As soon as I came to law school, I started hearing about the great need for legal services in the Rio Grande Valley. In 2008, data for Hidalgo County, the county where I will be working this summer, showed that 34.8 percent of its population was living below the poverty line, significantly above the Texas average of 15.8 percent.
Even while the need is so great, there are significantly less resources for the indigent in the region. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) estimates that 2.6 million residents in its service area are eligible for their services, creating a ratio of approximately 21,000 potential clients for every lawyer working for TRLA. It was this need that led me to seek a summer position in the Rio Grande Valley.
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