In much of rural Ohio, you can drive an hour and not find a lawyer to draft a will, close on a house, or represent you in court. Seventy-eight of the state's 88 counties are considered legal deserts, with fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. In several rural counties the shortage is even more pronounced, and the lawyers who remain in these counties are running out the clock.
Jan Allen Baughman L’97, has spent her career inside that gap. As the Ohio State Bar Association's 2026–2027 president, she has made it her mission to close it.
"The attorney population is also aging," she said of counties like the ones surrounding her own practice in Zanesville. "There are not people here to carry on the practice or purchase the practice. So as this generation ages out, which is going to happen, the gap is only going to get wider and more severe."
This isn't a distant problem for Baughman. It's next door. It's the shape of her life's work.
As a general practitioner for nearly three decades, she has watched families return to her office again and again — for an adoption, then an estate plan, then a parent's nursing home paperwork, then a house closing.
"We just touch families at all different times of their life," she said. "It’s very rewarding and it’s nice that they come back. They feel very comfortable here.”
That kind of practice, she insists, can't exist without lawyers willing to plant roots in the communities that need them most.
Before law, Baughman began her career as an educator, teaching science and math in Dresden, Ohio. Looking for something different, she went on to work at a bank in the county in which she was raised. There she had a front row seat watching her father, who represented the bank as part of his private practice and served as county prosecutor, move through both worlds with a kind of ease she never forgot.
"I just loved the way that he was living his life, his career, and I wanted the opportunity to try and do that as well,” she said.
When Capital Law School accepted her alongside The Ohio State University, something about Capital simply felt like home. As a non-traditional student, Baughman needed to feel recognized. Capital gave her that.
Capital also gave her Sue Watson Salamido L’97, the friend she met leaving orientation, who saved her from walking into her first day of class without having done the reading. It gave her Law Review and its editor Mary Albright L’97, another non-traditional studentwho would also build an estate planning practice in the same region as Baughman.. Small, human moments. The kind that quietly shape a career.
As the new Ohio State Bar Association president, Baughman leads an association of more than 20,000 attorneys and she's using the position to speak plainly about and bring attention to a crisis that’s been building for years: Ohio's rural attorney shortage.
“Ohio Bar President was not something I necessarily had on my radar," she said. "It wasn't a goal I was shooting for, but it came about organically as a result of my service on the board."
A friend and former Ohio Bar President, Judge Dean Wilson L’83, encouraged her toward leadership. She initially resisted.
"I always envisioned the president of the association as somebody from a large firm, from one of the three C's" — Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati. Then she looked honestly at who the association actually represents. "A large percentage of our members are in the rural, smaller areas, just like me, practicing like me. So I came to realize that what I first saw as a weakness was actually a strength!” "
She calls the presidency exciting, challenging, a little intimidating, but never something she carries alone. It’s a team effort built on mentors, board colleagues, and staff she credits at every turn. Underneath that humility, though, is someone who has grown from every new experience put in her path. She ultimately found her “forever fit” at Capital Law and is now making room for the next generation of attorneys.
She hopes Capital University Law School continues building rural pipelines, because for Baughman, none of this is theoretical.
She's living proof of what it takes to close the gap: a student who feels recognized, a mentor who answers the phone, a classroom that seals the deal. Now, as president, she's making sure the next Jan Allen Baughman has somewhere to land.