Ellen Murphy, Wake Forest University School of Law, has posted Farm Advocates: Unearthing an Access to Justice Success Story, which is forthcoming in the Nebraska Law Review:
This is the untold story of a grassroots group of lay legal advocates who – in defiance of unauthorized practice of law restrictions – provided legal assistance to countless farmers and farm families during the 1980s Farm Crisis. The Farm Crisis followed a period of unprecedented prosperity in farm country. But when the boom ended, many farmers were saddled with unmanageable debt. Farm country and much of rural America faced catastrophic loss of people, community, and institutions. Pressured by class actions against government lending agencies, Congress (eventually) responded with statutory relief for the farmers. However, obtaining the relief was legally complex and, as remains true today, farm country faced a simultaneous crisis: access to justice. Farmers needed legal assistance, but lawyers were scarce, cost-prohibitive, and unfamiliar with agriculture’s legal complexities and cultural norms. The farm advocates stepped up to provide the legal services that farmers needed.--Dan Ernst
These self-organized groups of neighbors helping neighbors morphed into a sophisticated system of legal service providers who were trained and supported – but not supervised – by legal service agencies and nonprofits. Some states, like Minnesota, funded farm advocate programs. The advocates, operating in plain sight, counseled, advised, and assisted distressed farmers and farm families in exercising their legal rights. The farm advocates were not lawyers but nevertheless, they engaged in the practice of law. And they did so without evidence of harm and without drawing the ire of the bench and bar.
The farm advocates’ legal work saved countless farms and restored hope to rural communities. Analyzing hundreds of pages of training materials and oral histories, this article unearths their contribution to access to justice. The farm advocates were a small but mighty force in the history of access to justice. Their story challenges the foundational premise of lawyer regulation: that legal services can be competently provided only by lawyers and that law practice by unlicensed practitioners invariably harms the public. The farm advocates' story shows, to the contrary, that legal services can thrive outside of the lawyer monopoly, and that strict enforcement of unauthorized practice of law restrictions can deprive people of help that is essential to their lives and livelihoods.
