Rural California Suffers a Painful Shortage of Lawyers

Abstract

This op-ed about the rural lawyer shortage in California was published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal on the occasion of the American Bar Association's release of its 2020 Profile of the Legal Profession. That ABA report highlighted the problem of "legal deserts," the places in the United States where few or no lawyers practice. The op-ed suggests steps that various stakeholders, e.g., the State Bar of California, the California General Assembly, law schools, members of the Bar, can take to alleviate the rural lawyer shortage and its consequences for rural communities.

Keywords: legal deserts, legal education, legal profession, attorney deserts, rural, lawyers, attorneys