Wanted: Rural Attorneys

NYT:

“A hospital will not last long with no doctors, and a courthouse and judicial system with no lawyers faces the same grim future,” South Dakota’s chief justice, David E. Gilbertson, said. “We face the very real possibility of whole sections of this state being without access to legal services.”

In South Dakota, 65 percent of the lawyers live in four urban areas. In Georgia, 70 percent are in the Atlanta area. In Arizona, 94 percent are in the two largest counties, and in Texas, 83 percent are around Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Last summer, the American Bar Association called on federal, state and local governments to stem the decline of lawyers in rural areas.

Last month, South Dakota became the first state to heed the call. It passed a law that offers lawyers an annual subsidy to live and work in rural areas, like the national one that doctors, nurses and dentists have had for decades...

The new law, which will go into effect in June, requires a five-year commitment from the applicant and sets up a pilot program of up to 16 participants. They will receive an annual subsidy of $12,000, 90 percent of the cost of a year at the University of South Dakota Law School.

This compares with a 40-year-old federal medical program, the National Health Service Corps, which offers up to $60,000 in tax-free loan repayment for two years of service in underserved areas and up to $140,000 for five years of service. The program consists of nearly 10,000 medical, dental and mental health professionals serving 10.4 million people, almost half in rural communities.

A spokesman for the federal program said research had shown that residents who train in rural settings are two to three times more likely than urban graduates to practice in rural areas.

Rural areas are struggling to survive, and whether residents want to realize it or not, the rural way of life is subsidized by the government, and has been for most of the history of this country.  Rural Free Delivery, the Rural Electrification Act, the Universal Service Fund, the Federal Aid Road Act, the Rural Development Administration, the various ag programs, state school funding schemes, the list goes on and on.  And yet, rural folks overwhelmingly vote for knaves and buffoons who work to end these very programs, telling us hicks that it is the brown people who get all the help from the government, and it comes out of our pockets.  For whatever reason, folks lap that shit up.  If things continue the way they've been going, rural folks are going to find out the truth very soon.