Written by: Paige Henze

The number of attorneys practicing in rural areas has been declining, raising concerns about access to legal services in smaller communities. Iowa Law faculty members Brian Farrell and Daria Fisher Page explore one possible piece of that problem in a new article published in the Drake Law Review.

Their article, “Legal Deserts, Indigent Defense, and the Rural Practice Ecosystem: Observations from Iowa,” examines how Iowa’s indigent defense system has evolved and how those changes may have affected private attorneys practicing in rural and small-town communities. Rather than evaluating the quality or outcomes of the public defender system itself, Farrell and Fisher Page focus on how structural changes can impact what they describe as the broader “rural practice ecosystem.”

The research traces the history of rural legal practice and criminal defense in Iowa, documents the decline in rural attorneys, and considers how fewer opportunities for court-appointed work may affect the sustainability of small-town law practices.

Farrell, who serves as a professor of instruction and director of the Citizen Lawyer Program at Iowa Law and as associate director of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights, focuses his teaching and scholarship on access to justice and rural practice. Fisher Page, a clinical professor, Wagner-Murphy Fellow, and director of the Community Empowerment Law Project, researches access to justice, law and rurality, and community engagement.

The article appears in Volume 72, No. 4 of the Drake Law Review.