On rural lawyering--before and during the pandemic

Earlier this week, I was delighted to welcome 11 lawyers (10 of them UC Davis Law school alums) to my Law and Rural Livelihoods class to talk to the students about their careers and practices.   Four are in private practice, two work in county counsel offices, one is a tribal court judge, and the others do a range of public interest work.  They came to us (virtually, of course) from as far away as Del Norte County on the Oregon state line and as far south as San Luis Obispo County (SLO), specifically the communities of Atascadero and Avila.  

Here are just a few of the takeaways from the conversation. 

• Physical geography matters/can be a barrier:  The "grade" b/w "north county" and "south county" in San Luis Obispo County is significant for many who live there.  Folks in "south county," e.g., San Luis Obispo, Arroyo Grande, don't like to travel the grade, for example, to reach an attorney in "north county," and vice versa.  The attorney in Ukiah, the county seat of Mendocino County, said the same phenomenon (aversion to a "grade") applied there, as between Ukiah and Willets, where there was formerly a courthouse.  
• One attorney practicing in Avila, in SLO County, shares an office with her husband, a vineyard manager.  They have converted the office of an old plant nursery for this purpose.  
• The pandemic brought a 3- month closure to activity in the SLO County.  Then requirements to notice everything twice were imposed.  Now more people are "showing up" for hearings because they can hop on Zoom.  Previously, they would have had to take a half a day (at least) off work to come to the court house. 
• A big issue for estate planning attorneys in rural areas is how to divvy up farm and ranch land; what is a fair way to allocate that sort of wealth?
• The number of appearances by out-of-county attorneys in Lake County has risen since the beginning of the pandemic. 
• A public interest attorney working in the Sacramento Valley said she deals mostly with wage theft issues.  
• A tribal judge talked about the resources he has to allocate to support entire families, not just to "throw the book" of punitive criminal law at them. 
• There is no e-filing in Humboldt County, and it has only recently begun in Mendocino County.  
• In the "emerald triangle," nearly every matter that comes in is touched in one way or another by the marijuana trade/marijuana growing business.  
• Public interest attorneys who serve several rural and frontier counties from a relatively urban locale, e.g., Redding, Eureka, have seen some benefits from digital access to legal services for those living in more remote parts of their service area.  This is because those living hours from the legal aid office are not nudged out by those who live much closer and don't have to get up as early to get in a physical queue.  When all consultations are online, those living in remote and distant locales--assuming they have adequate internet/broadband connections--have equal opportunity for access with those living just down the street from the regional/relatively urban office.