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Abstract

In recent years the legal profession has raised alarms about a perceived shortage of lawyers in rural America. State legislatures, courts, and bar associations have created rural lawyer recruitment (RLR) programs to address the perceived shortage, which include stipends, logistical support, and training for law students and lawyers willing to make a commitment to rural practice. Is there really a crisis? If so, are current RLR programs an effective means of stemming the crisis?

This Article examines these questions from several different angles, singling out rural Wisconsin for particular attention. It concludes that although lawyer density ratios (the proportion of lawyers to population) are lower in rural areas than urban areas, lawyer density has long remained stable in rural Wisconsin, suggesting that claims of a rural crisis are overblown. But the near-total absence of lawyers in some rural counties poses a real risk of erosion of respect for the rule of law in those counties.

The Article examines rural demand for legal services in detail. Rural Wisconsin residents are generally as litigious as their urban counterparts, suggesting that there may not be an unmet demand for additional services. Rural culture also inhibits demand: many rural residents believe that lawyers and formal legal processes are biased in favor of urban areas and that they undermine core rural values of community solidarity and neighborliness. But demand for at least one practice area is potentially expandable: immigration law, a practice area of great concern to burgeoning rural Latino and Asian populations, which few rural lawyers have tapped.

The Article next examines the challenges of supplying more lawyers to rural areas. It concludes that concerns over a hollowing-out of the rural bar as baby-boomer-generation lawyers retire are largely unfounded. However, many law students and young lawyers avoid rural practice because they believe urban areas offer better financial, professional, social, and cultural opportunities and because they do not receive enough support from established rural lawyers. Many of these concerns are well founded, although concerns about financial disadvantages of rural practice have been overstated. The Article argues that RLR programs should devote more effort to recruiting rural-raised law students and young lawyers who find rural practice more attractive than their urban-raised colleagues and that such programs should encourage aspirant rural lawyers to offer their services as presiders in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) proceedings and as providers of settlement-oriented claim resolution services to personal injury victims who value quick resolutions and wish to avoid prolonged litigation. The Article concludes that although RLR programs have real value, they are unlikely to succeed unless current models are extensively modified.

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