When Dorothy Tobe and Mike Rosseau bought a long-vacant church building in St. John to convert into their home, they moved in to opposition from the owner of a business nearby.
They needed a lawyer, and they couldn’t find one — a common occurrence in small towns across Kansas.
The business owner who wanted Tobe and Rosseau out had deep connections with the city government. The couple found themselves homeless and being prosecuted as criminals, for allegedly violating the city zoning code by sleeping in the church while they worked to convert it into a habitable dwelling.
“It was a terrible experience,” Tobe said. “I would say I called at least 20 or 30 different law offices. I could not find an attorney who knew anything about city, municipal law. It would have been easier if I was looking for a divorce or, you know, personal injury attorney.”
Some law offices said they were too busy. Some didn’t even bother returning calls. Some said they couldn’t legally take the case.
“The one or two of the firms in Great Bend, the city of St. John at one point had used some of these attorneys,” Tobe said. “There was a conflict of interest, so there was no possibility of their helping me.”
More about Tobe and her husband in a minute, but the plight they faced illustrates a major problem facing rural Kansans — a shortage of lawyers in the Sunflower State that’s making it hard to find justice, especially in out-of-the-way small towns. Lawyer shortage bad and getting worse
It’s the kind of problem that’s difficult for the average Kansan to grasp, when it seems like every other commercial on TV is for one law office or another. Hardly anybody ever thinks about the supply of lawyers until they get in trouble and need one.
We are on the verge of a constitutional crisis as individuals struggle to find attorneys to represent their legal interests and judges reach out to attorneys hundreds of miles away to represent indigent clients. A report from the Rural Justice
Initiative Committee
I spoke about this with two members of the Kansas Supreme Court last week, acting Chief Justice Eric Rosen and Justice K.J. Wall, who chairs the court’s Rural Justice Initiative Committee.
They said the data shows the problem is very real and it’s getting worse. A report compiled by the committee last year spells it out:
“We are on the verge of a constitutional crisis as individuals struggle to find attorneys to represent their legal interests and judges reach out to attorneys hundreds of miles away to represent indigent clients,” the report states.
About 45% of the state’s population live in rural counties. But only 21% of Kansas attorneys practice there, the report said.
The data collected in the group’s report is thorough and it is stunning.
“In 2006, the number of new attorneys peaked at 509,” the report said. “That number fell to its lowest point in 2018, when only 230 new attorneys were admitted. In 2023, there were 380 new attorneys admitted in Kansas.”
That’s not going to be enough going forward.
