What is a legal desert and why does it matter?

Jennifer Albright

Director of JD Online Student Success

With over two decades of experience in legal education, both in traditional and online environments, Jennifer Albright supports students in navigating their journey toward success in legal studies.

A legal desert is a county or region with too few lawyers to meet the legal needs of its residents. In many parts of the United States, especially rural communities, there are fewer than one attorney per 1,000 residents. Some counties have no practicing lawyers at all.

When legal help is unavailable, everyday problems escalate:

• Families struggle to resolve custody disputes
• Small businesses move forward without contracts
• Veterans face benefits issues alone
• Landowners navigate development pressure without counsel
• Access to justice becomes uneven depending on geography

Legal deserts are actively shaping real outcomes for real communities.

Why are rural communities losing lawyers?

The increasing prevalence of legal deserts is a result of several converging trends:

• A significant number of rural attorneys are approaching retirement
• Fewer law graduates are relocating to small towns
• Traditional legal education requires students to move for three years, typically to large metropolitan areas, and they often do not return to the rural areas they came from due to gaps in wages and employers between rural and metro areas.
• Many prospective JD students already live where they want to provide legal services, and may even work for government and public service agencies that struggle to attract recent law graduates.

Over time, the result compounds and counties lose practitioners faster than they gain new ones.

How can legal education respond to attorney shortages?

One approach to addressing the legal desert crisis is expanding how and where students earn a JD.

ASU Law created the part-time, fully online JD to increase access to legal education while maintaining the same curriculum, faculty and academic standards as the on-campus program. Students remain in their communities while completing their degree, empowering working professionals, caregivers and community leaders to pursue a law degree without stepping away from their lives. By remaining in their communities and continuing to work, this also reduces the financial burden that keeps many recent law graduates in metropolitan areas after graduation.

The need for increased access to legal education is significant; more than 1,300 counties across the United States have fewer than one attorney per 1,000 residents. The part-time online JD at ASU Law was designed with those communities in mind, particularly students committed to public service and rural practice.

With program leadership sitting within the dean’s office, this initiative is central to achieving ASU Law’s mission and upholding the legacy of our namesake, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The degree awarded is the same ABA-accredited JD – expectations for rigor and engagement remain unchanged.

Considering its digital delivery, technology also plays a fundamental role in the program’s curriculum and execution. Students engage with AI and legal tech tools to prepare for modern practice, especially in areas where efficiency and resourcefulness are essential.

What does public service look like in this model?

Public service in this program is tied directly to geography and lived experience.

Many students enter with defined goals:

• Practicing in rural counties
• Serving tribal communities
• Supporting children in the welfare system
• Addressing land use conflicts
• Working in conservation law. 

Because they remain in those environments during law school, their education connects immediately to the communities they intend to serve. That continuity matters. It allows community ties to remain intact, professional networks continue to develop locally and the transition from student to practicing attorney becomes more direct.

Who is already part of the first JD Online cohort?

The inaugural cohort is already in motion:

• Jamie Lee Tucker, a novelist and mother in Cartersville, Georgia, joined the first online, part-time JD class while continuing her writing career and raising her family. Her long-term goal is to practice in her hometown, focusing on land use and property issues that affect rural and agricultural communities. Years of service with a local nature preserve shaped her interest in stewardship of both land and law.
• Bruce Orr, located in Powderly, Texas, began the program while remaining in Lamar County. A former teacher and conservation advocate, he has seen how lack of legal knowledge limits people’s ability to protect their interests. He noted that he might be the only person in his county currently attending law school, which underscores the program’s geographic reach.
• Natalie Winzenried, based in South Jordan, Utah, works as a CASA coordinator supporting children in abuse and neglect cases. As a full-time professional and mother of two, relocating for law school was not feasible. Her goal is to practice in child welfare advocacy, special education and disability rights, with growing interest in Tribal law.

Each of these students represents a different geography and professional path – what connects them is location. They are studying law while remaining embedded in the communities where they plan to practice and where they already contribute locally to the community.

Legal deserts develop over time, and ASU Law is reimagining legal education to address them with future-forward, structural change. Expanding access to legal education is one part of that change.