Abstract
Access to legal services in America has emerged as one of the most pressing structural challenges facing the legal community. As attorneys increasingly concentrate in metropolitan areas, large areas are left with few practicing attorneys and challenging prospects of attracting many more. The consequences of this challenge reach across nearly every aspect of life in these communities—from housing and family stability, to starting or winding down businesses, and critically, to the constitutional guarantees that attach when someone is charged with a crime. Yet, these challenges have also generated a period of genuine creativity and collaboration between communities and different institutions. From embedded legal clinic programs to remote court technology, to rural fellowship pipelines, across the county, law schools, bar associations, legal aid organizations, and state judiciaries have experimented with new ways to deliver legal services to rural communities. Policymakers and community leaders have increasingly recognized that legal access is part of the same infrastructure, workforce, and economic challenges rural communities face more broadly. And there have been important investments made on the ground by Main Street programs and similar organizations to grow their communities’ economic base, support people starting businesses, and attract investment to their area. There’s a lot that is going right, right now. Maine sits at the center of both this challenge and opportunity. Most Mainers live in a rural community. Our bar is aging, and the distribution of new attorneys entering practice is uneven, concentrating in a small number of southern counties. The challenges the state faces with adequate representation of criminal defendants in the state has raised questions of whether the state is meeting its constitutional obligations. At the same time, Maine has been a site of genuine experimentation, creating innovative programs, and investing significant resources into broadband and economic development in rural communities. Whether these efforts are sufficient, and what more is needed, are all questions this volume explores.
First Page
233
Recommended Citation
Adam Fortier-Brown,
Foreword,
78
Me. L. Rev.
233
(2026).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/mlr/vol78/iss2/2
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