Nebraska
Rural NE county attorneys, public defenders confront 'legal desert' in hiring new lawyers • Nebraska Examiner
LINCOLN — Three decades ago, Hall County Public Defender Gerald Piccolo could get more than 100 applicants for a job opening just by posting a notice on the bulletin boards at Nebraska’s two law colleges and sharing a notice with the state bar association.
Now, he said, he’s lucky to get a handful of aspiring defense attorneys to apply.
“I haven’t ever received more than 10 applicants for a job in the past 10 years,” Piccolo said.
It’s part of a national trend of fewer law graduates due to decreased enrollment in law schools, which have seen a 21% drop in students since peaking in 2010.
The shortage of potential new prosecutors and public defenders is presenting an even bigger problem in Nebraska’s smaller cities and rural areas, where it’s difficult to convince some college graduates to relocate.
Bill derailed
At Piccolo’s central Nebraska office, for instance, four of his eight lawyer positions were unfilled in 2022 and 2023, and two remain open today.
“It’s just more attractive to live in Lincoln or Omaha than live in Grand Island, Madison County or Scottsbluff,” he said. “It’s easier to stay in Omaha or Lincoln because that’s where the law schools are.”
A bill to address the workforce shortage, however, got derailed in the Nebraska Legislature toward the end of the 2024 session due to a disagreement between the state’s prosecutors and defense attorneys over the incentives that should be offered.
State Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln, who is a lawyer, had introduced legislation to expand financial incentives offered to “public service” attorneys — like county prosecutors and public defenders — who located in rural areas through the state’s long-running Legal Education for Public Service and Rural Practice Loan Repayment Assistance Program.
That program provides student loan repayment assistance to counties with less than 15,000 residents in an effort to address “legal deserts” in the state.
12 of 93 counties without lawyers
Twelve of the state’s 93 counties currently have no active lawyers, and 18 have three or fewer attorneys, according to the Nebraska State Bar Association.
That shortage is projected to expand to 16 counties with no lawyers, and 32 with three or fewer by 2027, due to retirement of lawyers in rural areas.
“We hear from attorneys in rural Nebraska that they’d like to retire (but) their clients won’t let them.”
– Liz Neeley, executive director, Nebraska Bar Association
“We hear from attorneys in rural Nebraska that they’d like to retire (but) their clients won’t let them,” Liz Neeley, the executive director of the Nebraska State Bar Association told a legislative committee this spring.
That’s because there’s a lack of replacements for them, Neeley said. Some public defender/county attorney jobs have been vacant for six months in rural counties without a single applicant, she said, and a few jobs have been vacant for more than a year.
Under Sen. Conrad’s proposed Legislative Bill 1195, the loan repayment program would be expanded to larger counties, such as Grand Island, Kearney, Hastings and Scottsbluff.
Killed by salary parity
Funding for expanding the program, about $500,000, was projected to come from the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office, which has amassed a reserve fund of millions of dollars via legal settlements it obtains from class-action lawsuits.
But LB 1195, as originally proposed, failed to pass. The issue that killed it was salary parity — whether deputy county attorneys should be paid the same salary as deputy public defenders.
“It was really disappointing,” Conrad said. “We were all rowing in the same direction, and then we got tripped up on this parity issue.”
Representatives of the state’s county attorneys argued that the jobs are different, and shouldn’t get the same pay, and that local counties — not the state — should decide what they pay their employees. The parity issue arose during later crafting of the bill, and ended the county attorneys’ support for it.
Nebraska
33 Nebraska senators urge Board of Regents to delay vote on $800M acquisition of Nebraska Medicine
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Thirty-two Nebraska state senators joined Sen. Brad von Gillern’s letter calling on the Nebraska Board of Regents to delay a vote on the proposed $800 million acquisition of Nebraska Medicine.
The letter, dated Thursday and bearing a total of 33 signatures from state senators, shared concerns about the proposed acquisition, including the lack of transparency to the public and the Legislature.
According to the letter, the regents’ Jan. 9 meeting agenda item summary indicates that the Board has “negotiated the final agreement over a series of meetings in the past 18 months”.
The regents will consider a proposal in which Clarkson Regional Health Services would give up its 50% membership in Nebraska Medicine. The deal would give full control of the health system to the University of Nebraska.
However, the letter said the public and Legislature have had little time to understand the proposal, its impact and any financial implications of the transaction.
“The University of Nebraska and Nebraska Medicine are two institutions of tremendous significance to our state, and any major changes to the existing structures must be carefully considered,” the letter stated.
Senators are asking the Board to delay the vote to “ensure all viable alternatives have been considered and until all stakeholders understand the impact of the proposal for the state” and the two institutions.
The Board of Regents meeting, previously set for Friday, will now be held Thursday, Jan. 15 at 9 a.m.
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Copyright 2026 KOLN. All rights reserved.
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Parts of a temporary historical exhibit inside the Nebraska State Capitol were torn down by a state senator, Gov. Pillen alleges.
Gov. Pillen said Wednesday on social media that several displays of historical figures, key events in the American Revolution and portraits of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were “ripped off the walls” by state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha.
A 40-second video shared by Pillen appears to show Sen. Cavanaugh taking down several displays and a photo showed the items on the floor of her office.
The displays featuring material made by the controversial conservative group PragerU were put up in the state Capitol as part of the United States’ 250th anniversary.
“Celebrating America during our 250th year should be a moment of unity and patriotism, not divisiveness and destructive partisanship. I am disappointed in this shameful and selfish bad example,” Pillen wrote.
Cavanaugh told 10/11 that senators are prohibited from putting items on the walls in the hallway outside their offices. She said the posters line the entire hallway around the first floor, but she only took down the ones outside her office.
“When I walked in this morning and saw these poster boards lining the hallway of my office, I thought well I’m not allowed to have things lining the hall of my office… I tried to take them down as gently as I could and not damage any of them, and I stacked them inside of my office and I let the state patrol know that they were there,” Cavanaugh said.
PragerU has previously faced criticism for making content that historians, researchers and scholars have considered inaccurate or misleading. Some parents and educators have also spoken out against the nonprofit, saying its content spreads misinformation and is being used for “indoctrinating children.”
The Founders Museum exhibit in particular has been criticized by The American Historical Association for blurring the line between reality and fiction, according to NPR.
The exhibit is supposed to remain on display during public building hours through the summer.
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Copyright 2026 KOLN. All rights reserved.
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