The clearest lawyer shortages are local.
The United States holds roughly four lawyers per 1,000 residents, but density runs from 9.6 per 1,000 in New York to a little over two in South Carolina, and the Midwest's lawyer population has slipped over the past decade.
Where lawyers are scarce — the “legal deserts” — is where South Dakota's Rural Attorney Recruitment Program pays attorneys to practice small-town law.
What is a legal desert?
“Legal desert” is the shorthand for a community whose supply of lawyers runs thin relative to the people who need them — on this page, the thin markets the data below describes, from whole states down to rural counties and small towns.
The national and state lawyer-density figures here come from the American Bar Association's Profile of the Legal Profession, which also publishes the ABA's county-level legal deserts research.
The supply also has a direction.
Over the decade to 2025, the ABA found the lawyer population grew 11% in the South and 7% in the West, rose about three percent in the Northeast, and fell 1.4% in the Midwest.
The ABA calls the Midwest stable, but it is the one region where the count fell rather than grew.
For how these markets fit into the wider profession — firm types, practice settings, career paths — see our guide to attorney careers.
States and counties with the fewest lawyers
Per capita, the ABA's 2024 Profile counts roughly four lawyers for every 1,000 U.S. residents, and the state spread is wide: New York tops the country at 9.6 lawyers per 1,000 residents, while South Carolina has the fewest lawyers per capita, a little over two.
The county level is where the “desert” label really applies, and it is the one layer we cannot put verified numbers on.
The ABA publishes legal deserts research, but our research could not access its legal-deserts page to confirm current county counts, so this page does not repeat figures we have not read.
The ABA's own Profile publication is the place to check them.
No verified county counts on this page
Incentive programs for rural attorneys
The clearest example is South Dakota.
Its Rural Attorney Recruitment Program pays participants five annual incentive payments of $12,513.60 — $62,568 over five years — for practicing continuously in an eligible rural county (population of 10,000 or less) or municipality (population of 3,500 or less).
Each payment equals 90% of one year's resident law school tuition and fees, and the program reports 36 attorneys have participated.
Arizona offers a route on the licensing side.
Under the Arizona Lawyer Apprentice Program, bar applicants who score 260–269 on the UBE and meet Arizona's other attorney-admission requirements can spend two years practicing under a supervising Arizona lawyer in rural Arizona or a public law office — a supervised route tied to those specific settings.
Loan forgiveness is the other lever, and it runs on employer type, not geography.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining balance on eligible Direct Loans after the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments made while working full-time for a qualifying employer — U.S. federal, state, local or tribal government entities, public child or family service agencies, 501(c)(3) nonprofits, tribal colleges, and certain other nonprofits that provide listed public services.
Private, for-profit law firms are not qualifying employers, so rural private practice cannot count on it — a rural job with a government office or a 501(c)(3) legal aid program can.
Our guide to Public Service Loan Forgiveness for lawyers has the full eligibility picture, and loan repayment assistance programs are a separate route worth comparing.
Confirm program terms before you plan around one
What is rural law practice like?
In the American Bar Foundation's 2005 Lawyer Statistical Report — still its most recent census — 49% of private practitioners were solo practitioners, down from 64% in 1960, and 16.1% worked in firms of 101 or more lawyers.
New graduates almost never open a practice straight out of school: NALP counted just 174 members of the Class of 2024 who began as solo practitioners, 0.8% of law firm jobs.
Pay data comes by firm size, not by location.
NALP's Class of 2025 data put the median starting salary in private practice at $155,000.
By firm size, starting medians ran from $84,000 at firms of 1–10 lawyers to $225,000 at firms of more than 500 — national entry-level figures, not rural ones; we found no pay series for rural practice.
Keep the series straight when you read pay figures: BLS wage statistics exclude self-employed lawyers and the owners and partners of unincorporated businesses, so they don't describe what a solo rural practice nets.
What the statistics cannot tell you is the shape of one specific small-town practice — the caseload mix, the driving distance between courts, how much of the work sits in a single practice area.
Treat those as interview questions for any firm you talk to, or as the business plan you would have to write if you open the office yourself.
Hours are the other variable.
BLS says most lawyers work full time and some work more than 40 hours a week, and self-employed lawyers may set their own schedules — 11% of lawyers were self-employed in the BLS's 2025 employer breakdown, alongside legal services at 52%, local government at 8%, state government at 7% and federal government at 5%.
Is a rural legal desert a good career move?
Start with demand.
BLS projects lawyer employment to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, with an average of 28,700 openings a year over that span, many from replacing workers who retire or change occupations.
We found no statistic that isolates rural demand, so the closest signals are the data above: thin per-capita states, and the Midwest, where the ABA counted a small 1.4% decline over ten years.
Money is the honest question.
The Class of 2025 starting medians above — $84,000 at firms of 1–10 lawyers against $225,000 at firms of more than 500 — are national and by firm size, not by location, and we found no pay series for rural practice.
On the other side of the ledger: South Dakota's $62,568 incentive for five years of continuous rural practice, and loan forgiveness if your employer type qualifies.
How those net out is personal.
Geography cuts the other way too.
NALP found 65.6% of employed Class of 2025 graduates worked in the same state where they attended law school, so a rural move across a state line starts you outside that pattern.
One practical wrinkle: a rural move across a state line means getting admitted there.
BLS notes lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination — our bar admission guide covers the process.
The national projections and entry-level outcomes behind this page are covered in detail in our job outlook guide for attorneys.
Whether the rural trade is worth it comes down to the income you need, your ties to a place, and your appetite for the business side of a small practice — only you can weigh those.
Where to find attorney jobs
Small-market openings rarely make headlines, but they sit inside the same segments that employ lawyers nationally: private firms, government offices and nonprofit legal aid.
Civil legal aid alone is a national network — the Legal Services Corporation distributes over 94% of its funding to 129 independent nonprofit legal aid programs running more than 800 offices — and our legal aid attorney guide covers that segment.
For public-interest and defender work, the National Legal Aid & Defender Association runs a free job board that typically lists civil legal aid, defender, pro bono and public interest jobs.
For firm openings, browse attorney jobs on LawFirmHires.
Career information, not legal advice. Program terms, projections and pay figures change — confirm current details with each program administrator, the U.S. Department of Education for PSLF, or the source named above.