Colorado gets US DOJ money aimed at alleviating legal deserts

 Colorado Public Radio reports: 

A statewide organization that helps rural Coloradans find legal solutions received a grant of over a half-million dollars this fall to figure out the legal needs of people living in legal deserts, and this month, hired a new staffer to manage it.

The Colorado Access to Justice Commission received a two-year Rural Legal Deserts Grant [from the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance] in October to bring legal solutions, in the absence of lawyers, to parts of Colorado where there aren’t enough.

The $627,000 grant comes from a Congressionally Directed Spending Award supported by Colorado U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. After the first two years, the grant will expire; the commission can then reapply for additional funding, according to Elisa Overall, executive director of the commission.

She said that outside metropolitan areas like Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, most parts of Colorado have too few lawyers to serve their communities.

“Right now, 45 percent of the state's counties have 10 or less attorneys,” she said. “And that's certainly considered a legal desert.”

The American Bar Association defines a legal desert as a county with fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 people, according to Legal Evolution – an online publication that focuses on the legal industry.

The graphic in that article shows Colorado and seven other states (North and South Dakota, Utah, Montana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia) are identified as “moderate/high legal deserts.” Only five states (Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas and Wisconsin) fall into the category of “high legal deserts.”

Overall said that each rural area has different needs for legal services, and the grant will help them figure out those needs based on where the county is located.

Then there's this quote from Overall about Alamosa, in the southwestern part of the state: 

In Alamosa, we tend to see a lot of drug addiction, substance abuse, and so custody tends to be something that the communities have a greater need for, or potentially expungements of drug-related offenses ... There are areas with high numbers of immigrants and that's where immigration needs are very great and interpretation and translation.