Rural Institutional Loss

Elizabeth Chambliss

Two recent studies of rural court systems highlight the importance of institutional investment for improving access to justice in rural communities. Rural communities not only need more individual providers, such as lawyers and community justice workers, they also need local nonprofits, community action networks, mental health treatment centers and other institutional infrastructure to support and partner with providers¹ including—critically—more public investment in rural county government and courts.

In Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice: A Study of Criminal Legal Systems in Rural Washington, Lisa R. Pruitt, Jennifer Sherman, and Jennifer Schwartz document alarming institutional deficits in rural county criminal justice systems. Based on detailed qualitative and quantitative data from six rural counties in central and eastern Washington, they find a growing shortage of lawyers available to prosecute and defend criminal cases, with county vacancy rates for defense attorneys of up to 67% (P. 868); an increasing reliance on remote appearances by defense attorneys who never meet their clients (P. 884); and “a lack of services and infrastructure to support system-involved individuals, from drug treatment programs to public transportation.” (P. 852.)

These deficits significantly undermine the quality of rural indigent defense. Many system-involved individuals report being detained for lengthy periods before appearing before a judge—systematically longer than in urban counties. (P. 906.) Many indigent defendants have no contact with their attorneys before their appearance, even by phone, and thus no opportunity for confidential communication. (P. 908.) The problem is exacerbated by courts’ increasing reliance on remote appearances by defense counsel while defendants typically are required to appear in person, inhibiting confidential attorney-client communication in court (P. 911) and raising constitutional concerns about the effective assistance of counsel. (P. 912.)  The study finds that “[d]eputy prosecutors, too, are increasingly physically absent from rural courthouses.” (P. 848.)

A key source of the problem is funding. Over 80% of criminal defendants in Washington are indigent and county governments are primarily responsible for funding indigent defense. (P. 875.) Counties also are responsible for funding “substantial portions of the prosecutorial and judicial functions.” (P. 893.) Yet it costs more per capita to deliver these services in rural counties than urban ones and the costs of indigent defense are on the rise, placing rural counties with weaker tax bases under significant financial strain. (P. 894.) These fiscal constraints “not only hamstring counties’ ability to recruit indigent-defense attorneys and prosecutors, but they also prevent counties from making other criminal legal system investments that could enhance procedural fairness,” such as electronic reminders of court appearances, which are standard in urban counties. (Pp. 895, 898.) Despite widespread awareness of the problem, the legislature has declined to increase state funding to support rural indigent defense. As a result, there are significant “spatial inequalities” in the operation of criminal justice systems in rural versus urban counties. (P. 847.)

In addition to the injustices that defendants experience, the degradation of rural justice systems profoundly affects the well-being of the local judges and lawyers who struggle to work within them. In A World-Threatening Feeling: Grief, Moral Injury, and Institutional Loss in Rural Courts, Michele Statz examines how courtroom dynamics in rural Minnesota and Wisconsin have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on the impacts of the transition to remote hearings. Drawing on more than seven years of mixed methods research on active judging in state and Tribal courts, including repeated interviews with the same judges over time, Statz reports “a noticeable shift” in judges’ perspective and affect since the move to remote hearings (P. 1261) and “an acute sense of betrayal” and loss of meaning in their work. (P. 1259.)

She finds that, since the widespread adoption of remote hearings, judges feel “tired and overwhelmed” (P. 1260) and increasingly inadequate in their roles. (P. 1263.) They miss the opportunity to connect and engage with the people appearing before them and the “routine interactions, informal camaraderie, and shared knowledge and ethos” with other court actors. (P. 1265.) They feel like they are “just … processing cases” and “not making a big difference.” As one judge said, “I don’t feel like people are getting justice right now.” (P. 1261.) Another said: “what I realized from Zoom is actually how little of what I actually do [as a judge]” is possible to do over Zoom. “At some point when you’re dealing with a little face on the screen, you kind of give up.” (P. 1264.) Many are thinking of stepping down or retiring early. (P. 1261.)

Statz argues these findings are not simply evidence of individual stress and burnout but rather point to a collective, institutional loss of connection and vocation that is a “spatially distinct occupational hazard” for practitioners in geographically isolated communities. (P. 1259.)

The institutional loss that rural legal practitioners are experiencing is one of physical space but also the intimacy within it …. Many of the legal professionals I have interviewed over the years have deep, long-standing ties to the court and the people who move through it, whether as colleagues, mentors, or litigants whose families are personally known in rural sovereign nations and other communities. To lose this intimacy threatens connections that prove pivotal to getting good facts, giving sound advice, making informed decisions, building confidence in the courts, and maintaining procedural fairness. (P. 1265.)

Statz argues this loss goes unacknowledged in the highly individualistic framework of the lawyer wellness literature, which puts the burden of recovery on individual practitioners rather than addressing external sources such as “mandated Zoom hearings, an expedited docket, funding allocations that do not correspond with growing caseloads…and the shuttering of treatment facilities.” (P. 1272.) She calls for the profession to engage in an “institutional reckoning” to acknowledge the unique losses experienced by rural practitioners. (P. 1275.)

Read together, these studies have two broad takeaways for rural access to justice advocacy and research. First, while in the short term, allowing remote appearances by defense counsel may increase (inadequate, remote) access to counsel by rural defendants, states’ increasing reliance on remote appearances as a solution to funding and staffing shortages promises to exacerbate inequalities between rural and urban justice systems and to further destabilize the rural legal workforce. Policymakers’ embrace of remote appearances takes the pressure off calls to increase state funding for rural justice systems and personnel. Such funding not only is essential for delivering public services in rural counties; it also plays a vital role in supporting local private practice. Many rural private practitioners work as part-time county prosecutors, contract indigent defense attorneys, or town attorneys to subsidize their practice and may play other important roles in their communities.²

A second takeaway is that the problem goes beyond the legal labor supply. It is not just lawyers and other justice workers that we lack in rural areas. “Across the United States and around the world, rural areas have suffered from brain drain” that has played out across generations, “with young people leaving rural spaces to seek education or opportunity in urban areas and never returning. The result is not just towns without lawyers, but also towns without doctors, accountants, teachers”³ or the institutional supports for such providers, such as hospitals, businesses, and schools.⁴ While increasing funding for individual providers is important, addressing these deficits at scale will require “broader revitalization efforts” including sustained public investment in rural institutions and infrastructure.⁵

1. See Matthew Burnett & Rebecca L. Sandefur, A People-Centered Approach to Designing and Evaluating Community Justice Worker Programs in the United States, 51 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1509, 1534 (2024) (emphasizing the importance of stable staffing for the success of community justice worker programs and discussing the advantages of programs in which “justice workers are embedded in…community-based organizations”). See, e.g., Arizona Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 2020-88 (authorizing a local nonprofit to provide limited legal services to domestic violence survivors); Arizona Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 2023-21 (authorizing the expansion of the program to include other community-based organizations).
2. See Hannah Haksgaard, The Rural Lawyer: How to Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive 103 (2025) (finding that the lawyers in South Dakota’s Rural Attorney Recruitment Program, many of whom work as part-time county prosecutors, also “serve businesses—they draft documents to form companies and non-profits; they structure the buying and selling of businesses; they represent businesses. They also do general litigation, including debt collection and civil defense.”); Elizabeth Chambliss, Rural Legal Markets, 12 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 961, 994 (2025) (finding that part-time public contracts are especially important for rural lawyers who practice in areas with lower profit margins, such as family law and criminal defense).
3. Legal Deserts, The Practice (Aug./Sep. 2025).
4. See Lisa R. Pruitt & Bradley E. Showman, Law Stretched Thin: Access to Justice in Rural America, 59 S.D. L. Rev. 466, (2014) (arguing that rural access to justice requires more than simply adding lawyers and calling for more investment in community infrastructure and support); Chambliss, supra note 2, at 1005 (discussing some rural practitioners’ reluctance to live in the small towns where they practice due to concerns about the quality of the public schools).
5. Mapping Legal Deserts, The Practice, supra note 3 (quoting K. Aleks Schaefer). See also K. Aleks Schaefer & Andrew Van Leuven, Quantifying the Rural Legal Desert Problem: Assessing Access to Justice and Legal Services in Marginalized Communities, 69 S.D. L. Rev. 419 (2024).