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Commentary: Trump’s Bill Could Further Limit Access to Legal Services in Rural America [1]
['Christopher Chavis', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-08-05
Rural America has a lawyer shortage. According to an article published by the University of California Davis Center for Poverty and Inequality Research, while roughly 20% of Americans live in rural communities, only two percent of lawyers practice there. This disparity poses a significant barrier to accessing justice. And new student loan limits imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) may make it even harder to recruit lawyers to rural areas.
Rural lawyers are often jacks of all trades, helping their clients with matters that include basic real estate transactions, estate planning, and divorce and custody proceedings. They ensure that the criminally accused have fair representation in court. They even play a key role in public safety, helping domestic violence victims secure protective orders against their abusers.
They are an essential element of the communities in which they live.
I have always believed that the most effective means of solving the rural lawyer shortage is to create opportunities for rural students to attend law school and return to their home communities.
A 2016 study at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Schools, which found that rural students are more likely to be open to rural practice, offers validation to this theory. Nebraska put this theory into action in 2016 with the Rural Law Opportunities Program, providing scholarship opportunities (and guaranteed admission to the University of Nebraska’s law school) to qualified rural students.
Unfortunately, the “Big Beautiful Bill” represents a step backward in solving the rural lawyer shortage. Under this new law, graduate students are substantially restricted in the amount of money they can access to finance their education. Graduate students now face limits on how much they can borrow, both annually and over the course of their lifetimes. As the AccessLex Institute, a non-profit that specializes in research on legal education, noted in their analysis of the bill, this will force many low and middle income students to either seek loans from the private sector or forgo seeking a legal education entirely.
Previously, graduate students could essentially borrow an unlimited amount of money for graduate school, limited only by the cost of attendance for their given program. However, under the OBBB, graduate students who are not pursuing a professional degree (like a law or medical degree) are limited only to $20,500 per year and $100,000 total. While the bill caps total borrowing for professional degree seekers at $200,000, the more immediate barrier is its $50,000 per year limit.
Let’s consider where I went to law school – Michigan State University. According to the law school’s website, tuition is $42,682 and $47,424 for in-state and out-of-state students, respectively. At first glance, that fits under the annual limit. However, tuition is only part of the cost. Many students also rely on loans to cover living expenses, books, and supplies. When everything is added together, the total annual cost of attendance is $71,874 for in-state students and $77,816 for those from out of state. For low-income students, a $50,000 loan cap doesn’t come close to covering the full cost.
This is more than a financial burden; it is a structural barrier to legal access. In my home state of North Carolina, according to an article published by the University of North Carolina School of Law, almost half of the 100 counties qualify as legal deserts, meaning that those counties have fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. This is mirrored on the national level, where, according to the United States Department of Justice, 40% of counties have fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. This is a crisis where we should be expanding access rather than restricting it.
These loan limits will force low-income rural students to either forgo law school entirely or go into the private student loan market, which would make rural practice financially unsustainable. Private loans lack many of the key protections that federal student loans provide, including income-based repayment, which makes rural practice feasible. They also lack access to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives loans for anyone who spends ten years in the non-profit or public sectors.
To truly serve rural communities and solve this crisis, the federal government needs to take a more proactive role. While some states have already been proactive, the federal government has been largely absent from this conversation. But it doesn’t have to be. Because it controls much of the nation’s student loan portfolio, it has the power to offer real incentives for rural service.
In 2019, University of South Dakota law professor Hannah Haksgaard suggested adding rural legal practice to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. This is a smart, actionable idea. The federal government could also create dedicated rural service loan forgiveness tracks or increase borrowing flexibility for students who commit to practicing in underserved areas.
If aspiring rural lawyers cannot access the funds necessary to finance their education, entire communities may be left without essential legal support. In a time when the federal government should be acting to solve this crisis, the “Big Beautiful Bill” represents a huge step backward.
Christopher Chavis grew up in rural Robeson County, North Carolina, and is a frequent writer and speaker on baseball history and rural access-to-justice issues. He is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
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