Filling the Needs of Rural Clients

Another Gap 

Created by 

Retiring Baby Boomer Lawyers

Over the last several years, several state and local bar associations have focused on under-served clients living in rural areas.  Twenty percent of the U.S. population resides in rural counties, but only two percent of law practices locate there.  

The October 2014 issue of the ABA Journal re-visits the topic again, profiling a number of lawyers practicing in rural North Dakota and South Dakota.  The article, Too Many Lawyers? Not Here. In Rural America, Lawyers are Few and Far Between by Lorelei Laird, gives a general overview of the situation, identifies a number of resources, and suggests the adaptations to rural practice required of young lawyers. An associated podcast is here.

Additional states -- including Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, Vermont, Montana, New Hampshire, and Maine -- have started various types of programs designed to encourage younger lawyers to practice in rural areas.  

Other resources on this topic include:

• Bruce Cameron, Becoming a Rural Lawyer: A Personal Guide to Establishing a Small Town Practice (The New Lawyer's Survival Guide) (Volume 3) (2013).
• Gary P. Toohey, Choosing the Road Less Traveled: Reversing the Lawyer Exodus, Mo. Bar Magazine (Winter 2014). 
• Martha Neil, In a Rural County That Lacks Lawyers, No One Seemingly Wants to Buy a Successful Law Practice, ABA On Line Journal (Nov. 3, 2014).
• 

January 12, 2015 Update: More on this story here.

Update On the Aging of Lawyers in Private Practice

What Happens When 

Baby Boomers Retire?

In April 2013, I wrote about the possible opportunities for new lawyers created by the increasing age of lawyers -- who will eventually retire. 

Bill Henderson, of The Legal Whiteboard blog, provides a very interesting analysis of his data on this topic here.  One of his findings:

The big surprise here is that the proportion of young lawyers (under age 35) has been declining for several decades. And not by a little, but by a lot. During this period, the median age went from 39 in 1980, to 41 in 1991, to 45 in 2000, to 49 in 2005.

Some of his conclusions:

The analysis above suggests that the JD Advantage / JD Preferred employment market started to take shape several decades ago, long before these terms were put in place by the ABA and NALP. Yet, we really don't know about these careers. To construct a more useful, informative narrative, we'd have to systematically study the career paths of our alumni. That task is long overdue.

I blogged on the JD Advantage market here and here.

More of Henderson's conclusions:  

My own conclusion is that neither the organized bar nor the legal academy has a firm grip on the changes that are occurring in the legal marketplace. This uncertainty and confusion is understandable in light of the magnitude of the shift. 

Nonetheless, these market shifts create special urgency for legal educators because we can't teach what we don't understand. The thesis of the Young Lawyers Board is surely right -- if unchanged, legal education will remain a business in decline. Much of legal education today is premised on a 20th century professional archetype--an archetype that is, based on the data, becoming less and less relevant with each passing day. Thus, we are under-serving our students. And frankly, they are figuring that out.

Change is hard for people and organizations they work in. And law professors and law schools are no different. The retooling of legal education will likely be a slow, painful process that will take the better part of a full generation to complete. I am trying to do my part. 

Yet, the brunt of the demographic shift falls on the licensed bar, which is getting older and thus weaker with each passing year. This is a problem that belongs to the ABA, the state bars, and the state supreme courts, not the legal academy.

Nov. 18, 2014 Update:  For a graphic and more cynical look at this topic, see here. 

Supply-Demand Gap in Lawyers When Boomers Retire

Most of the news these days focuses on the alleged over-supply of lawyers.  I say "alleged" because the market considered by these journalists does not cover the needs of our rural populations or anyone who can not afford legal services at current prices. But, I'll leave that topic for another post.

Today, I want to focus on the potentially odd likelihood that we will have a lawyer shortage in another five to ten years.  Here's why.

The Washington state bar surveyed its lawyers asking about retirement plans.  The survey found that nearly one-quarter of the state's lawyers planned to retire in the next five years or about 1,440 per year.  Another 32 percent of its surveyed lawyers planned to leave the profession or cut back their practices.  See story here.

The Washington bar report noted that a whopping 71 percent of the state's lawyers were aged 50 or older, with 21 percent being 61 or older.

On the other hand, admissions to the state bar had not kept pace with retirement projections.  Admissions dropped by 13 percent between 2007 to 2011, with about 1,200 new lawyers added each year to the rolls during that time.

I sent the report to friends that work in the administration of the Virginia Supreme Court and to friends in leadership positions in the two state bar associations.  I asked whether Virginia should be doing a similar survey of its lawyers.

The data suggests that the need for lawyers will outstrip supply in the next decade, but few incentives exist in the current legal market to encourage college graduates to pursue a career in law.  Data shows that, on average, about 50 percent of recent law grads will find jobs in traditional law firms.  At the same time, many law grads accumulate over $100,000 of debt.  The high cost of the education coupled with poor current job prospects has reduced applications to law schools by another whopping number: about 50 percent since 2004.   See story here.

As noted in earlier posts here and here, changes in the legal market are propelling changes in law firm staffing models, first-year hiring, and technology use.  Law firms are considering other deeply structural changes in the way they offer legal services to clients.

Oddly enough, if the current generation of law students and recent grads can tough it through the current market downturn, their mid-career options could be diverse and plentiful.  However, the overall situation screams for strategic planning of your own legal career.  On top of everything else that new grads must master, they must also understand the changes happening at a macro level in our profession.   We are calling the situation the "New Normal."  

9/19/13 Update:   The National Jurist covered this story in greater depth here.