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Alix Rogers builds pathways to rural practice in Tennessee

By Amanda Robert

June 3, 2026, 9:20 am CDT

At the start of her career, Alix Rogers worked in a small firm in Lewisburg, Tennessee, a rural town about 60 miles south of Nashville.

As a generalist, she handled family law, estate planning and civil litigation matters, and she quickly discovered that a rural practice was both challenging and rewarding.

“I saw how important lawyers were to that community,” says Rogers, a 2018 graduate of Belmont University College of Law in Nashville. “They were community leaders and problem solvers, and they were trusted people.”

“I also saw the huge access-to-justice gap that rural communities face,” she adds.

Nearly 20% of the country’s residents live in rural areas, but only 2% of lawyers practice there, according to data from the Legal Services Corp. The scarcity of rural lawyers profoundly impacts Tennessee, where Rogers notes that 78 of the state’s 95 counties are considered rural.

Rogers kept thinking about this problem and helped the Tennessee Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division launch an initiative to do something about it. Last year, she co-created the Rural Judicial Fellowship, which addresses the shortage of young attorneys entering rural practice. It places law students in paid judicial clerkships in rural Tennessee, where they gain hands-on experience while serving communities that struggle with access to justice.

“I really do hope it creates a ripple effect,” says Rogers, who is now the assistant dean for career and professional development at Belmont Law. “Some students have reflected that they could really see themselves working in a rural community, but I think all of them are now more aware of this problem.”

“These are our future bar leaders,” she adds. “These are our legislators. These are our judges. If we have more young attorneys in Tennessee who understand the challenges of access to justice in rural communities, even if they end up practicing in Knoxville or Memphis or Nashville, I think that only helps with the problem. They could be champions for reform.”

Alix Rogers

‘Culture of service’

Rogers grew up in Murray, Kentucky, another small town in the southwestern part of the state.

Both of her parents were teachers who were active in their community, Rogers says. They inspired her to also view public service as a fulfilling part of life.

As an undergraduate student at Murray State University, Rogers was a volunteer theater camp counselor and taught children’s theater workshops during the school year. She was a volunteer coach for the local elementary school’s problem-solving competition team and the philanthropy chair of her sorority.

Rogers went to law school knowing she wanted to help others. But she wasn’t sure what her career would look like until she got an internship during her 1L summer with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, she says.

“When I was working there, it clicked for me,” says Rogers, who also received the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Law Student for Justice Award for completing more than 400 hours of pro bono service. “I was like, ‘This is why I’m meant to be a lawyer, and what I am supposed to do.’”

After graduation, Rogers stayed in private practice for about a year until a staff attorney position opened at the Legal Aid Society. She handled housing and employment matters but later transitioned to family and domestic violence cases.

Rogers intended to spend her entire career in legal aid, until she heard about a new position at Belmont Law. It was for a public interest coordinator who would counsel students on careers in public service and develop the school’s pro bono legal clinics.

“Even though I was really happy at Legal Aid, I thought, ‘If someone’s going to build this at my alma mater, I want it to be me,’” says Rogers, who joined Belmont Law in 2022.

Now, as the head of the Office of Career and Professional Development, Rogers hopes she can instill a “culture of service” in every law student, she says.

“I certainly know that not every student who graduates is going to be a public interest lawyer, but I really believe I can make them all public interest-minded lawyers,” she says.

Creating the fellowship

Rogers, the Middle Tennessee governor for the Tennessee Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division, began talking with Judge Zachary Walden, the secretary for the division, about how to tackle the shortage of attorneys in rural Tennessee.

She understood from her experience that students were open to practicing in rural areas but didn’t know how to access those opportunities, she says. Meanwhile, Walden, who presides over the 8th Judicial District Criminal Court in East Tennessee, connected with other rural judges and knew they wanted law clerks.

“We thought, ‘How could we get students to these rural judicial chambers to see what rural practice is like, and to see if they like it?’” Rogers says.

With funding from the Young Lawyers Division, the Rural Judicial Fellowship program now provides $1,000 stipends to rising 2L, 3L and 4L students from across Tennessee who are interested in spending six weeks of the summer in courtrooms in rural parts of the state. The students also participate in a community service project, complete a final reflective essay and attend the Tennessee Bar Association Annual Convention, where they meet with justices of the Tennessee Supreme Court.

From Walden’s perspective, Rogers is an ideal leader of the program because of her own rural experience. He also says she has an unmatched “level of enthusiasm.”

“Everything Alix does, she approaches with a lot of enthusiasm,” Walden says. “So if she is bringing a new idea to the table, it makes it much better because she is going to make other people excited about the program.”

Six law students were in the inaugural class of fellows, and another six were selected for this year’s class. In the future, Rogers says they hope to offer more fellowships and recruit more judges who are interested in hosting fellows.

“I’m really thankful that I am part of a bar that lets us do these innovative new projects, lets us try something to see if it works,” says Rogers, who adds that the application pool for the program doubled this year.

Early in her career, Rogers got involved in the ABA. She is the Tennessee Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division delegate to the ABA House of Delegates. Her other volunteer work includes serving on the board of directors for the Tennessee Alliance of Legal Services and advisory committees for the Tennessee Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission.

“I think it makes me better at my actual job,” says Rogers, who lives with her husband, Hayden, in Murfreesboro, a suburb of Nashville. “I’m more plugged into the issues that are going to affect law students. And I’m building better connections that I think help my students. So it’s also been really rewarding in that way.”

Members Who Inspire is an ABA Journal series profiling exceptional ABA members. If you know members who do unique and important work, you can nominate them for this series by emailing [email protected].