Non-Urban Rather than Rural - Successfully Developing Rural Opportunities for Students to Serve Rural Communities

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Marriott St. Louis Grand

Room: Majestic B

Floor: Second Floor, Conference Plaza

Washburn Law has had a developing RURAL law program for well over a decade now. We have successfully placed many students in rural settings for careers that allow them to serve the social and economic needs in rural Kansas. As part of this program we leveraged private grant funding, pipelines with regional universities for 3+3 programs and our Third Year Anywhere programming and rural externships.

Most recently I was invited to recommend appointments to, and to serve on the Rural Justice Initiative Committee developed by our Chief Kansas Supreme Court Justice Marla Luckert and chaired by Justice Wall to address the severe lack of lawyers in rural areas as it has now begun to impact replacing rural judges as well impacting access to justice.

While the focus of this year’s theme has more of an urban impact it is important to remember and realize the social justice needs in non-urban areas as well and the impact we can have nationwide in training, placing and replacing these rural lawyers who are aging out of service in communities that may have “one or none” lawyers left. This session will focus on a discussion of what Washburn Law, and I, have done, what works and what we are looking to next to address the rural lawyer crisis in a way that may turn the problems into opportunities for the next generation of law students.