California Commission on Access to Justice Rural Task Force publishes two policy briefs

The California Commission on Access to Justice has published two policy briefs which, I will admit right here, I played a major role in drafting over this past year.  The first, titled "Disasters in Rural California:  The Impact on Access to Justice," highlights the need for legal assistance in the aftermath of disasters.  Because disasters like wildfires disproportionately impact rural areas--areas already underserved by both legal aid and other attorneys (see more below re: California Attorney Deserts), the post-disaster need in rural areas tends to be greater.  Here's the opening excerpt:

California faced ten federally-declared disasters in 2018, and then-Governor Brown declared an additional two. These disasters disproportionately struck rural parts of the state, including the November 2018 Camp Fire that decimated the town of Paradise in Butte County. That fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, claiming 86 lives, destroying or damaging some 18,000 structures, and causing $16.5 billion in damage. Map 1 illustrates the rural impact of the Camp Fire and other recent wildfires, including the Klamathon Fire in Siskiyou County, the Ferguson Fire in Mariposa County, and the Ranch and River fires in Mendocino County. (See Map 1 and Table 1). The 2015 Valley Fire in Lake, Sonoma, and Napa counties caused $1.5 billion in damage, while that from the Butte fire in Calaveras and Amador counties tallied $450 million.

Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are typically the slowest to recover from disasters, in part due to income-based differences in FEMA assistance. Ten million people with incomes below 125% of the federal poverty level live in rural places in the United States. Indeed, rural areas often have higher poverty rates than urban ones.

This means that areas most affected by wildfires are often burdened by poverty even before disaster strikes, as illustrated by the poverty rates in Lake County (25%); Mendocino County (20%); and Shasta County (17.5%).8 Disasters aggravate poverty, as those who already have few resources face loss of homes, personal possessions, and livelihoods. Those who can afford to leave a wildfire-impacted area often do, while low-income residents are more likely to remain. Major disasters typically increase a county’s poverty rate by an average of 1%.

* * * 

The intensity and frequency of such disasters demand unparalleled levels of resources and support for affected communities, and those resources must include legal assistance. Legal aid attorneys work in coordination with attorneys offering pro bono services to assist low-income and modest means rural populations with the many civil legal issues that arise in the wake of a disaster. These include housing, employment, and consumer fraud, as well as securing FEMA assistance and other public benefits. 

* * *  

Legal aid and pro bono assistance are vital aspects of any disaster recovery process. Legal assistance to low-income Californians is critical when they are facing illegal actions by landlords, scammers, and employers. In the aftermath of disaster, this legal assistance is critical if disaster survivors are to regain a sense of normalcy and stabilize their lives. Legal aid must have the funding and resources to provide wide-ranging services that protect low-income and vulnerable Californians after a disaster. These populations disproportionately reside in rural areas, where both legal aid lawyers and attorneys generally are in short supply. Rural deficits in access to legal services are nothing new.

The second brief, California Attorney Deserts:  Access to Justice Implications of the Rural Lawyer Shortage, essentially summarizes the California data presented in the six-author law review article, "Legal Deserts:  A Multi-State Perspective on Rural Access to Justice," published earlier this year by the Harvard Law and Policy Review.  This policy brief also discusses possible solutions to the rural lawyer shortage, and most of these are applicable in the Golden State and elsewhere.  We highlight roles law schools and other stakeholders can play.  And, we include some colorful maps depicting where the state's lawyers are.  Here's a short excerpt:

One measure of access to the legal system is access to an attorney. Massive parts of rural California are attorney deserts, where residents must drive many miles to reach an attorney who can represent them. This brief presents the geography of 2016 California attorney data to illustrate where attorney deficits exist throughout the state.

Many parts of California lack sufficient numbers of attorneys to serve their population, a situation that is particularly acute in many rural areas.

* * * 

Some of the disparities in lawyer availability are best revealed not by comparing counties or regions, but by looking at where lawyers are within a particular county. Fresno County makes an interesting case study because it represents a blend of urban, rural, and frontier: Fresno (City), California’s fifth largest city, is surrounded by rural areas, with the Sierra Nevada mountains rising to the east and central valley farms stretching south and west from the county seat. The county covers some 6,000 square miles, of which 98% is classified as rural or frontier under the MSSA scheme. While 37% of the population lives in those rural and frontier areas, just 5% of Fresno County attorneys have addresses there. Thus, each lawyer in an urban part of Fresno County serves around 417 people and about 1/20 of a square mile, while each rural lawyer serves around 2,887 people and 48 square miles.

The brief features a number of maps visually depicting where California's lawyers are, as well as which are the state's highest poverty counties.