Fellowships, Incubators, and Other Strategies that Support and Encourage Rural Criminal Law Practice
Fellowships
In the medical field, rural fellowships serve as critical training grounds, helping residents gain the particularized skills they need to serve rural communities.95 Post-graduate training, whether residency or fellowships plays an important role in recruitment,96 with over 55% of recent residents practicing permanently in the states in which they completed residency.97
For attorneys interested in full-time public service, fellowships can help launch or transition their careers. Typically law schools,98 professional associations,99 nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies sponsor fellows who do public service work for a designated period at a host organization. These fellowships become a pathway to permanent placement.
Equal Justice Works (EJW) sponsors around 100 civil legal aid fellows per year. The EJW fellowships are powerful incentives for new lawyers to experiment with public service practice. Fellows can earn more than $60,000 each year for two years, as well as health insurance, fringe benefits, and $5,000 in loan repayment assistance. EJW fellowship programming also includes an annual leadership training and networking event. Importantly, EJW reports that 85% of its fellows remain in public service positions after their fellowships.
Unfortunately, there are no similarly well-established national fellowship programs for criminal lawyers or rural lawyers, much less for rural prosecutors and public defenders. Local, state, and non-profit organizations have built their own programs.
The Illinois State Bar Association’s Rural Practice Associate Fellows program places graduating law students and attorneys with rural firms in associate positions. The program pays a $5,000 stipend at the beginning of employment, and encourages permanent placement by offering an additional $5,000 stipend if the associate is still employed at the firm at the one year mark. The program also incentivizes employers with CLE credit for participation. New Mexico Judiciary’s Rural Justice Initiative Clerkship Program funds four law clerk positions under the mentorship of state judicial district Chief Judges in rural areas. Law clerks make a two-year commitment and receive a salary of $78,000, plus all judicial branch benefits.
There are emerging movements to create rural criminal law fellowships. For example, Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services’ Rural Justice Fellowship places a new attorney in a regional public defender office to do felony criminal defense representation and implement a two-year special project to improve the agency’s rural practice. Colorado’s Rural District Attorney Fellowship Program places a new attorney at a rural district attorney’s office and pays their salary for one year. This is state-funded and a collaboration between the Colorado District Attorney’s Council (a statutorily created organization representing Colorado’s elected District Attorneys), the University of Colorado and University of Denver.100 The Greater Colorado Fellowship Program places graduates with the Colorado Alternate Defender and pays salary and benefits for up to two years. Fellows learn criminal defense and entrepreneurial skills to set them up to start their own defense practice. In 2025, the Texas Indigent Defense Commission offered one-time grants for rural programs that could be used for indigent defense fellowships.
But these remain isolated programs. Only concerted scaling will meet the need. Larger fellowship programs would offer the advantage of allowing fellows to operate as part of a cohort, sharing knowledge and camaraderie that might be lacking in small-scale arrangements.
Incubators
For private attorneys, legal incubators can help launch their practices and expand access to legal services in underserved areas.101 Incubators provide resources like start-up funding, mentoring, peer support, and training on substantive law and business operations.102 The American Bar Association lists 75 incubators created since 2007.103 Although most programs are not criminal-law-focused, they can help bring attorneys to areas that rely on the private bar to handle court-appointed defense. Scholars note that incubators are useful in rural legal deserts because they “further the goal of increasing the number of graduates trained to open solo or small practices by helping graduates solidify subject matter expertise and practice skills.”[x]
To help green Arkansas’ rural legal deserts,105 the University of Arkansas’ William H. Bowen School of Law’s Rural Practice Incubator Program, in operation since 2018, provides training, resources, mentoring, and guidance to help launch their practices. Attorneys are expected to provide at least 100 hours of pro bono or low bono legal services during the 18-month program. Similarly, the Montana Legal Services Association’s Rural Incubator Project for Lawyers is a 12-month program that provides business development assistance; legal training; practice resources and office space; up to $1,800 in loan repayment assistance; and more to lawyers who form solo or small businesses in rural areas and provide 25 pro bono hours and 150 reduced rate service hours. Another example is the Vermont Lawyer Incubator Program, a partnership initiative of the Vermont Bar Association and Vermont Law & Graduate School that helps lawyers new to practice or to the state establish their practices through resources like case rounds with experienced lawyers and perks like stipends for office costs and free bar association membership. The incubator requires that lawyers take a certain number of low-bono cases and base themselves in rural or underserved areas.
Colorado’s Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel’s (OADC) Greater Colorado Fellowship Program is a hybrid fellowship/incubator program. OADC is a state agency that oversees contract defense attorneys for criminal cases. To help private attorneys launch their small-town practice (so that they can eventually contract with OADC), for two years, OADC pays them a full-time salary (around $66-97,000) and benefits, provides training and mentoring from experienced defense attorneys, and connects them with groups like Office of Respondent Parent Counsel, Office of the Child’s Representative, and Colorado Legal Services so that they can start a well-rounded public service practice.
Successful incubators offer dual advantages to rural places; they cultivate lawyers while also building the small-business knowledge base. Alumni of incubators are equipped to become mentors to would-be lawyers and entrepreneurs in the community.