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Across the United States, there is a staggering lack of access to civil legal services. A 2022 study revealed that 92% of low-income Americans do not receive “any or enough legal help” for issues that “had a substantial impact on them.”
This lack of access impacts all Americans, but members of rural communities are particularly vulnerable for two reasons. First, the poverty rate for rural Americans was nearly three percent higher than their urban counterparts in 2023. This is problematic because, in most cases, the major obstacle to accessing legal services is the high cost of these services.
Second, rural communities also suffer from a sheer lack of access to lawyers. The vast majority of lawyers live and work in urban areas. For example, New York has the most lawyers of any state in the country, but just 3% of those lawyers work in rural areas. Meanwhile, recent reports show that over 20% of New York’s residents are rural. Of course, there is typically greater need for lawyers in urban centers, which are home to large businesses and governments. Even still, it is apparent that the demand for lawyers in rural New York is not being met. The problem is so extreme that several counties in Central and Northern New York are considered “legal deserts,” places where there is less than one lawyer per 1,000 people. As such, it is often a challenge for rural Americans not only to pay for a lawyer, but also to find a lawyer willing and able to help them.
In response to this problem, legislatures at the federal and state level have implemented programs to either directly fund legal services in rural areas or to provide incentives to encourage lawyers to practice there.
The most important of these programs is the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). Congress created LSC in 1974 through the Legal Services Corporation Act, and in 1975 President Gerald Ford appointed then-Dean of Cornell Law School Roger C. Cramton as its first chair. LSC receives federal funds and operates as an independent nonprofit organization. It directs financial support to 130 regional legal aid organizations which provide free civil legal services across the country. Some of these organizations specifically target rural communities, such as North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, Florida Rural Legal Services, and California Rural Legal Assistance. While most LSC organizations do not target rural communities, they collectively have a huge impact because they cover every county in the United States, meaning qualifying rural Americans can theoretically rely on them no matter where they live.
However, while these services are critical, LSC organizations cannot assist with every qualifying legal issue, and there are still more legal aid lawyers per capita in urban areas. Likewise, LSC has faced funding threats throughout its history. In real dollars, its funding has been cut in half since 1981, even though many more Americans now qualify for services. Recently, the Trump Administration has proposed eliminating funding for LSC entirely. As such, despite the desperate need in rural areas, continued federal support is currently in question.
Luckily, several states have created their own programs to attract lawyers to rural communities. In 2013, South Dakota enacted the pioneering Rural Attorney Recruitment Program (RARP). RARP provides five yearly stipends of $12,513.60 to attorneys who agree to work in a county with a population less than 10,000—or any metro area with a population under 3,500—for five years. Funding for the program is split between participating counties, the state bar, and the state. As of 2023, over 30 lawyers had participated in RARP, and 75% of them were still practicing in rural areas. The total number of participants in this program may seem small. But in rural South Dakota, where some counties have no lawyers at all, this program has made a real impact.
The success of RARP led other states to adopt similar programs. North Dakota created an essentially identical program, also called the Rural Attorney Recruitment Program. Illinois also adopted a program to attract lawyers to rural communities, albeit with significantly less funding for participants.
Clearly, legislatures have recognized the rural access to justice issue, and programs at the federal and state level have aimed to bridge the gap. However, work remains to be done to ensure that all Americans have equal access to legal services. As such, it is time to consider changing our system of legal education to create more opportunities for members of rural communities to attend law school.
One obstacle to rural practice is that the vast majority of American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law schools are located in urban areas. This makes sense for practical reasons, but it means that people who live in rural areas typically need to relocate to larger cities in order to pursue a law degree. Relocating can be incredibly disruptive and costly and, as such, presents a major barrier for people in rural communities who might otherwise wish to attend law school and then practice in these areas.
However, recent developments in legal education present a promising solution: distance learning. In recent years, select law schools have begun offering options for students to attend classes and complete credits remotely. ABA requirements limit the amount of credits schools can offer through remote instruction, but several schools have applied for and received approval to exceed this limit. Currently, some ABA accredited schools even offer fully remote programs, so students can earn their degree without ever stepping foot on campus.
Critics of distance learning programs have cited poor employment outcomes as a reason to limit their proliferation. But the drastic need for lawyers in rural areas makes this argument less applicable to people seeking to live outside of cities. Moreover, given the general lack of economic opportunity which plagues rural areas, it is likely that many young people would be willing to take advantage of such an opportunity. They would be able to attend law school while remaining in their communities, maintaining connections and giving them the opportunity to assess the existing legal need while completing their education.
A recent case example indicates that fully online schools are gaining acceptance—in large part because of the need for rural lawyers. Purdue Global Law School is a fully online law school which operates out of Indiana. While the school has existed for many years, it is unaccredited by the ABA. The school’s lack of ABA accreditation creates obstacles for its students because, in many states, graduation from an ABA accredited law school is a requirement to sit for the bar exam. To get around this, Purdue Global is accredited by the state of California, which has relatively lax requirements compared to the ABA. As such, Purdue Global students can take the bar and practice in California after graduation. With a few exceptions, however, students cannot take the bar in most other states. However, supporters of the school have been working to change these restrictive rules.
Until recently, for example, graduates of Purdue Global could not take the Indiana bar. This changed in the summer of 2024, when the Indiana Supreme Court modified its rules to accommodate graduates from unaccredited, online law schools based in Indiana. Under the new rules, Purdue Global graduates can submit a petition and, if accepted, take the Indiana bar. Therefore, Purdue Global graduates can now practice in Indiana shortly after completing law school. The rule change came after extensive lobbying from Purdue Global, whose argument to the state focused on the potential for their school to address Indiana’s rural lawyer shortage. That argument proved to be persuasive, and subsequent developments have already created real results to support Purdue Global’s position.
In 2025, the first five Purdue Global graduates were sworn in in Indiana. It is unclear how many, if any, of these attorneys are now practicing in rural areas. However, nearly half of Purdue Global’s current Indiana-based student body (a total of over 70 students) lives in rural areas. Even if only a handful of these students eventually graduate, pass the bar, and remain in their communities, the number of rural attorneys could rise significantly.
Purdue Global’s recent success shows that online law schools have real viability as a solution to the rural attorney shortage. As such, states facing this issue should consider funding or sponsoring online law schools or programs and modifying licensing rules to allow for their graduates to become licensed attorneys. Like South Dakota’s RARP, states could impose a commitment on students to practice for a certain amount of time in rural areas to ensure that their investment is not wasted.
It is important to remember that simply having more lawyers does not directly address the issue of the high cost of legal services, which is typically the most significant obstacle for all low-income people. However, increasing the number of lawyers in rural areas is nonetheless an important step towards ending the justice gap because of the urban-rural lawyer disparity. In addition, having more practitioners could indirectly limit the cost of legal services by reducing travel costs for consumers, promoting competitive pricing among lawyers, and allowing for greater access to pro bono services. Moreover, having lawyers in rural areas could promote general commercial development in small towns, which in recent years have faced increasing economic distress.
Online law school remains controversial. And it is true that we should hold law schools to high standards to ensure that the law is practiced by competent and ethical lawyers. However, given the severity of the rural access to justice problem, it is time to look to distance learning as a solution. States have already created programs to incentivize rural practice, and these programs have produced positive results. By providing support directly to online schools and their students, these states can go farther and implement a more fundamental solution to the problem, one which will put prospective lawyers on a path to rural practice before they even take the bar.
Suggested Citation: Joe Shepard, Access to Justice: Addressing Deficiencies in Rural Areas, Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol’y, The Issue Spotter, (Nov. 30, 2025), https://publications.lawschool
.cornell.edu/jlpp/2025/11/30/access-to-justice-addressing-deficiencies-in-rural-areas/.
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