Rural Lawyer Dilemma: Burke's Legal Profession Faces Aging Workforce and Youth Attraction Challenge

There are no wild-growing Saguaro cacti in Burke. No sidewinder rattlesnakes. No scorpions. No gila monsters. But it’s a desert just the same: A legal desert.

Burke is one of 48 counties in the state that qualifies as a legal desert – areas with fewer than one attorney per 1,000 people.

Burke, home to nearly 90,000 residents, had just 76 lawyers when the American Bar Association last conducted a study in 2020.

Morganton attorney Alan LeCroy wants to change that. In fact, he envisions a 180-degree turnaround.

LeCroy heads up a committee formed by N.C. Supreme Court AChief Justice Paul Newby and the N.C. Bar Association Committee on Professionalism that is searching for solutions. 

He said now is the time to act – before the situation gets out of hand.

“There is a statewide effort underway to identify legal deserts,” said LeCroy, who represents the State Bar for Burke, Caldwell, and Catawba counties. “I want to change it to a legal oasis, because desert has such a negative connotation, and because these are such wonderful places to live and raise a family.”

“It’s not as dire in Catawba as it is in Burke and Caldwell. Caldwell is having trouble staffing their court-appointed attorney list, and Burke is helping to take up some of that slack.”

A STATEWIDE TREND

Burke’s growing lawyer shortage is part of a statewide trend that has seen young attorneys fresh out of law school eschewing North Carolina’s many rural regions in favor of more populous urban counties.

A whopping 46.7% of North Carolina’s active attorneys work in just two counties, Mecklenburg and Wake, even though only 21.5% of the state’s population resides there.

And it isn’t like the state as a whole is doing much better. Another 2020 study, this one from the National Bar Association, lists North Carolina as 44th in the nation in attorneys per capita, with an average of only 2.3 per 1,000 residents. The national average is 4 per county, but the numbers are dramatically higher in major cities like New York. The same study concluded 40% of the counties or county equivalents in the U.S. face a legal desert.

“It’s not a problem that’s unique to North Carolina,” LeCroy said. “It’s all over the U.S. So we’re researching what other states are doing to address the problem.”

LeCroy said it’s vital for all citizens to have access to competent legal help. He said associations like Legal Aid, which provides some services for low-income people, help fill some of the gaps, but not nearly all of them.

“Ultimately, the problem is the public needs to be served and have good, affordable, legal representation,” he said. “The worry is, people won’t have access to attorneys, and they’ll have to go far away to get them and pay a premium for their services, so they have to do without. We’re trying to address that better.”

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The first step toward solving the problem is understanding the drivers behind it. In this case, there are two, LeCroy said. 

Older lawyers who are well-established in non-urban areas are aging out of the profession.

At the same time, younger attorneys are emerging from law school with a mountain of debt in the form of student loans. The recent graduates need to start paying those loans back quickly, and it simply takes too long to build up a clientele if they move to small towns and hang a shingle of their own. 

“At 58, I’m being called a young attorney,” said LeCroy. “That’s great for my ego, but not for the profession.”

Morganton attorney Michelle Lippert agreed, saying the problem isn’t overwhelmingly urgent yet, but looms large in the future as older attorneys retire. 

“We have a quantity of lawyers right now, but we certainly have an aging population,” said Lippert. “What we have not seen is a lot of new lawyers who are coming out of law school and going back to the rural areas. Your kids who are graduating from local high schools and making the decision to go to law school are not coming back to the area like they used to.

“As our attorneys start to look at retirement – which they’re fully entitled to; they’ve been practicing a long time – there is not an abundance of young attorneys to fill the gaps.”

Even some who don’t see an immediate threat recognize the attrition among the ranks in recent years.

“We’ve lost more than we’ve gained in the last 15 or 20 years, but I think we’ve still got 50 or 60 in the county, counting Broughton Hospital,” said Morganton attorney Steve Cheuvront. “As far as the courthouse, there are still 30 or 40 of us.

“I don’t think there’s any shortage, because there are lawyers that are still trying to keep practices together and have enough business, so if it was a desert, we’d all be flooded with people.”

Lippert agreed that hasn’t happened — not yet, anyway.

“The attorneys are here,” said Lippert, “There may be fewer of us who are younger, but we’re certainly going to step up and fill any gap that may exist. I don’t think it’s a desert yet. I think the concept of a legal desert is maybe down the road, but it’s not here yet.”

AVERTING A LEGAL CATASTROPHE

In order to stave off the impending crisis, LeCroy said his group is keeping an open mind. “We’re looking into a lot of different things to address the problem,” he said.

One way to overcome the deficit is to speak to prospective law school graduates about migrating to underserved areas. Some of the bar associations have visited schools to recruit graduates to rural locales like Burke, but their efforts haven’t paid off yet.

“For whatever reason, that hasn’t taken hold,” said Lippert.

LeCroy said the reticence graduates have shown seems to be financially based. The will to move to the country is there, but the money isn’t. 

“What we’ve seen in talking to law students, is that what we think they want (to live in urban areas) is not really true,” said LeCroy, who noted he paid his way through law school by waiting tables, something that is not an option in today’s world. “A lot of them say this (rural communities) is what they want.”

LeCroy said nonprofit, sliding-scale firms – where clients are charged according to their ability to pay – are one answer, and hopes to see one established here eventually. He said those firms can fill in the gaps between folks who qualify for legal aid and those who don’t.

He also favors some form of public assistance for young lawyers who want to move to areas like this one. A program that would help established firms defray the cost of hiring fresh faces would also help, he added.

Other states are developing legal incubators to give young lawyers the confidence to start their own businesses.

The first few years are critical for start-up attorneys.

“In my opinion, we need to help them get through those first couple of years – because they can be pretty tough – if we want them to come to rural communities,” LeCroy said.

Lippert said the rewards are great for those who weather the storm. She and her husband, Scott, also an attorney, love living in Morganton. Both are Ohio natives, and both work with the well-established Dick Beyer Firm, which she said has been in business for 40 years. 

“I grew up in Ohio and moved here for a job in the DA’s office in 2014,” she said. “We’ve loved it. We raised our kids here and we plan to stay. We have nothing but good things to say. We’ve been very pleased with our decision to come over here.”

If only more would follow the Lipperts’ lead, LeCroy said.

“We need enough lawyers to make sure the people of Burke, Caldwell, and Catawba counties have quality representation,” said LeCroy. “I’m one of the youngest attorneys in town at 58, and that’s a problem.”

Marty Queen is the senior reporter for The Paper. He may be reached at 828-445-8595 or at marty@thepaper.media.