Does Iowa have enough lawyers? American Bar Association president says it could use more

Whether it's wrangling over big-dollar medical malpractice verdicts or shortages of attorneys to represent indigent clients, Iowa's legal challenges have a lot in common with those elsewhere around the country. Just ask Deborah Enix-Ross.

As president of the American Bar Association, the membership and lobbying organization for legal professionals across the country, Enix-Ross hears a lot from lawyers nationwide about issues in their jurisdictions. Last week, she came to Drake University to meet law students and practitioners and to give the keynote speech to the school's annual Supreme Court Celebration banquet.

The Des Moines Register spoke with Enix-Ross, a dispute resolution specialist and mediator by trade, during her visit to get a national perspective on some of the legal challenges facing the state. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Encouraging diversity beyond, race, gender

Des Moines Register: When you're doing these trips around the country, what are you hoping to learn? What are you hoping to accomplish?

Deborah Enix-Ross: A couple of things. Number one, I enjoy speaking with law students in particular, as they think about their kinds of careers that they would like to have in the law.

I'm particularly interested in law students of color to make sure that we have a diverse population. Diversity for me is not just gender and racial and ethnic diversity, but here in Iowa, for example, diversity of practices and not just everyone being in big law firms or big- city firms, but also thinking about opportunities to serve in our rural communities.

And then the third thing that I'm emphasizing is my initiative this year, which we call the Cornerstones of Democracy, the three C's of Civics, Civility and Collaboration, talking about the importance of civic education and civic engagement.

Iowa ranks low in lawyers per capita

DMR: Iowa has a split system for indigent defense: the state public defender's office employs full-time public defenders and also hires contract private attorneys to do indigent defense work. We've heard a lot of warnings this year in particular that the number of attorneys who are accepting contract work has fallen by about half in the last few years. What best practices does the Bar Association have for this problem of, how do you find the attorneys who are willing to take these very challenging and not super highly compensated cases?

Related: Iowa's chief justice warns state's indigent defense system could collapse

Enix-Ross: You know, among the 50 states, Iowa ranks 43rd in the number of lawyers per capita, so you start with just the fact that Iowa has about 2.3 lawyers per 1000 residents where the national average is four. And then if you look to see where are those lawyers, more than half of them are in in three areas, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

In the ABA, we adopted what we call the 10 Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System. One of the 10 principles says that where the caseload is sufficiently high, the public defense delivery system should consist of both the defender's office and the active participation of the private bar. So there are best practices for how to do that. One of the things we'll talk about is there should be parity between defense counsel in the prosecution with respect to resources. We have to make sure that there's parity in the way that we compensate.

One of the problems is law students graduate with a lot of debt and they feel like they have to go and earn income sufficient to pay off those debts. So that's why the ABA has been very active in promoting the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, where if you work in some of these public sector jobs for 10 years and pay your student loan on time every month for 10 years, then the balance is forgiven at the end.

DMR: I imagine a lot of readers probably don't realize how know how few attorneys we have in Iowa. Are there other areas that where you think that Iowans lack of access to legal services because we have that shortage of attorneys?

Enix-Ross: It means that you don't have access to people if you want to do your estate planning, if you have family issues, if you need advice about starting a business as well. So it really is a problem across the board. There is Iowa Legal Aid providing services, and they serve about 27,000 people across 10 offices. But there's a number of people that go unserved because they don't have the resources to help everyone that's eligible. So I would say the average Iowan, not just as a criminal defendant or someone who's low income, but just everyday people who need their legal resources met may be suffering as well because there's not enough lawyers.

DMR: Have you seen any other states that had some creative ideas, innovative strategies to get more lawyers and provide better legal services out in rural communities?

Enix-Ross: Yes, in fact, we have our Center for Innovation and they really collect all of that kinds of information. Some states think about training and then accrediting non-lawyers to do certain types of legal work.

DMR: Like a paralegal practitioner?

Enix-Ross: Yes. Other states are looking at providing stipends or incentives for people to go to some of their rural areas. So I think that states are looking at creative ways to be able to bridge this justice gap, because it really is important that our citizens feel that that they have equal access to our courts, that when they appear in our courts or have a legal problem, that they'll be treated fairly.

Related: Federal justice leaders announce plans to boost rural legal access in visit to Iowa

ABA opposes caps on medical malpractice verdicts

DMR: I wanted to ask you about something that's been a hot topic at the Iowa Legislature this year, which is tort reform. We've got proposals to cap limits on medical malpractice, and on trucking traffic crashes. How does the ABA think about this question?

Enix-Ross: Going back to 1978, the ABA House of Delegates passed a resolution opposing monetary ceilings on a medical malpractice. In 2006, we revisited it and reaffirmed that policy and I think the resolution itself said that we recognize that the nature and extent of damages in a medical malpractice case are what we call triable issues that need to be decided by a jury or judge and should not be subjected to formulas.

In these kinds of cases. judges and juries are the ones that are fully capable of adjudicating claims against medical providers, just the same way they do and claims against other businesses. We think we should let the justice system do its work.

That resolution was for medical malpractice. I don't know that we have policy that speaks specifically to the trucking industry.

More funding needed for legal services

DMR: What are some other frequent legal issues and questions that you're seeing pop up in other legislatures around the country that the ABA is paying attention to right now?

Enix-Ross: We were just on the on the Hill lobbying for legal services funding. I think we see that playing itself out in lots of states, because it is so crucial. I actually sat in on the meetings with the two Iowa senators, Grassley and Ernst, and I know that those were issues that were top of mind.

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Does Iowa have enough lawyers? ABA president says it could use more