The American Bar Association is calling attention to the uneven distribution of lawyers across the United States in its second annual deep dive into the shape of the legal profession, adding a geographic dimension to the burgeoning industrywide discussion of the access to justice gap.

The figures on "legal deserts" are the lead entry and one of two new tranches of data in the ABA's second Profile of the Legal Profession, released Tuesday. They land at a time when a number of states are looking into updating how they regulate lawyers with the goal of insuring greater representation for individuals in need.

Out of over 3,100 counties and their equivalents nationwide, 52 lack a single lawyer. Nearly 1,300 have fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. Compare this to national average of four lawyers per 1,000 residents, or New York City, home to 14 lawyers per 1,000 residents.

"Simply having lawyers in a county doesn't guarantee they are available to the public," the report said. "Many lawyers work for prosecutors, public defenders, city and county attorneys—and many others work for corporations or nonprofits. Numbers alone don't always tell the full story, but they are a starting place for discussion."

Even the three states with more lawyers than any others—New York, California and Texas—contain counties with less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. California, which has been at the vanguard of discussions about regulatory reform, has seven such counties, while San Francisco County has a whopping 23 attorneys per 1,000 residents.

The issue is just as pronounced in lower-population states with large rural expanses. Ten of Arizona's 15 counties have less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents, and the state's overall figure of 2.1 lawyers per 1,000 residents is the lowest in the nation. Perhaps it should not be surprising that an Arizona task force has already proposed the elimination of rules barring outside ownership of law firms. Likewise, Utah, which with 2.6 lawyers per 1,000 residents is in the bottom third nationwide, has introduced a "regulatory sandbox" aimed at evaluating new legal service offerings, including nonlawyer-owned businesses.

The ABA also introduced new data on the growing burden of law school debt, which shows that nearly half of lawyers at the start of their careers surveyed said that they'd postponed or decided against having children because of their debts.

The report additionally resurfaces recent data on gender and racial equity within the law firm world. Nearly 10% of law firm partners in 2019 were Hispanic, African American, Asian, Native American or mixed race, compared to 2009, when the figure was 6%, according to data from the National Association For Law Placement. Meanwhile 21% of all equity partners were female. Women of color remain underrepresented, however, serving as only 5% of non-equity partners and 3% of equity partners.

Furthermore, of 103 female lawyers of color surveyed in 2019, 70% reported leaving or considering leaving the legal profession, according to an ABA report released in June.

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