Washington Lawyer - November/December 2021 - 17

FEATURE
situations when people are in crisis. And we do have a lot of folks that are
in crisis, but we also have a lot of folks here who are not. "
Most legal services organizations in the District specialize in helping
people with the most urgent civil legal needs, while also having to
contend with limited budgets to support their operations.
RURAL ATTORNEY RECRUITMENT
The American Bar Association, in its " Profile of the Legal Profession 2021 "
report, states that there are 52 counties in the United States that have no
lawyers. Another 182 counties have only one or two lawyers, and nearly
1,300 counties have less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. Advocates
and stakeholders in the legal community have turned to incubator
programs and rural attorney recruitment efforts to help mitigate the
scarcity of lawyers.
Many legal incubator programs are modeled after City University of New
York School of Law's Incubator for Justice, launched in 2007. Since then,
other universities in cities such as Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Kansas City,
Missouri, have followed suit.
The California Commission on Access to Justice launched the Modest
Means Incubator Project in 2014 to bridge the access to justice gap in
urban neighborhoods in the state. Funded by grants, the program was
designed to train recent law school graduates who want to start their own
practices. Incubator participants build their skills while providing legal
services at affordable rates in underserved communities in Los Angeles,
San Francisco's Bay Area, and rural counties in Northern California.
Legal deserts in sparsely populated states like South Dakota face different
challenges, including an aging attorney population. Seeing older
attorneys retire with no new attorneys to fill the void partly inspired the
creation of South Dakota's Recruitment Assistance Pilot Program (now
the Rural Attorney Recruitment Program) in 2013. Before the program
got off the ground, the State Bar of South Dakota interviewed several
recent law graduates in the state to inquire why they weren't practicing
in rural counties.
" The responses they got were that the student loan debt was increasing
and they couldn't sustain the waxing and waning of self-employment, "
says Suzanne Starr, director of policy and legal services for the South
Dakota Unified Judicial System. " Also, they were really afraid of committing
malpractice if they went out on their own and they didn't have that
mentorship. "
To incentivize law students to practice in South Dakota's rural areas,
the state bar developed five-year contracts in which participants
receive payment equal to 90 percent of each year's tuition and fees at
the University of South Dakota School of Law for state residents, paid in
five equal installments. The bar also paired participants with a mentor.
For Austin Hoffman, part-time state's attorney serving McPherson
County (population 2,411 in 2020), the Rural Attorney Recruitment
Program was a godsend. While in law school, his dream was to practice
law in his hometown, Eureka. Today he divides his time as a state's
attorney and as a private civil law practitioner. (South Dakota allows
attorneys in counties with under 50,000 residents to serve as part-time
state's attorneys while maintaining a private practice.)
In addition to being able to stay close to his roots, Hoffman says that the
program's biggest benefit was the annual payments to help pay off his
Kohekian
Originally from North Carolina, Kristen Kochekian of Gillette Law Office
moved to Redfield, South Dakota, after being accepted into the state's rural
attorney recruitment program.
tuition fees. " I was able to start my own business without having to be
overly concerned about what kind of debt was coming into play, " he
says. " Having an immense amount of debt can make opening up your
own business extremely hard. "
One of Hoffman's major concerns in starting his own practice was
whether he would have enough business. His hometown's population
is 814. " Those concerns were washed away very quickly, " Hoffman says.
" I could legitimately spend 18 hours a day in my office and not be able to
get everything that I need to get done, which is a good and a bad thing.
The nice thing is that I feel very comfortable for this to be a sustainable
practice. "
" The rural attorney program is fantastic, " says Hoffman. " I wish more
people would utilize it. I really hope that our state legislature funds it
again so that we can get more attorneys in rural South Dakota. "
Kristen Kochekian, originally from North Carolina, also practices in
South Dakota. While attending Oklahoma City University School of Law,
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
* WASHINGTON LAWYER 17
Courtesy of Kristen Kochekian
Washington Lawyer - November/December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Lawyer - November/December 2021
