{"id":30102,"date":"2023-12-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/nearly-half-of-colorado-counties-have-10-or-fewer-attorneys-a-new-grant-aims-to-expand-legal-access-for-coloradans\/"},"modified":"2023-12-20T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T14:00:00","slug":"nearly-half-of-colorado-counties-have-10-or-fewer-attorneys-a-new-grant-aims-to-expand-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/nearly-half-of-colorado-counties-have-10-or-fewer-attorneys-a-new-grant-aims-to-expand-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly half of Colorado counties have 10 or fewer attorneys. A new grant aims to expand legal access for Coloradans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Train
Train tracks snake into the distance near Alamosa in the San Luis Valley on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span>Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Colorado Access to Justice Commission received a two-year Rural Legal Deserts Grant in October to bring legal solutions, in the absence of lawyers, to parts of Colorado where there aren\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

The $627,000 grant comes from a Congressionally Directed Spending Award supported by Colorado U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. After the first two years, the grant will expire; the commission can then reapply for additional funding, according to Elisa Overall, executive director of the commission.<\/p>\n

She said that outside metropolitan areas like Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, most parts of Colorado have too few lawyers to serve their communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, 45% of the state\u2019s counties have 10 or less attorneys,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s certainly considered a legal desert.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American Bar Association defines a legal desert as a county with fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 people, according to Legal Evolution \u2013 an online publication that focuses on the legal industry.<\/p>\n

The graphic in that article shows Colorado and seven other states (North and South Dakota, Utah, Montana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia) are identified as \u201cmoderate\/high legal deserts.\u201d Only five states (Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas and Wisconsin) fall into the category of \u201chigh legal deserts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall said that each rural area has different needs for legal services, and the grant will help them figure out those needs based on where the county is located.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Alamosa, we tend to see a lot of drug addiction, substance abuse, and so custody tends to be something that the communities have a greater need for, or potentially expungements of drug-related offenses \u2026 There are areas with high numbers of immigrants and that\u2019s where immigration needs are very great and interpretation and translation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The commission is mostly volunteers, but it hired its second paid staffer \u2013 in addition to Overall \u2013 in the beginning of December. Jason Roberts, who recently graduated from law school, will direct the grant project.<\/p>\n

He said that the program will train employees at nonprofit organizations on how to help members of rural communities navigate the legal system without a lawyer.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what has worked in similar programs in Alaska, Oklahoma and California where residents were given access to legal information without necessarily meeting with an attorney.<\/p>\n

The aim of the project is to, \u201cbuild solutions together with rural communities instead of saying, \u2018Hey, we have these ideas for you. Let\u2019s drop \u2019em on you and hope these \u2026 cookie cutter things fit.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

One might think that the natural solution for a legal desert would be to recruit lawyers for those deserts, but that plan hasn\u2019t always been effective, Roberts said, because lawyers often migrate toward larger cities and towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we\u2019re going to have to do is get creative about other ways that we can connect people with legal resources and legal information aside from simply providing lawyers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Overall said that initially, they\u2019ll focus on needs assessments, with the possibility of offering services in a rural Coloradan community or two later on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have funds to plan and then implement solutions, and so the first phase of the grant will be a lot of listening to communities in rural legal deserts and listening to what their needs are, what has been tried and what has not worked, what has worked,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That will be more fruitful than targeting a service area immediately, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not a specific locational focus in the beginning, as we learn there will be at some point early on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cOnce we have really listened to a number of stakeholders in rural legal deserts, we\u2019ll then identify probably two specific communities, areas that qualify as rural legal deserts, where we think we can make progress in the short period of the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

tracks snake into the distance near Alamosa in the San Luis Valley on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News The Colorado Access to Justice Commission received a two-year Rural Legal Deserts Grant in October to bring legal solutions, in the absence of lawyers, to parts of Colorado where there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28,1215],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-lawyer"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30102"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}