News Archive

IU McKinney Professor Joel Schumm and students Nathan Lund and Hope Rice were featured in a television news story about Indiana’s shortage of attorneys in its rural communities. The story was broadcast December 1 on WTIU.

The three from IU McKinney spoke about the law school’s Supporting Rural Justice Initiative. The effort began in 2019 by placing students with judges in rural counties but has since expanded to include placement of rising third-year students as certified legal interns with prosecutor and public defender offices in rural counties. Law students commit to working at least 200 hours for which they receive three experiential learning credits and a $4,000 stipend. The IU Maurer School of Law also has a Supporting Rural Justice Initiative program.

The program is a boon for the law students and the legal professionals in the counties they serve, said Professor Schumm, J.D. ’98. He’s the director of experiential learning at IU McKinney.

“I learned so much from attorneys that were three years out of law school, and then attorneys that were 40 years out of law school,” Lund said in the story. In the piece, Rice said the program opened her eyes to the benefits of working in a small community. “It really did kind of totally rewire my brain in what I wanted to do, what I thought I wanted to do, and where I wanted to do it,” she said.