The Rural Lawyer takes a close look at the challenges facing small-town America, where populations are dwindling and aging lawyers are not being replaced by new graduates. With interviews and personal accounts, the book shows how incentive programs can address this access-to-justice crisis. It specifically examines the South Dakota Rural Attorney Recruitment Program, which is the first program of its kind in the US and has seen great success in helping to attract new lawyers to small towns. Chapters also explore the larger context of rural economic development and its relationship to the law. With insightful analysis and real-life examples, The Rural Lawyer provides readers with a deep understanding of the challenges facing rural communities and the role that lawyers can play in helping these areas thrive.

‘This rich and loving portrait of life and law practice in rural South Dakota traces the first ten years of the state’s Rural Attorney Recruitment Program, a pioneering effort to recruit new lawyers to rural communities through direct stipends. Based on in-depth interviews with the first 32 participating lawyers, mentoring attorneys, and key players who brought the program into existence, Haksgaard examines the challenges of building a rural law practice, the importance of community ties and acceptance, and what lawyers bring to rural communities through volunteer and local government work as well as paid private practice. The book is a must-read for bar leaders and scholars of the legal profession, as well as a primer for policy-makers aiming to promote and sustain rural communities.’

Elizabeth Chambliss - Henry Harman Edens Professor of Law Director, University of South Carolina

’Hannah Haskgaard’s study of the Rural Attorney Recruitment Program offers ground-breaking new insights into rural legal practice during the devastating rural lawyer shortage of the twenty-first century. Through intimate interviews with program participants, the book is a compelling tribute to rural lawyers and South Dakota’s efforts to ensure its rural communities prosper.’

Emily Prifogle - Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

‘Haksgaard supplies important data and insights that will be invaluable for legal system stakeholders wishing to ameliorate the rural attorney shortage. The book will also be very useful to policymakers and scholars seeking to support the economic development of rural communities.’

Lisa Pruitt - Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law

‘Hannah Haksgaard’s new book …offers a robust, multifaceted analysis of the Rural Attorney Recruitment Program in South Dakota, where the author lives and works. This final detail - where the author lives and works - is an important one, for the book masterfully balances interview data with personal history, policy, and economic analyses with candid asides. It is as much a how-to manual as it is a labor of love. And above all else, it is written and assembled with great care.’

Michele Statz Source: Law & Society Review

‘The case this book makes is that the work of rural lawyers, hard though as it is, is important. Professor Haksgaard’s account shows rural lawyers serving as mentors, prosecutors, transactional counsel aiding in property conveyances, advocates in civil suits, vital community and municipal touchpoints, and even effective grant writers. … the work that these lawyers do to help common citizens and small businesses address the challenges of day-to-day life through the law calls into the light the relevance of the legal system and lawyers themselves. This is critical work. Here is where The Rural Lawyer is the most broadly gripping, as the legal profession, let alone rule of law, teeters in precarity. … Professor Haksgaard shows the reader, tenderly yet unflinchingly, a path: go lawyer by lawyer, client by client, and person by person. If she is right that rural lawyers can be viewed as “great equalizers in American society,” then perhaps, in this moment, that is some of the most profound work of all.’

Melissa Mortazavi Source: Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)