Making a Difference in Rural Communities
by Liani Balasuriya
Last summer, Cole Adams served as a Rural Summer Legal Corps Fellow at West Tennessee Legal Services, a Legal Services Corporation grantee. His experience highlights the value of, and continued need for, legal aid in rural communities.
While growing up in suburban Alabama, Cole observed his peers experiencing socio-economic challenges. He knew he wanted to help people but wasn’t sure how. During his first year at law school, he learned about the Rural Summer Legal Corps program from career services and discovered it was a perfect fit. The program gave him an opportunity to help people like the people he grew up with but also challenged him to leave his comfort zone and move to a rural community in a new state.
At West Tennessee Legal Services, Cole worked with attorneys specializing in consumer advocacy issues, including debt relief and healthcare law. At small claims court, he was able to serve one client in debt but saw 20 to 30 other pro se defendants facing collection suits. Under his supervisor’s leadership and in collaboration with local judges, Cole helped launch the Rural Consumer Debt Relief Project, which effectively operates as a booth at the courthouse, where defendants can learn about their rights and legal services. On one day, five new defendants, who had never had an advocate, signed up to receive help from West Tennessee Legal Services.
Cole also worked on healthcare benefits. While he knew in an abstract sense that many people lacked access to health insurance, the statistics became real when he had to tell a client with stage 4 cancer that she would not qualify for Medicaid because her family’s monthly income was $40 dollars over the limit. The experience inspired the direction of Cole’s legal career, as he plans to focus on health justice. As a 2L, he currently serves as a law clerk at the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, where he focuses almost exclusively on Medicaid wavier work. This summer, he will serve as a fellow at Justice in Aging, a national nonprofit that fights senior poverty through law, with a focus on health equity.
As a Rural Summer Legal Corps fellow, Cole, along with his colleagues at West Tennessee Legal Services, worked really hard, every day. Yet for each person Cole was able to help, he observed many more who did not have equal access to justice. He saw a power imbalance. Unlike his clients, his life would not come to a crashing halt if he incurred $3,000 in debt because he financed the purchase of a car to drive 40 minutes away to work an hourly job. His wages wouldn’t be garnished, a lien wouldn’t be put on his assets, his credit score wouldn’t go down, and his ability to rent wouldn’t be jeopardized. Through his work as a Rural Summer Legal Corps fellow, Cole helped to correct the power imbalance but knows the need is still greater than the amount of legal aid available.
Learn more about the Rural Summer Legal Corps program, a joint partnership between the Legal Services Corporation and Equal Justice Works.
Liani Balasuriya works at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She is a member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council.
