Filling the gaps: How innovative collaborations are helping communities in legal deserts

By Teri Saylor

Delina Locklear has worked as a paralegal in the Pembroke office of Legal Aid of North Carolina for more than three decades and there she has found her purpose and her passion.

“I came to Legal Aid in 1991, back when it was called Lumbee River Legal Services,” she says.

Locklear was hired through the Jobs Training Partnership Act of 1982, a federal program that helped prepare economically disadvantaged individuals for employment. She was initially hired for a temporary six-month job, but was promoted to a full-time support staff position, and over the years worked her way up to a paralegal role.

A Pembroke native, Locklear loves working close to home and enjoys warm relationships with her clients and co-workers.

“I just love helping people that need an attorney but can’t afford to hire one,” she says. “And having local offices is important for those with limited transportation options.”

Last month, the LANC Pembroke office was closed due to lack of funding. Its employees are working remotely, assigned to the Fayetteville office, leaving residents in three southeastern North Carolina counties without a local LANC location.

Before closing, the Pembroke office was one of 24 regional LANC offices across the state.

LANC’s Pembroke office has served communities in Hoke, Scotland and Robeson counties since it was established in 1978. The three counties have a cumulative population of 206,187 residents, many living under the federal poverty level. According to the North Carolina State Bar, 162 licensed attorneys practice in those three counties

Legal Aid serves all 100 counties in North Carolina and is a lifeline for people living in “legal deserts,” defined by the American Bar Association as geographic areas with less than one attorney per 1,000 residents.

Vast legal deserts

Almost half of North Carolina’s counties are legal deserts, according to Mary Irvine, executive director of the North Carolina Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts, which has provided funding for Legal Aid and other nonprofits for decades.

Those legal deserts recently expanded when LANC closed the Pembroke office along with offices in Rocky Mount and Goldsboro, says LANC executive director Ashley Campbell.

The closures followed a new state law that halted IOLTA grants which provided about 20 percent of LANC’s budget. Other funding sources are the federal Legal Services Corporation, philanthropic giving, the North Carolina Bar Association, private law firms, and local government grants.

“The IOLTA funding mechanism has existed since 1983,” Campbell says.

According to the organization’s 990 IRS report, LANC reported revenues of $51.7 million in 2023 which fund one of the most productive nonprofit law firms in the country, Campbell says.

“We closed 24,000 cases last year, an enormous case volume,” she says. “There is no other law firm in North Carolina that covers as many rural locations as we do.”

She adds that almost 2 million North Carolinians are eligible for LANC’s services.

In addition to funding Legal Aid, North Carolina’s IOLTA fund also supports other programs that benefit largely underserved populations including internships for law school students to introduce them to public interest law.

“During the summers of 2024 and 2025, we had 60 law students from participating law schools interning with district attorneys, public defenders, civil legal services, organizations, and judges,” says Mary Irvine, IOLTA executive director. “And through that work, they had the chance to build relationships in rural communities, to be mentored and to learn more about practicing public interest law in rural areas.”

Last summer, the North Carolina General Assembly passed Senate Bill 429, known as “The Public Safety Act,” a comprehensive bill encompassing a variety of issues relating to criminal laws. The new law freezes IOLTA grant funding until June 30, 2026.

At a hearing of the North Carolina House Select Committee on Oversight and Reform on Oct. 22, committee co-chair Rep. Harry Warren (R-Rowan) accused IOLTA of “going somewhat rogue awarding grants to leftist groups with leftist ideologies.”

Specifically, the organizations IOLTA funded were the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and Carolina Migrant Services, each receiving $55,000.

“We would typically have opened our application window for 2026 grants on July 1, and now we’re working toward a resolution to allow us to continue helping increase access to legal services in underserved areas,” Irvine says.

Nonlawyers could fill gaps

Strategies for using nonlawyers to help close gaps are beginning to make a difference.

The North Carolina Supreme Court established the Equal Access to Justice Commission in 2006 to explore ways of empowering North Carolinians to serve their own legal needs by providing materials and resources to help them navigate the legal system, says executive director Jennifer Lechner.

“We launched the Legal Support Center in the Wake County Courthouse in 2023, and in less than two years have served over 25,000 people,” Lechner says.

At the Legal Support Center, volunteer lawyers, paralegals and community members work side-by-side with staff to provide information and assistance to people trying to solve their civil legal problems, mostly associated with housing and family matters. The public also has access to the new eCourts system and Legal Hand, a statewide call center.

The call center was launched in June 2025 and by October had already received 700 calls, Lechner says.

“Over the course of our work, we’ve learned that even small interventions can make a huge difference in how people are able to meet their legal needs,” she says.

In South Carolina, with the fewest lawyers per capita of any state, legal deserts are particularly acute, according to the South Carolina Access to Justice Commission.

In 2021, the organization partnered with other groups to produce a statewide civil legal needs assessment of the life experiences of low- and moderate-income South Carolinians, the legal problems they encounter, and the gaps between their legal needs and the available resources.

“Our study showed that most of the private lawyers and legal aid providers in South Carolina are concentrated in the state’s three metro areas – Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston,” says executive director Hannah Honeycutt.

South Carolina Legal Services is the state’s largest provider of civil legal aid, and its biggest challenge is the same as in North Carolina — recruiting and retaining attorneys to serve rural areas.

Last year, the South Carolina Supreme Court approved the Housing Advocate Program, a pilot initiative in partnership with the NAACP that uses trained nonlawyers to provide limited legal advice to tenants facing eviction, filling a critical shortage of attorneys willing to represent them.

“The program just got off the ground, and they trained their first cohort of housing advocates in September,” Honeycutt says. “They’re partnering with community action agencies around the state, with a presence in rural areas and a reputation as trusted resources in their communities.”

Legal Oases

Jimbo Perry has made it his mission to bring awareness to the problems associated with legal deserts and to take an aggressive approach to solving them. He’s even rebranded deserts as “legal oases” — places where the pace is slower, the quality of life is richer, and the ability to help others is inspiring.

“Relationships, work-life balance, control over schedules and cost of living are compelling reasons why one might consider living in a legal oasis community,” he says.

Perry is a partner at Perry, Perry, Perry in Kinston, population 19,519. He recently was appointed as executive director of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. Among the commission’s roles is enabling access to the legal system

From Perry’s seat, the problem is not only access to lawyers for civil matters, but on the criminal defense side too, especially when it comes to court-appointed attorneys that represent indigent clients. Often, the attorneys who are on the court-appointed lists are burdened with hundreds of cases.

Perry is floating a variety of remedies to the problem, including establishing law firm incubators, continuing public interest internships for law students, establishing nonprofit law firms, engaging in community recruitment as part of local economic development efforts, creating mock trial programs at rural high schools and providing more legal support centers like the one in Wake County.

Another strategy for broadening access to legal services is deploying the state’s network of about 3,700 certified paralegals, many of whom provide pro bono services at clinics, call centers and other organized functions to support residents who need help.

Natalie Porter is the owner of Apricus Paralegal Group, a Winston-Salem firm that helps law practices bridge the gap by offering solo and small law firms remote, high-quality, and economical legal support.

Porter’s goal is to find solutions that help attorneys build scalable and sustainable law practices and improve access to justice with better access to skilled, experienced paralegal support.

“In North Carolina, paralegals, including freelancers, are only allowed to work under the direct supervision of a licensed attorney,” she says.

Some states are moving to enact limited licenses for paralegals to offer a narrow scope of legal services and create legal navigator programs for nonlawyers to guide individuals through the legal system. In North Carolina, the Justice for All Project is a leader in those efforts. It’s similar to South Carolina’s Housing Advocate Program.

Porter believes programs like these are tailor-made for paralegals wishing to further their careers and help fill justice gaps.

“I think limited licensure for exceptionally qualified paralegals is a great way to help address access to justice, the affordability of legal services, and legal deserts,” Porter says. “However, I don’t think we’ll see anything like that from our legislature anytime soon.”

As chair of the Paralegal Division’s pro bono committee, Porter and her committee spearheaded an effort to provide pro bono services to the families of the Hurricane Helene victims whose bodies have not been recovered.

“We’re working to help administer the estates of those folks so that their families can get the benefits that they’re entitled to,” she says. “We also perform a handful of regular clinics where pro bono paralegals and attorneys work together to prepare document packets for pro se litigants and we assist with the N.C. Bar Association’s Wills for Heroes project.”

In Pembroke, where the local Legal Aid office has ended its lease, issues involving families and domestic violence cases are persistent problems in the communities the office serves.

“A lot of people who come to us for domestic violence protective orders don’t trust the justice system and fear facing their abusers in court,” Locklear, the paralegal, says.

The big challenge is making people aware that Legal Aid is still available, even though the Pembroke office is closed.

“We’re not on TV, we’re not on the radio,” Locklear says and uses herself as an example. “I’ve been here 34 years and when I first came here to work, I knew it was a lawyer’s office, but I didn’t know what it did, and there are still people out there that don’t know we’re here or what we do.”

Despite the recent Legal Aid office closures and others that may close in the months ahead, LANC will continue to serve all 100 counties as best it can.

“There are not enough attorneys for the types of cases we handle, and we want people to know we are still here for the vulnerable, low income, seniors, veterans, domestic violence victims and homeless,” Locklear says.

Campbell acknowledges the lack of some physical office locations may lead to a diminishing level of service, like going to court with clients and serving them in person. Instead, some locations will rely on providing legal advice by phone and helping them represent themselves.

“We have been so committed to rural legal services since our beginnings,” she says.  It’s a core part of our mission, and continues to be important to us.”