Patchwork Efforts Grow Lawyer Pipeline To Reach Legal Deserts

When Illinois attorney Angel Wawrzynek first took the helm of a statewide effort to recruit lawyers to rural communities and legal deserts, she thought she was looking for former city kids like herself.

Wawrzynek mostly grew up in the Chicago suburbs and Milwaukee. After graduating from law school into a tight job market, she took a job at a firm in Mattoon, a small town in central Illinois she'd never heard of before. She bought a three-bedroom house while still paying off her student loans. Her commute to work as an estates and trusts attorney is minutes long, making family life with two children very manageable. Yet convincing others to follow in her footsteps hasn't been easy.

After chairing the Illinois State Bar Association's Rural Practice Fellowship Program for three years, Wawrzynek realized the state's attorney shortages won't be solved simply by luring lawyers away from urban and suburban communities. Countless unique circumstances impact where people decide to live, and each legal desert like Mattoon has its own challenges requiring individualized responses.

"The thing that I have come to recognize is that there is not going to be one solution that solves the problem," Wawrzynek said.

The fellowship Wawrzynek led until this year is among a growing number of local pipeline programs across the country hoping to educate and bring the next generation of attorneys to nonurban and rural communities where there aren't enough legal practitioners. Led by local bar associations, law schools, states or courts, the programs work to make the case for small-town life by espousing the professional and personal benefits Wawrzynek herself has come to enjoy: making a good living away from BigLaw's billable hour rat race.

These initiatives are designed to both encourage homegrown talent and lure outside practitioners to areas with the greatest need, often offering financial incentives like stipends to cover expenses or supplement salaries, alongside special curriculums, clinics and fellowship training.

"It takes a holistic approach to respond to what is really a nationwide concern," said Warren Circuit Court Judge Hunter Reece, who helped develop one such curriculum in Indiana. "We've seen similar approaches taken in the medical field in getting doctors to move to rural communities."

It's a herculean task, one with slippery measurements of success. Wawrzynek said she considers even a few more attorneys practicing in rural places each year a win, but program leaders and experts like her said it's difficult getting young lawyers to grow roots in legal deserts.

Adding to the dilemma nationwide, each jurisdiction regulates the legal profession differently, and no one court system or bar is solely responsible for all U.S. attorneys. While schools and bar associations are working to address attorney shortages, these solutions are piecemeal by nature, and pipeline programs that begin today may not see results for years to come.

"Little pockets" of people have cropped up to address the problem over the past five years, but there's been "no coordinated response," said Hannah Brenner Johnson, the dean of Southern Illinois University School of Law and a member of the state Supreme Court's new task force on legal deserts. And there are challenges in using a piecemeal approach to solve a national crisis.

"It's a critical issue, and we may not be able to solve it like this," said Bernadette Gargano, vice dean for experiential education and social justice initiatives at the University at Buffalo School of Law in New York, which is developing a rural practice curriculum among other measures. "But if we put programs in place now, we're building a pipeline to help solve the problem."

The American Bar Association defines a legal desert as an area with less than one attorney for every 1,000 residents, though that metric doesn't necessarily include every city, town or community without enough legal help. Often far from dense or populated towns and cities, people in these areas struggle to find lawyers for a host of legal problems involving trusts and estates, contracts, probate, civil litigation and real estate, as well as matters involving family, criminal or agricultural law. Businesses, nonprofits and municipalities also have trouble finding representation as attorneys retire or get conflicted out of matters.

The consequences can be long-standing and far-reaching, impacting the local economy and the well-being of residents. Prosecuting crime, purchasing property, attracting corporate facilities, opening new businesses and even adoption become harder without enough attorneys.

In Indiana, where more than half of the state's 92 counties are considered legal deserts, Judge Reece has seen an increase in wills generated by artificial intelligence.

"Sometimes they're acceptable, sometimes they aren't," he said.

The problem is so acute in the state that one small-town mayor went to law school himself. Mayor Thomas Estabrook said Bicknell, a city in Knox County with 3,000 people, hasn't had a single practicing attorney within city limits for at least five years. His constituents are literally counting down the days until Estabrook can practice, with word already getting around town that he took the bar exam in July.

"Forty years ago, there were a number of attorneys in our local area who went to law school for all the right reasons, came back, practiced, and they were in the legal community for four decades," Estabrook said. "There really isn't as much of that as there used to be."

Draw Them In, Help Them Out

Money is a major hurdle in convincing attorneys to set up shop in rural places, especially for new graduates with heavy student loan burdens, and lawyers tend to earn lower salaries in less dense areas.

The annual median wage for lawyers in the nonmetropolitan Illinois area that includes Mattoon was $127,120 in May 2025, compared with $165,660 for those working in the area that includes metro Chicago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual median wage for lawyers in the New York City metro area was $208,880 during that same time period.

In addition to that factor, law grads may see rural areas as difficult places to begin a career if there aren't enough other attorneys around to teach and support them, program leaders said. Pipeline programs attempt to bridge this gap in part by providing mentorship and paying students and young attorneys for their willingness to make the jump.

A central philosophy of these programs is exposing future lawyers to career opportunities outside cities. Shawn Leisinger, a former in-house attorney who now works at Washburn University School of Law in Kansas, said he wants students to understand rural communities have firms and clients that "actively want to hire you" to handle seven-figure matters, compared to big firms with their scores of applicants.

"If you want to work for millionaires, drive by a farm and look at each piece of equipment," Leisinger said. "That's over $1 million."

Attorneys will also get more early-career experience working one-on-one with clients or law firm leaders when they look beyond BigLaw. "In rural practice, where you don't have 2,500-hour billable requirements to achieve, you will get to meet your clients on the first day," Judge Reece said.

With one pipeline initiative launched in Ohio this year, newly licensed attorneys can receive a $20,000 stipend as they build private practices in underserved areas while directly serving clients and gaining hands-on experience.

Though 78 of 88 counties there are considered legal deserts, the Ohio State Bar Association said the shortage is worse in some northwest areas. Beginning this fall, an initial three-year pilot program will fund the operations of two new legal clinics to serve those communities. They will be run by Ohio Northern University's Pettit College of Law and the University of Toledo College of Law.

Under the program, four newly licensed attorney fellows and up to 40 students a year will help rural clients with essential legal needs at the clinics. Fellows must devote 20 hours a week to the clinics in Lima and Bowling Green, and can spend the rest of their time building their own practices.

Once the clinics are staffed and operational, they are expected to expand legal services to an estimated 720 people a year in northwest Ohio. The hope is to eventually expand or duplicate the program in the east and southeast regions of Ohio, according to the bar association's president, Jan Allen Baughman.

"We're trying to get ahead of the curve," she said.

Finding time for new clients has already become tricky for Baughman, who has a general practice at a firm she founded with her father in central Ohio. One of the firm's two offices sits in what's considered an "underserved" Ohio county.

"I'm starting to feel like a doctor," Baughman said. "You used to be able to get people in immediately. We're booking sometimes four weeks out before we can even get somebody in the door, and then we're always scrambling to catch up."

Beyond the new clinics, Ohio also has a loan repayment program for attorneys who agree to practice in underserved communities, providing up to $30,000 over three years. This year, Kansas lawmakers also passed a measure to repay up to $100,000 in student loans for attorneys who live and practice in certain rural counties for up to five years, as well as a similar scheme for students at certain law schools.

Kansas, where 100 of 105 counties are considered rural, has seen success with other pipeline initiatives. In the last 10 years, about 100 students have worked in northwest Kansas as part of a Washburn Law externship program, and at least 22 of them are currently practicing in the area, said Leisinger, Washburn Law's associate dean.

"They become local lawyer leaders," Leisinger said. "As soon as they're out there, those communities embrace them because they want them to come back out."

The Illinois fellowship Wawrzynek chaired also encourages rural law firms to integrate associates into the surrounding communities so they're more likely to stick around.

The Illinois program uses a $10,000 stipend to place five to 10 attorneys a year in associate positions at firms in rural counties, which make up 90 of the 102 counties in the state. About 38% of the associate fellows — or 28 people — have remained in rural private practice since the program started in 2021, as measured through the end of the 2024-2025 program year. And while private practice placement is the program's goal, another 12% of participants — seven people — stayed in rural practice working in other capacities like government, legal aid and in-house.

There have been growing pains. Wawrzynek said some of the first firms to host associates saw the $10,000 stipend as an opportunity to reduce the associates' pay by that amount.

And money alone can't be the only draw. Central Washington has had an "especially persistent and serious attorney shortage" despite local law firms "offering generous signing bonuses," according to Seattle University School of Law Dean Anthony Varona. In response, the school expanded a pipeline-to-licensure initiative where local students from underserved communities can earn a law degree while studying at other university campuses closer to home.

"A one-time bonus addresses only one part of a much larger decision," Varona said. In addition to salary or law school debt, lawyers who consider working in central Washington may also think about where their family can work, professional networks, housing, lifestyle and more.

Fewer cultural activities and perceived chances to find a romantic partner can also be a turnoff for younger prospects, according to Sarah Taylor, who now chairs the rural practice section overseeing the Illinois fellowship program. So the group is looking to attract more seasoned attorneys tired of city living who might want to open their own practice in a more laid-back place, she said.

"We can't rely on just new graduates," Taylor said.

This is also the philosophy behind the Indiana State Bar Association's new Rural Practice Academy, designed for attorneys at all stages of their careers. (LexisNexis, which owns Law360, is a partner in the initiative.) The yearlong cohort program began with 15 attorneys this summer and offers training, workshops, mentorships and hands-on engagement with the community to help them launch their own practices in underserved areas.

If all 15 attorneys end up practicing in areas they said they hope to one day serve, Indiana will have aided 33% of the legal deserts in the state, according to the bar association's executive director, Joe Skeel.

The Indiana curriculum includes marketing, billing and fee arrangements, practice management and crucial subjects for rural clients, costing participants just $1,400 for the whole year.

The idea was to create a legal "incubator" to support attorneys who want to branch out, said Judge Reece, who worked on the curriculum. But getting attorneys already familiar with these communities is also part of the academy's approach.

"The people most likely to practice in rural communities grew up in rural communities," Skeel said.

Targeting Locals Sooner

Several pipeline initiatives take this further by targeting students earlier in their education using paid internships or the chance to graduate sooner.

Some schools, like Washburn Law, have programs — often referred to as "3+3" programs — where students can earn both their undergraduate and law degrees within six years. Washburn Law recruits at rural and community colleges in Kansas, as well as at high schools. Southern Illinois University is developing one such program targeting high school students from farming communities who want to study agriculture and the law.

Though Culver-Stockton College doesn't offer a law degree, the Missouri school launched the Rural Lawyers Project this July. The project aims to examine the problem in Missouri, initially through engagement, analysis and exploration of opportunities for collaborative efforts.

Leslie Sieck, vice president for strategic initiatives at Culver-Stockton College, said the goal is to eventually provide opportunities so that rural students from the elementary, middle and high school levels see the possibility of a career in law.

"The judges and attorneys we spoke with weren't just worried about filling today's vacancies," Sieck said in an email. "They were more focused on who will be here 10 or 20 years from now."

The project will meet every other month at first and is planning a "rural lawyer summit" to bring people together from the Missouri, Iowa and Illinois tristate area.

In November, meanwhile, the Association of American Law Schools and the Law School Admission Council are hosting a national conference on rural access to justice at the University of Nebraska College of Law. It will bring law schools, chief justices and other stakeholders together to develop concrete solutions and future plans.

Growing Their Roots

A looming challenge many pipeline endeavors face is keeping attorneys in legal deserts for the long term, particularly if they're not from those communities.

While stipends, internships, curriculums and mentors may help law students and attorneys establish a practice for a few years, program developers and leaders acknowledge these aren't lifetime commitments. Young attorneys, especially those in Gen Z, are even more likely to move around if they're unhappy with their work or circumstances.

"There isn't a real incentive for urban law students to move to rural counties," Indiana's Judge Reece said. "It's a pretty big gamble financially to invest in a startup law practice in a rural community."

Under Ohio's new program, for instance, there is no requirement for fellows to remain in rural communities, according to spokespeople for the law schools at Ohio Northern University and the University of Toledo.

Baughman joked that law schools and groups like the Ohio State Bar Association she serves can't make students "sign in blood." Instead, they have to show attorneys they can build a sustainable life in these communities.

"The hope is that once they're out and practicing in a rural area and they've developed their practice, they're going to have client relationships and those clients are going to continue to come back," Baughman said. "And they're going to be living in an area where it's probably more affordable than it might be in a city or a larger area."

Wawrzynek loves the affordability, sense of community and work-life balance she's found in Mattoon. But she's started to think that her early childhood growing up in a small upstate New York town — and summers running through cornfields and jumping in ponds there — may have been more meaningful to her choice to move to central Illinois.

She recently heard from several of the program fellows who decided to stay in rural practice. They described growing up in small towns and wanting to return, and credited the program with helping make that a reality.

"That's a success — different than the success that I had envisioned," Wawrzynek said.

--Editing by Daniel King.