Small Town Law

ISBA’s Rural Practice Initiative encourages law students, recent graduates to settle down in a small town.

The ISBA has taken a significant step toward combating access to justice in rural Illinois by creating opportunities there for law students and younger attorneys.

Last year, the American Bar Association noted the growth of “legal deserts” in the U.S., with 182 counties that had only one or two lawyers, and 54 that had none. The Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) has reported that 35 Illinois counties have 10 or fewer private practice attorneys, and 13 have five or fewer in private practice. Some of those counties have just two or three attorneys, many of whom are approaching retirement.

Established rural attorneys and firms have difficulty hiring associates and establishing transition plans; meanwhile, rural Illinoisans struggle to find a local attorney, let alone afford one. In response to these challenges, ISBA President Dennis Orsey created the ISBA Special Committee on the Rural Practice Initiative (RPI) tasked with finding solutions for Illinois’ legal deserts. (The RPI committee has since been upgraded to a standing committee.)

“We’re not unlike other big states,” Orsey says. “We’ve got Chicago and other populated pockets like Springfield and Bloomington and Peoria. But once you get beyond that, we have large swaths of Illinois that are much less populated. I look at this as an access-to-justice issue. If we don’t take affirmative action now to address this problem, in a few years those aging attorneys will retire and there will be no one left to serve these residents.”

The RPI committee conducted a survey and interviews that revealed several reasons for young attorneys’ reluctance to relocate to rural areas. Reasons included career-related concerns (earning enough to pay off law school debt, fewer opportunities for building business, finding mentors); personal and family unease about lower-quality schools; a lack of restaurants, culture, and entertainment; and difficulty finding a spouse—or employment for a spouse. For some attorneys, these concerns are compounded by a history of discrimination in some rural areas.

Sole practitioner Ebony Huddleston, who’s based in Madison County in the Metro East area but serves clients in surrounding rural counties, says she’s typically the only person of color regularly seen in those counties’ courtrooms, where she handles estate planning, real estate, and, most often, collections work for financial institutions.

Attorneys, judges, and other courtroom personnel know her well after 15 years of practice, but from early on, Huddleston says, she was consistently treated respectfully. Still, knowing that she would stand out as a Black woman, she says that she put extra pressure on herself.

“I was prepared, consistent, and I intentionally spoke with clerks and courthouse personnel. My reputation became, ‘OK, we’re comfortable with her,’” Huddleston says. “In smaller, rural counties, attorneys and judges are more likely to know one another personally. I figured, right or wrong, that I needed to be an extra step prepared.”

Huddleston suggests those thinking about participating in RPI should be sure to ingratiate themselves by getting involved in the community beyond the local bar association, such as by joining civic organizations and participating in events. “Practitioners would need to insert themselves into the environment,” she says.

There’s business to be had

Orsey, who practices in Granite City, just northeast of St. Louis, says a major obstacle to attracting more attorneys to rural Illinois is the assumption that there are too few clients to sustain a practice.

“Most big-city lawyers assume that when you use the term ‘rural practitioners,’ there’s not enough business there,” he says. “The reality is, if you take the time to do some interviewing, you’ll find that there are practicing attorneys in these smaller counties that have viable practices, that they can use more help, and they have been looking for attorneys to come into their community.”

Rural attorneys who participated in the RPI’s survey and interviews expressed great satisfaction in their career and life choices, saying they have built thriving practices, developed meaningful connections in their communities, and availed themselves of opportunities for public service, including public office.

“Law students and some young lawyers told us, ‘I can’t make a good living there. I’m not going to be able to pay off my loans. And I think I’ll be bored,’” says Daniel Thies, an RPI cochair and shareholder at Webber & Thies in Urbana (Thies also practiced for five years at Sidley Austin in Chicago before relocating to his family’s firm). “Rural practitioners all said, ‘We’ve made a good living; we like the variety of our work, we’re doing something different every day, and we feel fulfilled because we’re integrated into the community and we’re able to help a lot of people.’”

RPI cochair Lois Wood, a retired executive director of Land of Lincoln Legal Aid in East St. Louis, became intimately familiar with the challenges of meeting the legal needs in rural areas due to the scarcity of attorneys in many counties. The agency, which has assisted more than 600 lower-income residents in the past two years, would have referred many other cases brought by moderate- and middle-income families to private attorneys—if they had been available.

“Relatively few law graduates think of going to rural areas or small towns to practice law,” Wood says. “A lot of them have not grown up in rural areas and they don’t know what that would be like. They’re not sure, even, how to make connections with attorneys in those areas.”

Establishing the RPI

The RPI special committee put forth a proposal adopted by the ISBA Board of Governors to fund the Rural Practice Initiative, allocating $50,000 the first year for: 1) four Associate Fellows, young attorneys (who can be recent graduates but don’t need to be), who will each receive a $10,000 stipend to relocate to a rural area, half at the outset and half at the end of their first year, assuming they finish out the year there; and 2) two Summer Fellows, first- or second-year law students who will receive $5,000 each along with mentoring.

That money is intended to subsidize salaries and defray expenses such as moving costs, student debt payments, and the initial startup investment associated with law practice. In future years, the committee envisions finding other sources of funding aside from the ISBA. Attorneys also will receive minimum continuing legal education credits connected to the program, mentorship, introductions to community leaders, and other support.

The committee includes practitioners, current and retired judges, and three law school deans. The law school deans “are giving us great insight in terms of what’s on the minds of recent graduates, and what’s on the minds of second- and third-year law students,” Orsey says. “They have a handle on where people are typically placed. The judges have a pulse on the legal needs in their geographic areas.”

Firms and attorneys are eligible to participate if they are ISBA members in good standing with the ARDC and run a private practice in rural Illinois (defined as all counties except Champaign, Cook, DuPage, Jackson, Jefferson, Kane, Lake, Macon, Madison, McHenry, McLean, Peoria, Rock Island, Sangamon, St. Clair, Tazewell, Will, and Winnebago. Case-by-case exceptions might be made for practices in outlying parts of these counties).

“We think it can be a win-win scenario,” Orsey says. “We can match people with an existing practice where they can earn a good living; and if we’re providing access to justice by affording clients an opportunity to find a lawyer in their local community—and not have to drive 50 or 100 miles to meet a lawyer—that’s a good thing.”

Members of the RPI committee will screen applications from law firms and potential fellows. Approved firms will set up interviews and make decisions about extending offers; fellows will decide whether to accept them. Applications for the first year are due on Feb. 12, the committee will make decisions and inform law-firm applicants by March 1, and final decisions will be made by March 14 for the Summer Fellows and April 10 for the Associate Fellows. (More information about the RPI and the application process.)

“We’re trying to broker good matches” Orsey says. “If we can make the right match, an RPI Fellow may eventually take over that practice, and we are going to be able to continue to provide legal services in that county and surrounding counties.”

“They will have assurance that we have vetted the people they would be working for, and the people they have hired, respectively,” adds Thies. “We’re providing the service of a headhunter, or a clearinghouse for jobs, essentially.”

Surmounting perceptions

The RPI does not expect to “solve” the challenges of practicing law in rural Illinois. “I’m not an ostrich. We are realists when it comes to this,” Orsey says. “Many law graduates will say, ‘I can’t make enough money in a rural community because I need to service my student loan debt. Therefore I need a certain standard of living.’ We can all relate to that.”

But some perceptions are worth chipping away at. For example, while a lawyer might earn a higher salary in Chicago, living in rural Illinois may cost half as much, Orsey says. “Many would argue that the quality of living is better,” he says. “You can have a house with a big yard. Those are personal choices people have to make.”

“We’re giving law students and lawyers an incentive to bridge that perception gap, so they will have a chance to see what rural practice is like,” Thies adds. “The hope is, they’ll stay. We hope they will see things are promising in rural Illinois. There is a lot of prosperity there due to agriculture. There is more economic activity than in a lot of rural areas in the country.”

Thies attributes the decline of lawyers in rural areas to factors such as the perceptions of making a living and the general migration of young people during the past 30 years out of rural areas.

“If rural attorneys retire but aren’t replaced, there will be an even more severe shortage,” says Thies, whose firm practices litigation and general transactional work and whose client base is split evenly between Champaign County and its surrounding counties.

“In my own practice, many clients coming in from surrounding counties are driving two hours to see us. That’s not at all uncommon. Clients who are willing to make that trek typically have bigger matters,” Thies says.

Small ponds for big fish

Young practitioners need time to get established, build their reputation, and grow a network of clientele, Orsey says. “But if you go into a smaller community, you become a big fish in a small pond,” he says. “You can build your reputation quickly. If we match you with an established lawyer or law firm, you have an existing client base that you can begin to hone your skills on—and then work on a relationship with your senior partner about taking over that business moving forward.”

Among other advantages to working in a rural area is the clearer path toward becoming a state’s attorney, public defender, judge, or even an elected official, Orsey notes. “You are going to be on a faster track for some of those positions if you have an established practice in one of those counties,” he says. Noting that many people in those positions in downstate counties are only a decade out of law school, he adds, “Imagine somebody trying to pull that off in a big city.”

The RPI Associate Fellow program is also for younger attorneys who are not fresh out of law school but just got tired of trying to pull it off in Chicago, Orsey says. “It could be somebody practicing for three to 10 years. Maybe they’re burnt out in the big city and would like to raise a family somewhere else,” he says.

The Summer Associate program is not for those who plan to practice in a larger metropolitan area after law school and are willing to spend one summer in a small town. “We think there’s a lot of law students who would jump at a $5,000 internship and then, when they graduate, go practice in a more urban setting. The RPI doesn’t want those kinds of students,” he says. “We’re going to have a rigorous review process to make sure we’re matching students who truly have an interest in practicing in rural Illinois and are more likely to be matched with a law firm in a community in which they are willing to live.”

Voices from down home

Angel Wawrzynek of Mattoon-based Armstrong, Grove & Wawrzynek, which focuses on trusts, estates, and guardianship matters, is seriously considering hiring either an associate or law clerk through the RPI this year.

“I don’t know that we were otherwise going to be hiring, but we are definitely not going to turn away this fantastic opportunity,” she says. “The need is there. In Coles County, I can think of three attorneys who died or retired without any succession plan because there wasn’t one to be had—they tried to hire young associates. Hopefully, we’re able to start connecting people up.”

The RPI program can’t address every possible hesitancy one may have about rural practice, Wawrzynek says. “Mattoon doesn’t have an opera or a symphony or certain types of restaurants,” she says, adding that she’s learned to cook Greek and Indian food. “Depending on what you’re looking for in life, a small town might not check all those boxes.”

But Wawrzynek, a graduate of Oak Park River Forest High School, hopes the program will ease concerns about issues such as salary, cost of living, and the types of law one is able to practice. “Of course you’re going to make less money in a smaller community than in downtown Chicago. But it also costs way less to live there,” she says. “I was able to buy a house a year out of law school. Real estate is cheaper; restaurants are cheaper; it’s cheaper to grab a drink. My commute is approximately six minutes. My hours are roughly eight-thirty to five, with flexibility on either end, which is fantastic given the fact that I have a two-year-old.”

Wawrzynek has been able to build an estate planning practice across several counties. While doctors and farmers provide the most interesting and complicated puzzles, “average people still need wills,” she says.

As a transplant, Wawrzynek feels fully integrated into the community. “I love living and working here. The pro and con is that because it’s a smaller community, people know you. There’s no anonymity,” she says. “If I go to Walmart, I’m probably going to run into someone I know. For some people, that sounds terrible. For me, it’s not a bad thing. It’s easy to make a name for yourself where there’s not that many attorneys to work with.”

Sarah Taylor of Carbondale-based Barrett, Twomey, Broom, Hughes & Hoke, a general practice firm that has clients in most surrounding counties and even up to two hours away, says rural practice can be very rewarding.

“I have spoken with many attorneys who are very happy with the choice they made,” she says. “Many of them were from rural areas and small towns and love that environment. Some were not. I’m very hopeful that we will have law students and new attorneys sign up for this and give it a shot, and we will start to tackle this problem. I also think it will help the ISBA better understand and better meet the needs of attorneys outside of urban centers. I’m excited that the ISBA is addressing this problem of trying to meet the needs of rural areas and small towns. It’s a starting point. A journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step.”

Finding work has seldom been a problem for Taylor or her firm. She says word of mouth is often what drives new business, instead of social media or advertising. “It is about creating a reputation for yourself,” she says. “You end up representing families, and they introduce you to a close family friend. Those connections are very common. You can also end up with a bad reputation very quickly.”

That’s true within the tight-knit legal community as well, Taylor says. “It’s a very congenial attorney crowd,” she says. “Even though we do fight about stuff in court, we do a lot of social activities, and there are a lot of referrals and word-of-mouth type things. The fact that we see the same attorneys and same judges, if you want to have a good reputation, you have to be really courteous and professional with everybody.”

Jonathan Cantrell of the three-attorney firm of Hart Cantrell in Benton, about an hour north of Kentucky, says he doesn’t envision applying for the program this year because the firm already employs a law student who seems interested in staying on after he graduates. But Cantrell says participating in the RPI is a possibility in the future.

Although the coal mining that once drove the region’s economy has declined significantly, Cantrell says the remaining industry, which is heavily agricultural, has become underserved as aging, rural attorneys retire or pass away and are not replaced. Cantrell handles estate planning, probate, real estate, and municipal work, all of which, he says, will always have a market in the area.

Cantrell says the only challenge he sees in rural practice is trying to serve everyone who needs help. “There are legal services that will always be in demand, even in the rural counties,” he says. “Our client portfolio has continued to grow steadily. We are, frankly, struggling to keep up with our workload.”

Cantrell, who attended high school nearby, enjoys the level of face-to-face interaction he has with clients—at least in non-COVID-19 times—and the professional relationships he’s developed. “In rural counties, you’re going to be in front of the same judges over and over, and facing the same attorneys on the opposite side over and over,” he says. “It was a relatively short period of time before I felt like I was recognized in the community. It makes you feel like you’re making a difference.”

When he graduated law school in 2008, Cantrell was open to moving to an urban area and thought it would be best for himself financially. But during the Great Recession opportunities were few. He ended up relocating back near his roots—and never regretted it.

“From the very beginning, they sent me to court and had me doing depositions and trial work,” he says. “I felt like I learned everything I needed to be a well-rounded attorney within a couple of years. I don’t think I would have gotten that kind of training at a big firm. I also enjoy the direct interaction with the community, and the fact you quickly earn your own reputation among the judges and other lawyers in the area. As long as you have a decent work ethic, you’re going to do well in a rural community.”

“We consistently hear from ISBA’s rural members that ‘We’ve got more business than we know what to do with. We are looking for lawyers to hire to address clients’ needs.’ That raises eyebrows,” Orsey says. “That’s the opposite of the stereotype that there’s no business in downstate Illinois. Too often, people hear about our access-to-justice problems. What better way to solve that problem than to attract good lawyers to these communities?”

Ed Finkel is an Evanston-based freelance writer.
edfinkel@edfinkel.com