Imagine a picture that represents everyday life in rural America, and you’re likely to conjure up a pastoral portrait of life on the prairie—porch swings, rows of corn, county fairs, small white churches, and spirited town meetings. Legal aid lawyers in such places, however, are increasingly exposed to evidence of harsher realities characterizing today’s rural communities.

The sudden escalation of crime and violence is forcing us to revisit our innocent Norman Rockwell notions of the past. Family farmers are compelled to declare bankruptcy after being squeezed out by large corporate farms. Migrant families continue to toil on farms and in factories, working too hard for too little, while cultural clashes increase.

The troubling face of this rural Janus appears every day in the case files of committed public servants dedicated to helping our elderly and rural poor handle whatever circumstance brings. Take a slow ride through a rural U.S. town in 2004, and you will see poverty in its most abject form. Thousands of Native American families, whether living on or off reservations, survive truly desperate living conditions. Across the United States, impoverished rural counties outnumber impoverished urban counties nearly 5 to 1. Of our 500 poorest counties nationwide (per capita), 481 are rural counties.

Rural communities are also aging very quickly. In big farming states like Iowa and Nebraska, for example, seniors make up nearly 20 percent of the population. Too often aging farmers lead heartbreakingly solitary and destitute lives, stretching fixed incomes to live in the family home situated far from the suburbs where their own children have settled. At an age when many would be preparing for a well-deserved retirement, family farmers must wake up every day and confront the arduous physical demands of their occupation, putting them at a much higher risk of developing a disability or handicap.

Families that depend on crop production for their livelihoods suffer terribly from adverse weather and from swings in the nation’s economy. Small family farms are almost extinct now, having given way to federally subsidized agribusiness, which utilizes sophisticated machinery instead of human labor. In this competitive new order, some farmers are lured into questionable deals with unscrupulous lenders in an effort to ward off bankruptcy or foreclosure.

Economic woes are compounded by dramatic social shifts in many rural towns. Historically, rural America was a homogenous place, but now diversity is a fact of life as minorities constitute almost 20 percent of all rural residents. Like many who came before them, refugees and other immigrants are drawn to the lower cost of living in rural areas. Old-timers who’ve known their neighbors since attending grammar school together are being asked to adjust to outsiders who dress, speak, and worship differently. Some friction is inevitable. Schools must implement fundamental changes to accommodate non-English speakers. New approaches to farming and family bump up against old, with varying success.

Crime rates have reached historic highs in some rural communities. Local law enforcement officials often have little experience fighting the new breed of social ills that has taken root. Gang violence, delinquency, and drugs have all become part of the beat. Distressed families are beginning to flee the countryside in search of better employment, education, and housing opportunities. In their wake, they leave deteriorating tax bases, crumbling infrastructures, and neighbors too elderly or poor to follow. Our clients.

The civil legal issues faced by residents of rural America are, by and large, the same issues faced by urban poor. What is different, however, is the complicated set of challenges in actually delivering the aid to rural families scattered across the vast landscape. To provide effective assistance to isolated clients, advocates must overcome a litany of obstacles: no mass transit, low population density, a dearth of social services agencies, not enough lawyers, and the high cost of maintaining enough small offices to cover every county in the service area.

Some barriers might be minimized with additional funding, yet money alone will not eliminate the conditions that hinder rural clients pursuing equal justice under law. To overcome these barriers, it is incumbent upon legal services leaders to engage in creative risk-taking (column) and to help preserve the kinds of close community bonds that have long been at the center of rural life. Nurturing new relationships that prosper and endure will require the investment of considerable time and a dependable presence by legal aid. Program leaders must give staff the support needed to forge new partnerships that serve the entire community.

Ultimately, positive change can be achieved—by leaders in the national legal services community, by experienced LSC staff, by state justice community stakeholders, and by program staff not afraid to innovate and take a few risks along the way.

Here then are our thoughts as to how the national legal services community can improve the delivery of legal services to rural America:

• Articulate a definable commitment to rural clients;
• Communicate to providers and other stakeholders zero tolerance for the practices that have sometimes allowed urban clients to receive more dependable and higher quality services than rural clients;
• Put a high priority on community lawyering while recognizing that it can be time-consuming and labor-intensive;
• Insist that rural programs operate in a culturally competent way, reflecting traditional mores of African Americans, Native Americans, and any other groups with a presence in the community;
• Urge legal services programs in sparsely populated areas to address strategies (i.e., contract attorneys, reduced fee panels) that will enable members of the bar to assist those rural clients unable to access a legal aid office;
• Expand LSC’s Technology Initiative Grant Program to include broader capacity-building rural initiatives;
• Establish systems to capture client outcome data, which will allow advocates to experiment with alternative approaches, such as community economic development models;
• Recruit legal aid staff members who were raised in rural areas, as well as those who display a keen interest in strengthening rural communities;
• Offer salary enhancements to those lawyers who agree to live and work in especially isolated areas;
• Emphasize early legal education and prevention to rural residents; and finally,
• Encourage legal aid staff members to collaborate with community leaders and other local providers serving the poor.

To succeed, this retooled rural delivery system will require equal parts political savvy, patience, diplomacy, and innovation by legal aid offices. Together we can demonstrate that community-building is good lawyering—and good for America’s soul.