Much-anticipated report issued on legal deserts, drop in lawyers

Jennifer Friedel stands alone.

Friedel, an agricultural law attorney who also serves as associate professor of practice at Virginia Tech, is the only active member of the Virginia State Bar based in Bland County, according to a recent review of a list of active members.

Nestled just north of Wytheville and southwest of Blacksburg, Bland County is home to just over 6,000 residents. With just one active attorney, Bland County qualifies as a “legal desert,” defined as a locale with less than one attorney for every 1,000 residents.

“It is very, very rural,” Friedel said. “We go to Wytheville to go to the grocery store.”

Friedel has spent her entire professional career in Southwest Virginia, with stops in Russell County and Buchanan County. But her full-time job teaching undergraduate students at Virginia Tech means she cannot take every case that comes across her desk.

“I am very selective on the cases I take and the matters I handle for people,” she said. “I don’t do any litigation just because of my bandwidth.”

With her practice focused on natural resources, environmental and agricultural law, Friedel said she often refers prospective clients to other attorneys outside of Bland County, sometimes to lawyers as far away as Charlottesville, a three-hour drive.

Friedel’s situation is part of a growing concern in the legal community nationwide – an increase in legal deserts, a decrease in new attorneys admitted to the bar and a growing access to justice gap between rural and suburban and urban populations.

The Virginia State Bar established the Entry, Growth, and Distribution of Virginia Attorneys Study Committee, or EGAD-VA, in 2024 to study the issue. The 15-member committee released its findings in a comprehensive 170-page report on Dec. 11, complete with statistics and suggested action items to help address the issue.

“The Committee’s findings and recommendations offer a thoughtful, data-driver roadmap for addressing attorney distribution and access to justice in both rural and underserved communities,” VSB President Brett Marston said in a statement shared on the bar’s website.

The full report can be found at vsb.org.

Attorney distribution

The EGAD-VA study committee found that 58 of Virginia’s cities and counties are legal deserts, with 53% of those in rural counties. Along with Bland County, King and Queen County also has just one active VSB member, while several locales have less than 10 active attorneys.

Among the key findings from the EGAD-VA report is information on attorney demographics, with Virginia’s rural areas seeing a shortage of attorneys “exacerbated by the aging attorney population.” Notably, less than 26% of Virginia attorneys are under the age of 40, and rural areas have more attorneys over 60 than under 40.

The report further states that the rising cost of law school in the last four decades has led to the average law school graduate in Virginia incurring $107,000 in debt. As a result, new graduates seek higher starting salaries that are typically only available in urban areas.

“Folks … are anticipating the minimum starting salary to be lower if they’re planning on going to Southwest [Virginia] and higher if they’re planning on going to Northern Virginia,” VSB Deputy Executive Director Janet Van Cuyk said. “Then if you look at the distribution maps, the migration tends to be following where the higher salary ranges are.”

That situation has led to some older attorneys in rural areas delaying retirement.

“I’ve got a friend who’s practiced in Washington County all of his life and has a very successful firm,” Friedel said. “He’s been trying to find someone to hand that off to for the past four or five years, [but] it’s difficult.”

VSB Director of Access to Legal Services Crista Gantz, who served as EGAD-VA’s staff liaison, noted the Rural Attorney Shortage Task Force, an effort sparked by Sen. Tammy Mulchi, R-Mecklenburg County. The task force, which holds regular meetings, has been looking into legislative options to address the regional disparity.

“I think attorneys are generally just good for the community, and I think there’s some recognition of that to plant the seeds to ensure our local economies are thriving and that attorneys are playing a role in that,” Gantz said. “I think that [Mulchi’s] really interested in developing the pipeline of talent in these local communities.”

The action items recommended by EGAD-VA include providing mentorship to attorneys seeking to start their own firm in a legal desert and investing in “creative incentives” to draw private practitioners to underserved areas, including stipends, loan forgiveness and free-or-reduced-cost office space.

“I think some of the smartest approaches might be coupling both talent development with cost and debt mitigation,” Gantz said. “If you can get people with ties to the area into law school and set them up so they’re graduating with less debt, or offer them stipends to come back, that’s taking two findings and applying them to a solution.”

Declining admissions

Nationwide, bar admissions have been declining, and Virginia is seeing the same trend. According to the EGAD-VA report, there was a 57% decline in Virginia bar examinees between 2012 and 2024.

“There are some pivot points on things that are outside of Virginia’s control that could have contributed to that, but instead of being backwards looking, we are forward looking,” Van Cuyk said, noting an overall decrease in law school admissions and bar examinees nationwide.

Van Cuyk noted that Virginia is adopting the Next Gen Uniform Bar Exam in 2028 and that the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners, a separate organization from the VSB, has announced it will accept transfer UBE scores from other states. Similar decisions by neighboring jurisdictions have led to increased exam rates, EGAD-VA found.

Van Cuyk noted the report also found a perception exists that the Virginia bar exam is more difficult than other states, which she says is not supported by the data.

“When you look at our peer states, the passage rates for the Virginia bar exam are the same, if not higher,” she said.

According to the report, the primary reason VSB admissions have dropped is that there are fewer bar examinees. With that in mind, the committee explored the idea of new admissions without examination, or AWE, and recommended broadening eligibility for AWE by reducing the weekly hours requirement to qualify and expanding the definition of “active practice.”

Friedel said one thing that could help encourage students to pursue law is more mentorship and efforts to foster an interest in the profession, highlighting her experience with her undergraduate students at Virginia Tech.

“There are students from rural areas that have never been exposed to the opportunity to practice law. The field of law is very foreign to them,” she said. “In an introductory manner, I am able to present this, and so many students think ‘Wow, this is actually really interesting, maybe I do want to know more about law school.’”

Next steps

Among the recommendations from EGAD-VA are action items that could be taken up by the General Assembly next month, including raising pay for court-appointed counsel. Van Cuyk noted that, subject to approval by the Supreme Court of Virginia, the VSB will seek permission to support increases in pay for guardians ad litem.

Friedel said that another step that could help is continuing to promote the inclusivity of the profession. She noted her students who consider law school often ask if they need to pursue a political science major.

“Law school would be a really boring place if we were all poli sci majors. We need attorneys who understand engineering, environmental sciences and agriculture and use their background as a benefit in representation,” Friedel said. “We need to present to students that this isn’t some exclusive club.”

Van Cuyk and Gantz both said they are looking forward to seeing what the EGAD-VA report sparks.

“I am anxiously anticipating the support and implementation that I hope comes from this to take our profession to the next level,” Gantz said.