2026 Orr Symposium
Closing the Rural Justice Gap: Innovation and Regulatory Reform
April 16, 2026 from noon - 4:30 p.m.
University of Tennessee Winston College of Law
The Orr Symposium, Closing the Rural Justice Gap: Innovation and Regulatory Reform, is a half-day program dedicated to addressing one of the most pressing challenges facing the legal profession: access to justice in rural communities. Sponsored by the Tennessee Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission, the Winston College of Law Legal Clinic, and Tennessee Law Review, the symposium convenes judges, scholars, and practitioners to explore practical and regulatory solutions to the growing justice gap in rural legal deserts.
As rural counties across Tennessee and the nation experience attorney shortages and limited access to legal services, the symposium provides a timely forum for examining innovative responses. Panels will examine the causes of the rural access-to-justice crisis, explore alternative licensure pathways to the legal profession, and consider the expanding role of trained non-lawyers in delivering legal services. The program concludes with a Tennessee-focused roundtable featuring state leaders who are actively engaged in expanding access across the state.
At a pivotal moment when the Tennessee Supreme Court is considering regulatory reforms aimed at increasing access to quality legal representation, this symposium fosters informed dialogue about how the legal system can adapt to promote greater access to justice for underserved communities. By bringing together national experts and Tennessee leaders, the 2026 Orr Symposium seeks to advance meaningful, sustainable strategies for closing the rural justice gap.
CLE Cost & Credit
This CLE is free and is approved for 3.75 credits (2.25 Dual Credit and 1.5 General Credit)
Symposium Schedule:
Noon - 1 p.m.
- Justice Mary L. Wagner, Tennessee Supreme Court
- Professor Ben Barton, University of Tennessee Winston College of Law
- Professor Hannah Haksgaard, Knudson School of Law, South Dakota
The opening panel of the symposium will examine the growing access-to-justice crisis in rural communities and the structural forces contributing to the emergence of “legal deserts.” As many rural counties face declining attorney populations, residents often struggle to obtain even basic legal assistance in matters involving housing, family law, consumer protection, and criminal defense.
This panel brings together distinguished leaders with deep experience in judicial administration, rural legal scholarship, and access-to-justice reform. Justice Mary L. Wagner of the Tennessee Supreme Court will offer insights from the judiciary about the geography of justice in Tennessee and will moderate the panel. Hannah Haksgaard, of the Knudson School of Law at the University of South Dakota, will draw on her research into rural legal systems to highlight the unique demographic, economic, and cultural challenges facing rural communities nationwide. Ben Barton, of the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, will provide a broader perspective on trends within the legal profession, including attorney distribution, regulatory structures, and potential reform models.
Together, the panelists will explore the causes and consequences of the rural justice gap, examine data and emerging national trends, and consider innovative policy responses aimed at ensuring that geography does not determine access to legal representation. The discussion will set the foundation for the symposium’s broader exploration of regulatory reform and practical solutions to expand access to justice in underserved communities.
1:10 - 1:55 p.m.
- Professor Carol L. Chomsky, Minnesota Law
- Professor Marsha Griggs, St. Louis University School of Law
As states across the country confront attorney shortages—particularly in rural and underserved communities—questions about how lawyers are licensed have taken on renewed urgency. Panel #2 will explore evolving licensure models and alternative pathways to the legal profession, examining how regulatory reform can expand opportunity while maintaining professional standards and public protection.
This panel features two nationally recognized scholars in legal education and attorney licensing reform. Carol L. Chomsky, Professor Emerita at Minnesota Law, has written extensively on bar exam reform, attorney licensing, and the history of the profession. Drawing on her scholarship and recent work on alternative licensure pathways, she will discuss emerging models such as supervised practice pathways, diploma privilege variations, and competency-based assessments.
Joining her is Marsha Griggs, Professor at Saint Louis University School of Law, whose work has helped shape national conversations about bar exam reform, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. She will address the strengths and shortcomings of the traditional bar exam, the equity implications of current licensing systems, and innovative approaches designed to ensure both competence and access.
These panelists will consider how licensure reform intersects with the rural justice gap, asking whether modernizing entry into the profession can help address geographic disparities in legal services. The discussion will provide a forward-looking examination of how states—including Tennessee—might rethink attorney licensing to better meet the needs of the public and the profession.
2 - 2:50 p.m.
- Matthew Burnett, Frontline Justice
As rural communities continue to face persistent attorney shortages, policymakers and courts across the country are exploring whether trained non-lawyers can help expand access to essential legal services. Panel #3 examines the growing movement to authorize and regulate non-lawyer legal service providers as a practical response to the rural justice gap.
This discussion will feature leaders at the forefront of innovation in legal service delivery. Matthew Burnett, Founder of Frontline Justice, will share insights from efforts to redesign how legal help is delivered, including the development of community-based justice workers who assist individuals with navigating courts and resolving everyday legal problems. His work highlights how structured, supervised non-lawyer roles can meaningfully increase access while maintaining accountability and quality.
This panel will explore whether and how non-lawyer professionals can responsibly supplement the traditional bar, particularly in rural legal deserts where no lawyers are available. The conversation will consider ethical considerations, training and oversight structures, and the potential for these models to expand access to justice in Tennessee and beyond.
3 - 4:30 p.m.
- Laura Brown, Executive Director, Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services
- Lonnie T. Brown, Jr., Dean, Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law & Haslam Family Professor
- Eric Osbourne, Chair, Tennessee Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission
- Crystal Schrof, Co-Chair KBA Access-to-Justice Commission
- Jennifer Sneed-Perry, President, TBA Young Lawyers’ Division
- Judge Zachary R. Walden, Criminal Court Judge, 8th Judicial District
The symposium concludes with a Tennessee-focused roundtable bringing together leaders who are actively working to expand access to justice across the state. This discussion will move from national theory to on-the-ground strategy, highlighting current initiatives, emerging reforms, and practical solutions tailored to Tennessee’s rural communities.
Participants include Laura Brown, Executive Director of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services; Eric Osbourne, Chair of the Tennessee Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission; Jennifer Sneed-Perry, President of the TBA Young Lawyers’ Division; Crystal Schrof, Co-Chair of the KBA Access-to-Justice Commission; and Zachary R. Walden, Criminal Court Judge for the 8th Judicial District.
These Tennessee leaders will discuss the potential for collaborative efforts among courts, bar organizations, legal aid providers, and community partners to address attorney shortages and improve service delivery in rural areas. The roundtable will offer a forward-looking conversation about how Tennessee can lead in developing sustainable, innovative solutions to close the rural justice gap.
Panelist and Speaker Biographies
On February 1, 2024, Governor Bill Lee appointed Justice Mary L. Wagner to the Tennessee Supreme Court. The Tennessee General Assembly confirmed Judge Wagner’s appointment on March 11, 2024, and she has been serving on the Tennessee Supreme Court since September 1, 2024. Prior to serving on the Tennessee Supreme Court, Justice Wagner served as Circuit Court Judge, Division VII, for the 30th Judicial District.
Prior to her appointment to the bench, Justice Wagner practiced at the Memphis law firm of Rice, Amundsen & Caperton PLLC. While at the firm, she taught at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis from 2012-2014 as an adjunct professor, teaching second-year law students advanced skills in legal writing and oral advocacy, and first-year students legal writing, research, and analysis.
Justice Wagner received her law degree from the University of Memphis in 2009, graduating magna cum laude. While in law school, Justice Wagner served as a Notes Editor for the University of Memphis Law Review. She received a bachelor’s degree in 2006 from the University of Colorado, majoring in political science.
Hannah Haksgaard was born in Kentucky, but grew up outside of Yankton, South Dakota, where she received her K-12 education. Following law school, Professor Haksgaard clerked for the Honorable Roberto Lange of the District of South Dakota and the Honorable Kermit Bye of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Haksgaard joined the University of South Dakota faculty in 2016. At the Knudson School of Law, Professor Haksgaard teaches and writes about Family Law, Property Law, and rural legal issues. She received the Belbas-Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023.
Professor Barton is the Helen and Charles Lockett Distinguished Professor of Law and is the author of five books: The Credentialed Court, Fixing Law Schools, Rebooting Justice, Glass Half Full: The Decline and Rebirth of the Legal Profession, and The Lawyer-Judge Bias. Barton is an expert in Supreme Court Justice backgrounds and access to justice issues. His law review articles have been published in the International Journal of Law and Economics, The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and the law reviews of the Universities of Toronto, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and California.
Professor Barton has won the student-selected Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award and has been named the outstanding faculty advisor for UT Pro Bono three times. He also won the 2010 LSAC Philip D. Shelton Award for outstanding research in legal education. In 2014-15, he received a Fulbright Award to teach Comparative Law at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.
Professor Chomsky is a recognized scholar of legal history and a leader in the fields of teaching development and attorney licensing. Before taking emerita status, she taught courses in Contracts, Sales of Goods, Legislation and Regulation, and American Legal History, and she ran the year-round judicial externship program for the Law School. Her scholarly work has focused on attorney licensing reform, the history of women lawyers, American Indian legal history, and late nineteenth century American legal history, and she is co-author of innovative contracts and sales casebooks. She helped establish the Law School’s Structured Study Group Program, the academic support program for first-year students, and served as the faculty liaison for the program. She was a long-time board member of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and was SALT liaison to the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar. She is a member of the Collaboratory on Legal Education and Licensing for Practice, a group of scholars who study and write about the bar exam, licensing, and legal education. In 2024, she was appointed to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court Implementation Committee to develop alternative pathways for attorney licensing in Minnesota.
Professor Chomsky received a B.S. degree from Brown University and a J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Georgetown University. In law school, she was Case and Note Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal and earned the Francis E. Lucey, S.J. Award for maintaining the highest academic average in her graduating class. After completing her J.D., she clerked for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1979 to 1980.
Professor Griggs is a coauthor of the white paper, The Bar Exam and the COVID Pandemic: The Need for Immediate Action, that launched efforts to identify methods to safely license new attorneys when in-person exams posed health risks in the United States and abroad. Her other works, “Building a Better Bar Exam” and “An Epic Fail,” are published in the Texas A&M Law Review and Howard Law Journal. In 2021, she received the Trailblazer Award from the AALS Section on Academic Support.
Matthew Burnett is the Co-Founder and Senior Director of Frontline Justice. He is also Director of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation (ABF), a visiting scholar for Justice Futures at Arizona State University, and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to serving in these roles, Matthew was Senior Policy Officer at Open Society Foundations (OSF), where he worked to advance access to justice and legal empowerment through research, advocacy, and grantmaking in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the United States. Earlier in his career, he co-founded and led the Immigration Advocates Network and served as law clerk to Justice Z.M. Yacoob of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Matthew’s writing on access to justice and legal empowerment has appeared in more than 20 publications, and he has given more than 80 presentations and workshops around the world. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, the World Bank, and the International Development Research Centre. He serves as an advisor to the National Center for Access to Justice.
Laura Brown brings more than 17 years of legal experience to the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services where she serves as Executive Director. She most recently worked as the Senior Deputy Director of Client Services for the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. Her duties included the overall management and direction of client services at Legal Aid Society, including the implementation of strategic planning and regionalization; administration of grant programs; investigation and resolution of client complaints and grievances; contract compliance; and program development, implementation and evaluation.
Previously, Brown served was general counsel at the Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability, where she worked on advocacy issues for seniors and vulnerable adults and was also involved in the investigation and resolution of complaints, legislative support and strategic planning. She also previously was an insurance defense attorney for Robinson, Smith and Wells in Chattanooga, Tennessee, general counsel for Goodwill Industries – Knoxville, Inc. and, as an adjunct professor at Volunteer State Community College.
Brown received her juris doctorate from the University of Tennessee College of Law with a concentration in business and transactional law and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in learning and leadership (public policy) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She also holds a Master of Arts in civic leadership from Lipscomb University and a Bachelor of Science in English education from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Among her many professional accomplishments, Brown wrote and received the Model Approaches to Statewide Legal Assistance Systems grant from the Administration on Community Living, which funded the design and implementation of the first statewide, free senior legal helpline in Tennessee. She also oversaw and implemented the Title IIIB Legal Assistance Program, which provides free legal assistance to Tennesseans over 60 years old.
Eric Osbourne is the Chair of the Tennessee Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission. An accomplished attorney and Professor of Contracts, Eric sees litigation as an opportunity to protect his clients’ business and personal interests, to advance critical principles of justice and fairness, and to help people in times of crisis and need. Eric focuses his practice on contract disputes, white-collar criminal defense, antitrust, and civil rights cases. He has briefed multiple matters before the United States Supreme Court and has tried over a dozen jury trials.
In the last few years, Eric has handled some of the highest-profile civil rights cases in Tennessee and, in doing so, has developed a reputation for taking on controversial cases across the political spectrum. Eric’s recent work includes Hall v. Trump, which resulted in the end of solitary confinement in Tennessee, Ashe / Lawson v. Hargett, which challenges the constitutionality of a statute that criminalizes voting in political primary elections, and Newsom v. Golden, which was heard by the Tennessee Supreme Court and clarified the parameters of the Tennessee Open Meetings Act. For the past year, Eric has been the lead lawyer on behalf of the Covenant School Parents in Brewer v. Metro, a case that has drawn national attention for the parents’ effort to protect children from harm by preventing the release of a school shooter’s writings.
Eric is committed to the community. He serves as the outside general counsel to multiple non-profit clients. Eric is also involved with legal aid and contributes substantial pro bono time every year. For example, in 2016, Eric helped draft an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that contributed to the State Department declaring that ISIS was committing genocide against the Christians in Iraq and Syria. Since 2019, Eric has served as an inaugural member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council, a national group of young leaders working to increase public awareness of and support for equal access to justice for low-income Americans.
Memphis attorney Jennifer L. Sneed serves as the Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division president and is a member of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission. She has served as West Tennessee Governor for the YLD for the past two years. Sneed earned her law degree from The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and serves as the director—legal/estates for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital—ALSAC. She has been recognized at the local, regional and national levels, and currently serves as a board member of the Ben F. Jones Chapter of the National Bar Association, the Community Legal Center, and REACH Memphis college preparatory organization.
Crystal Schrof is the Co-Chair KBA Access-to-Justice Commission and a leader of the Knoxville Legal Ministry at Cokesbury Church. She is a highly skilled leader, manager, and attorney with more than 25 years’ experience in delivering innovative and strategic solutions to complex organizational, legal, and risk management issues. She is a member of Illinois and Tennessee Bar. Her expertise and experience include: Legal/Regulatory Drafting and Negotiation, Program/Project Assessment and Review, Strategic and Business Planning, and Strategy Development for Risk Mitigation, Persuasion and Influence.
Judge Zachary R. Walden has been recognized for his commitment to integrity, service and justice in Tennessee’s Eighth Judicial District. Walden, a 2013 graduate of ETSU, is currently the youngest trial judge in the state and has served on the Criminal and Recovery Courts since 2022. In 2024, he launched the 8th Judicial District Veterans Treatment Court, expanding support for veterans in Campbell, Claiborne, Fentress, Scott, and Union counties. Throughout his career, Walden has held numerous leadership positions, including membership on the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Technology Oversight Committee and as chair of the Tennessee Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee. He also teaches criminal practice skills at Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law and serves as secretary for the Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division. Previously, Walden practiced law in Knoxville at Eldridge and Blakney, with appearances on “Killer Cases” and “Court Cam Presents: Under Oath.” He received his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law in 2016, earning multiple academic honors. Walden has been recognized by the American Bar Association’s On the Rise Award, Knoxville News Sentinel’s 40 Under 40, and the University of Alabama School of Law’s Rising Young Lawyer Award. He lives in Jacksboro, Tennessee, and remains active in his community and church.