Access to legal representation is a cornerstone of the American justice system, yet millions of Americans live in communities where legal assistance is scarce, difficult to reach, or entirely unavailable. These areas, commonly known as “legal deserts,” are geographic regions where the number of practicing attorneys is grossly insufficient to meet the legal needs of the population. Legal deserts are most acute in rural America, Tribal communities, frontier regions, and economically distressed areas, but they also appear within otherwise well-resourced states and metropolitan regions.

This new report responds to the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations’ direction that SJI examine the issues related to legal deserts and prepare recommendations to address them. It consolidates findings from national justice-gap research, American Bar Association (ABA) county-level data, geographic information system (GIS) mapping conducted by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), the June 2026 interim findings of the SJI-funded Legal Desert Problem-Solving Project, a review of pilot programs currently funded by SJI in New Mexico, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota, independent state and Legal Services Corporation initiatives, and interviews with staff from national legal serving organizations such as the ABA, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,  the National Association of Counsel for Children, and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.

Key Findings

▪️ People in the United States experience approximately 260 million legal problems each year. A considerable proportion of these problems—120 million—are not resolved or are concluded in a manner which is perceived as unfair by the people seeking resolution. There is no income group, gender, race or ethnic group, age group, or geographic area that does not face a substantial number of legal problems.  These numbers reveal that access to justice challenges are significant and pervasive.

▪️ Low-income Americans receive no or inadequate legal help for 92% of the substantial civil legal problems they experience each year, and nearly three-fourths of low-income households face at least one civil legal problem annually.

▪️ The justice gap extends well into the middle class. Middle-class Americans face daunting challenges finding affordable legal help when they need it. They are “above the line” of income eligibility for the free legal aid reserved for the poorest Americans, but they also struggle to find quality and affordable legal services in the current legal market.

▪️ In rural households specifically, the unmet-need rate rises to an estimated 94%, with 77% of rural, low-income households experiencing at least one civil legal problem in the past year.

▪️ Roughly 41% of U.S. counties, more than 1,270 of the nation’s 3,100-plus counties and county-equivalents, have fewer than one attorney per 1,000 residents; 54 counties have no resident lawyer at all, and another 182 have only one or two.

▪️ The rural attorney workforce is aging without a succession pipeline, while newer graduates carrying substantial law-school debt increasingly concentrate in metropolitan markets.

▪️ Direct interviews with 100 residents, court staff, and service providers in three pilot jurisdictions, conducted through the SJI-funded Legal Desert Problem-Solving Project, confirm that legal deserts are also healthcare, service, and food deserts, that higher pay alone does not attract or retain attorneys absent broader community infrastructure, and that no rigorous evaluation yet exists of which interventions actually work, underscoring the need for community-centered design and dedicated evaluation funding.

▪️ Additional interviews with staff from national legal services organizations demonstrate a consensus that legal deserts impact all facets of the justice system and that each must be supported for the broader system, and the communities they serve, to function optimally.  Programs cannot be designed and implemented to improve civil justice but not criminal justice, or prosecution but not defense. In a legal desert, civil and criminal justice are not separate systems serving separate populations.  They draw on the same small pool of attorneys, the same limited court capacity, and often impact the same households.  When a necessary component of the system is left unaddressed, the impacts for justice involved persons range from loss of housing or property, barriers to employment, family issues, financial difficulties, loss of liberty, and ultimately an erosion of public trust and confidence in the courts.  The recommendations in this report reflect that consensus and that there is not a single solution to the problem.

Summary of Recommendations

This report provides recommendations developed through feedback and consensus from numerous organizations that would provide a coordinated federal strategy that:

(1) expands direct legal-aid capacity in underserved areas;

(2) recruits and retains attorneys in legal deserts through service-linked loan repayment;

(3) modernizes service delivery through secure technology and virtual legal clinics;

(4) builds a rural legal-education and apprenticeship pipeline;

(5) supports state-led licensure and regulatory innovation;

(6) expands community-based access points; and

(7) strengthens national data collection, GIS mapping, and annual reporting to Congress.

📄 To access the report and read more: Legal Deserts in America: Report to the Committees on Appropriations