In the past couple of weeks, I was reminded of a recent Post on this blog titled “Legal Desert” when I received a local bar email inquiring about local open attorney positions. Our local bar sent out a call for information from members who had open positions in their law firms for attorneys. The idea, it seemed, was that the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism was studying the dire lack of attorneys practicing in underserved areas and wanted to know, from all of us practicing out there, if we had any openings for attorney positions within our own firms. Interesting. How does knowing how many open attorney positions there are out there help shed light on how to address the severe lack of attorneys in underserved areas? It may be readily apparent to everyone else, but to this attorney, how this helps is not to me. Perhaps knowing how many of us are actively seeking associate attorneys to work sheds better light on where the most deprived areas of the law are and in what practice areas?

            This email got me thinking once again about how in need we are of attorneys to help represent people in dire need of legal representation. After I received this email, I started to get other emails from Public Defender offices reaching out far and wide for people already qualified on other lists to jump in and help represent defendants in areas where they just have plum run out of attorneys to help. We are in a pickle here in North Carolina right now when it comes to providing constitutionally mandated representation to indigent clients. Why is this happening now? Is this some after effect of the pandemic and Covid, or has this been something that has been a long time coming and we are now just experiencing the effects of the problem now starting to spill over the edge?

            From all the articles I have read about the attorney population and this issue of legal deserts the problem is not that in total, there are not enough actual lawyers in American and new ones being made each year. The issue is that we tend to geographically concentrate ourselves as opposed to spreading ourselves to all communities that may need us. But I work in a relatively dense attorney populated place. So why are we, who are in a concentrated area, experiencing a shortage of attorneys to help indigent clients? Seems like not only are we concentrating ourselves geographically, but also by practice area. From the literature it seems that those practice areas that are gaining the most numbers are not those areas where one is likely to find indigent clients in need of help.

            I think we all need to find the time in our busy practices to find a way to pitch in and help out. If you ask those older lawyers (ahem, I mean those over the age of 60) most of them will tell you that they were taught very early on in their careers that it was our individual duty to take on some pro-bono work. I think that message has been lost on those law school graduates post 1990 (just my opinion). I don’t recall receiving that message upon leaving law school. It was only because I was interested in and inquired into the experiences of those older attorneys alongside whom I was working.

            Our communities need us to help. So, do what you can. Take one case here or there. Reach out to your local Legal Aid office to see if they need any additional hands at their next outreach clinic. Don’t think that what little you can do won’t help. Trust me. It will.

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