In 2013, South Dakota launched a pilot program to address its shortage of lawyers practicing in rural areas. The program has since been expanded to include municipalities with less than 3,500 residents and was made permanent in 2019.
Attorneys who participate in the program receive five stipend payments of roughly $12,500 per year in exchange for five years of service in a rural community. South Dakota pays for the program through a blend of money from the unified judicial system, counties and municipalities and the state bar. Lawyers who breach the contract have to repay the incentive payments.
There have been 31 participants under contract in the program. Of those 31 participants, 15 graduated out of the program, five terminated their contract and 12 stayed in the rural communities where they were practicing.
“I think that’s really the important number there,” Douglas attorney Pierce Peasley said of the 12 lawyers who stayed in their rural communities.
“Five years in one of these communities is a long time, and it allows those individuals to build a practice and to ingratiate themselves in that community and learn to appreciate those communities that they may not have at that time.”