Texas is making a big investment in rural access to justice.
The Texas Access to Justice Foundation in September announced a multiyear initiative funded with $26.7 million from the Supreme Court of Texas. Seven legal-aid organizations will work together to establish a network of 170 rural legal outposts, using in-person, virtual, and technology-supported services to bring civil legal assistance closer to rural Texans. The initiative aims to reach nearly 38,000 more people over five years.
The investment comes at a critical time. Texas has more than 100,000 active attorneys, yet 123 of its 254 counties meet the American Bar Association’s threshold for a legal desert — fewer than one attorney for every 1,000 residents. Sixty-eight counties have five or fewer attorneys, and nine have none.
Bringing more legal resources into these communities is essential. But as Texas undertakes an effort of this scale, we should reconsider how we identify legal deserts in the first place.
Attorney counts tell us where lawyers are. They don’t necessarily tell us whether people can access legal help.
My research at Lone Star Legal Aid examines legal access across five dimensions: attorney supply and demand, geographic distance, digital infrastructure, language access, and court infrastructure. Looking at those factors together reveals at least two distinct types of legal deserts.
In acute legal deserts, multiple systems fail at once. These communities may have few or no resident attorneys, long travel distances, limited broadband, and fewer court-based resources. Thirty-four Texas counties fit this framework: 25 named by the Texas Access to Justice Commission and nine with no resident attorneys.
But there also are chronic legal deserts — communities where attorneys may be nearby, yet other barriers prevent residents from obtaining meaningful legal assistance. High concentrations of low-income residents, transportation barriers, limited digital connectivity, language needs, and court infrastructure can all restrict access even when attorney counts appear adequate.
That distinction matters because different legal deserts require different solutions.
Consider the 72 Texas counties that Lone Star Legal Aid serves. Approximately 3.4 million residents in that area live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. In 2025, we handled 27,638 legal matters serving 66,396 people. Rural counties had the lowest people-served penetration rate, at 1.56%, compared with 2.16% in urban and metropolitan counties outside Harris County and 1.93% in Harris County.
The reasons behind those gaps differ from geography.
In rural communities, residents may need to travel 60 miles or more to reach a courthouse or legal services. Broadband subscription rates are lower in rural portions of Lone Star Legal Aid’s service area, meaning virtual hearings and remote legal services can’t always substitute for an attorney or legal office nearby.
Metropolitan areas present another problem: scale. These areas may have many attorneys, but low-income residents still struggle to find affordable legal help. During 2024 and 2025, plaintiffs filed more than 187,000 eviction cases across Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin. A high attorney-to-population ratio offers little comfort to a low-income tenant if no attorney can represent them at an eviction hearing.
The Texas Rural Justice Initiative recognizes that access requires more than placing lawyers on a map. Its planned combination of local outposts, traveling attorneys, virtual services, and technology-supported assistance reflects the reality that rural communities face overlapping barriers.
As that work moves forward, data can help determine which combination of interventions works best in each community.
Texas should measure attorney distribution alongside poverty and legal demand, travel distances, broadband availability, language needs, court filings, self-representation, and court infrastructure. Legal-aid intake and service data can add another layer by showing who actually reaches available services — and where gaps remain.
Better measurement can help avoid searching for a single solution to fundamentally different problems. One county may need attorneys willing to build careers and live there. Another may need traveling lawyers or remote representation. Others may benefit most from stronger broadband, interpreters, accessible court procedures, or attorneys practicing in areas such as housing, family law, and probate.
The Texas Rural Justice Initiative is an opportunity to build lasting rural legal infrastructure and gives Texas an opportunity to learn. If we measure where lawyers practice and whether people can obtain the legal help they need, we can better understand which interventions work, where added resources should go, and how legal deserts change over time.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.
Author Information
Ashley Oborn is director of data analytics at Lone Star Legal Aid.
Interested in writing? Review our author guidelines and submit pitches to Insights@bloombergindustry.com.