The shortage of lawyers is especially difficult in rural Maine as many attorneys in the state approach retirement.
In Aroostook County, where Fort Kent is located, it can take two hours or more to travel from one courthouse to the next. Yet local court clerks say only about 20 attorneys are available to take indigent legal defense cases, and many aren’t from the area.
That means lawyers from other regions are routinely brought in. They either drive hours to the courthouse or communicate through phone or Zoom.
“A lot of us are just getting burnt out,” Jandreau [an Aroostook County attorney] said. “I mean, I stopped taking court appointments because it just became unmanageable.”
Now, the Maine Legislature is looking to step in. Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, who lives in nearby Allagash, said he’s heard about the legal challenges from his own constituents.
“We all understand that you have the right to legal counsel, but what good is it if you don’t have the ability to get that legal counsel?” Jackson said.
That’s what prompted him to introduce a bill that would bring practicing law students into the county to help fill that gap.
“Too many people leave our area to practice or try and get, to become a practicing attorney,” Jackson said. “And oftentimes, they don’t come back. And I just thought that there’s a way to actually do some of the training in Aroostook County. We might be able to actually draw some people.”
Under the three-year pilot program, students at the University of Maine School of Law would still spend the first half of their education on the school’s campus in Portland. But after their first few semesters, two or three students at a time would head to Fort Kent, where they would work under the supervision of a professor in a satellite office of the college’s student legal aid clinic.
They would receive academic credit for the work and stay at the dorms of another state college campus in town. Their clients would primarily be people with low incomes who can’t afford to hire an attorney of their own. The program would cost about $340,000 a year.
Other legislative efforts to support rural lawyers in Maine have not been passed into law, as documented here and here. Still, I'm hopeful about this new proposal because it is a bridge between critical stakeholders--legal education on the one hand, and rural places on the other. In short, it could meet legal needs in the short term while also creating a pipeline to rural practice over the longer term simply because it will systematically and institutionally expose more students to that sort of practice.
(A recent post featuring Aroostook County is here. And, it so happens, Senator Susan Collins is from this remote county, with its particular rural culture.)
Meanwhile, this piece on regulatory reform as a solution to the rural lawyer shortage ran a few days ago on the website Attorneys at Work. Here's part of the regulatory reform pitch--basically that bodies responsible for governing the profession should "loosen up":
The ABA’s Legal Innovation Regulatory Survey, originally published in 2019, provides an overview of the legal regulatory landscape related to legal innovation and access to justice.
To date, more than 14 states are studying regulatory reform issues or are engaged in regulatory reform. Increased pressure to study regulatory reform is rising due to access to justice concerns, increasing legal technology innovations, changes in the legal marketplace, as well as the pandemic and the havoc it has caused for citizens, the courts and lawyers.
According to the Clio Legal Trends Report and other surveys reporting on law, solo and small firm lawyers face a challenging environment:
- The cost of traditional legal services is going up.
- Access to legal services is going down.
- The growth rate of law firms is flat.
- Lawyers serving ordinary people are struggling to earn a living.
The primary mechanism for regulating the market is lawyer ethics, including:
- Rule 5.4 (who can own and invest in law firms)
- Rule 5.5 (who can do the work)
- Rules 7.2 – 7.3 (constraint of marketing efforts)
- Most experts do not expect to see an improvement in these legal deserts in the next decade.
Lauren Sudeall, a law professor at Georgia State University, while not optimistic about seeing improvements in these numbers, says, “But I hope that we can have a broader understanding of what access to justice means … Not just by looking at justice as sort of this binary do-you-have-a-lawyer-or-not question.”
What Can You Do About Regulatory Reform?
Proposals open for discussion include the creation of a regulatory sandbox (allowed in Utah), limited licensed paraprofessionals (Ontario has had a limited license program for more than 10 years, and Utah and Washington have added limited license programs in recent years), and the use of court navigators (allowed in Arizona and New York).
For the record, I have no idea what a "regulatory sandbox" is. However, I do know that the "limited license paraprofessionals" scheme has not been successful in Washington--at last not successful at getting licensed paralegals into rural locales. I don't know how it has been faring in Utah, where the program is newer. I understand the court navigators scheme has worked in New York City, but I don't know if it is working in rural locales with less formally educated folks to staff it.
The Attorneys at Work piece continues:
In addition, the Legal Services Organization recently launched a Rural Justice Task Force to study and recommend ways to enhance access to justice in rural communities. (The report is due in 2023.) The Rural Justice Collaborative — a project of the National Center for State Courts — recently launched an initiative to identify rural justice “innovation sites” that will serve as models for other communities. Over the next three years, the RJC will work with the sites to create educational materials that will be featured in an online resource center.
Full disclosure: I serve on this Rural Justice Task Force, which was assembled in December 2021 and has been busy since January.
The Attorneys at Work piece closes with an exhortation/opportunity:
Lawyers have the opportunity to make a difference. Follow the work of the state bars and organizations that are implementing regulatory reform efforts and encourage your own state to explore the possibilities that exist to expand access to justice.
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