Small Town Life

Archived Posts from this Category

March 5, 2012

Dear Joseph

Posted by Bruce under Being Solo, Ramblings, Rural Practice, Small Town Life | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Dear Joseph,

I hope you don’t mind the informality, Mr. Flanders seems a bit stiff for this blog (it’s more Carharts & Red Wings than Brook’s Brothers & Edmund Allens around here). First, thanks for the comment to Beyond Our Field of View; I am always flattered to know that someone other than spammers peruse my miscellaneous ramblings on rural law and rural lawyering. Now, to address some of your questions.

I don’t have a good definition of what or, more precisely, who a rural lawyer is. The prototypical rural lawyer lives and practices in a small town, yet some live in small towns but have offices in larger cities, and some live in larger cities and practice in small towns. By the way, “large” and “small” are relative terms depending on the area of the country you live in (what’s “large” out here on the prairie would look pretty “small” were it plopped down by Los Angeles – my guess is that there are more people in one block of downtown LA than there are in the small town I live in). If you are serving small town clients, you are a rural lawyer in my book.

There is nothing wrong with having both city clients and country clients. Donald Landon in Law Careers and Community Context: A Comparison of Rural and Urban Experience noted that to meet the entrepreneurial imperative of building a practice while still making a living, it was not unusual for rural lawyers to arrange their practice so that they drew clients from small towns as well as metropolitan areas – this is what practicing at suburbia’s edge is all about. No matter what, if you are starting a law practice, you are starting a business and you have to think first in terms of being an entrepreneur – unless you are blessed with a remarkably large personal fortune and practicing law just happens to be your way to do that “charity thing”, the point of this exercise is to make money, so take on city clients, country clients, or clients from other worlds (just be sure to get that retainer up front). (more…)

 

January 30, 2012

The Rural Track

Posted by Bruce under Ramblings, Rural Practice, Small Town Life | Tags: , , , , , |
Comments Off 
On The Fastrack 1/26/12

From "On the Fastrack" by Bill Holbrook (c) 2012 King Features Syndicate, Inc. World rights reserve, www.onthefastrack.com

While the rural lawyer is expected to be something of a generalist, there is some wiggle-room in that definition – folks don’t expect a lawyer to do everything. On the other hand, the rural lawyer who refuses to work outside a particular speciality is in for some lean times. The trick is to find that balancing point between doing the stuff that interests you and doing enough of the stuff that small town clients need so that bills get paid, you get fed and your conscience lets you sleep at night.

I arrived at that balancing point by doing transactional work and ADR – there is something about the degree of conflict in litigated matters that just does not sit well with my belief system. Frankly, when I made the decision not to litigate, I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t get clients – after all rural clients are a fairly conservative and traditional bunch and ADR might come across as a wee bit too much like tie-dye and love beads to them – but rural clients “get” ADR; though many were surprised to find out that it could be applied to areas other than union contract negotiations (many thanks TV news).

The thing I noticed most was that it became a lot easier to market my practice when what I did aligned with who I was. It was not just that the ol’ elevator speech sounded a bit more natural, the experience from first phone call to last meeting flowed better. Sure there are some clients that choose to go with the “full lawyer experience” and that’s OK – what’s right for me is not right for them. I do notice that the ones that do go with an ADR solution tend be surprised by the results – I often hear the phrase “our friends told us that their _____ was horrible, this isn’t all that stressful, are we doing something wrong?” It’s always nice to have to confirm that disputes can be settled with a minimum of conflict and that if they are getting the results they want, then they are doing everything right (personal validation, vindication and a paycheck all rolled into one).

My thanks go out to Bill Holbrook, the creator of “On The Fastrack“, for allowing me to use an image from his January 26th, 2012 strip and for reminding me that I’ve got that job.

 

December 8, 2011

Myopia

Posted by Bruce under Ramblings, Rural Practice, Small Town Life, Uncategorized | Tags: , , |
Comments Off 

There are certain presumptions that spring to mind when one hears the phrase “small town lawyer”; the stereotype seems to be a lawyer  (himself a strange amalgamation of Matlock, Atticus Finch, Lincoln, and Oliver Wendell Holmes) who has set up shop in some bucolic backwoods town and divides his time between tending to client matters and whittling. The trouble is that an exact definition of the breed is hard to come by; well the “lawyer” part is fairly simple, it’s that “small town” part that gives one fits. Even the US Census Bureau has problems with defining what a small town is, preferring to use classifications like “micropolitean” (a rural area that contains at least one urban area with a population of at least 10,000) or “place” (a territory, population, or housing unit not classified as urban or designated as an extended city). It’s always nice to know that one’s place in the world is defined more by what one is not that what one is.

Even my definition of the small town lawyer – the lawyer practicing beyond suburbia’s sprawl – is fairly generic, and when you consider Michael Sylvester’s argument, perhaps a bit short sighted. Mr. Sylvester practices in Shenzhen, China a bustling metropolis of 10+ million (not exactly the first place that springs to mind when one thinks “small town”) providing services to the Shenzhen expatriate community – a small (500,000?) city within the larger community. Now out here on the prairie, when a half-million people congregate in one spot we tend to consider that either a metropolis or a really fine turnout for the church potluck (everybody bring a dish to pass), but in a country of 1.3 billion, in a town of 10 million, 500,000 must seem like a tiny drop in a very large bucket.Water Drop

 

October 21, 2011

Short Takes

Posted by Bruce under Ramblings, Rural Practice, Small Town Life | Tags: , , |
Comments Off 

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. -- P. D. James

Once again, the rural clock has cycled back to the season of hurry-up when shortened days and the chill of night (those sure harbingers of winter) tell us that it is time to finish up the harvest chores while it is still possible to work outside without wearing insulated garments. So, farmstead maintenance has taken priority over the weekly posting  and temporarily damped the blogging muse – it appears that scrubbing a season’s worth of dust, oil, and grease from heavy equipment does not lend itself to the same contemplative frame of mind that driving said equipment slow over a field does. Given that inspiration and originality appear to be temporarily on hiatus, here are a few items from across the web that caught my eye:

  • Debra Bruce gives a small plug for considering small town practice on the Solo Practice University‘s blog in her post “Deciding Where to Locate Your Law Practice, Part 2.” Have to admit that Debra sums up paradox of small towns pretty well – collegial and welcoming once they know you, closed and standoffish when they don’t. The trick is to be collegial and welcoming first – make that first effort to get to know the town, ’cause if you wait for the town it’s gonna take a while.
  • BYU honors Elder Steven E. Snow for his 30 year career as a small town lawyer. His law firm may have merged with an up scale metropolitan firm in 2003, if you’ve ever been paid in quits, produce or trampolines you’re a rural lawyer. Congratulations Elder Snow.
  • The South Dakota Bar appears to be pleasantly surprised about the power of social media, especially when it comes to their Project Rural Practice initiative. South Dakota Bar Association President Pat Goetzinger comments on the  relevance of social media in his October message “Social Media – Is it great? OR Does it grate?.”
Remember: National Pro Bono Week is October 23-29 – “The public service we render is the rent we pay for a place on this earth” — Steven Snow
 

September 16, 2011

Pax maternum, ergo pax familiarum*

Posted by Bruce under Ramblings, Rural Practice, Small Town Life | Tags: , , , |
Comments Off 
Ghost Town, Bodie California

If this ain't the middle of nowhere, you can see it from here

It has been pointed out to me that, perhaps, one reason lawyers are not flocking to small towns is that a spouse or significant other may be reluctant to leave their career behind. Fair enough; jobs are tough to come by in this economy and it is perfectly understandable that someone would prefer keeping a sure thing over haring off into the middle of nowhere – even if it is a particularly scenic middle of nowhere. But this may not be the hurdle it appears to be. So if your SO is still talking to you after you first broached the idea of a rural practice, here are a few options: (more…)

 

Next Page »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 309 other followers