Addressing rural shortage of attorneys

Kansas Supreme Court justices are grappling with a growing shortage of attorneys in rural communities.

TOPEKA — Kansas Supreme Court justices heard from judges around the state who were having difficulty appointing attorneys to criminal cases, where representation is a constitutional guarantee.

So former Chief Justice Marla Luckert created in 2022 the Rural Justice Initiative Committee and appointed fellow Justice K.J. Wall as its chair.

“We found there was, indeed, a shortage of attorneys across the rural parts of our state, and we were able to put some data behind that and quantify that,” he said in an interview on the Kansas Reflector podcast.

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