Author: Bruce Cameron

Rural Lawyer – Catalyst

/ Bruce Cameron

I must admit that I’ve never given a great deal of thought to the entire scope of a rural lawyer’s role in their community. After all, much of my focus has been on developing my practice, providing an effective service to my clients, and trying to make a profit without gaining too many new gray hairs, or going noisily insane and running amok though the neighbor’s corn fields. Fortunately, the folks over at SD Rural Lawyer have put some thought into the subject and have posted about the rural lawyer’s role as a catalyst for  community development.

It appears that the small town lawyer can have an impact  on their community beyond being a potential employer or the dollar recapture of  shopping for office supplies locally. The article notes that the rural lawyer is in a unique position within the rural community; he brings a highly (one hopes) trained mind, an uncommon skill set and through the course of his practice develops a large network of  social connections, an intimate awareness of his community’s and client’s needs, and an awareness of community dynamics. It is the synergy of all of these factors that can allow the rural lawyer to act as a catalyst for community development.

Read the complete article, it is a fascinating look at what else rural lawyers can do.

Rural Compensation

/ Bruce Cameron

Fall is in full swing out here where the big woods meets the prairie and that means harvest is in full swing and that means that, with the exception of all things relating to football, grain yields, market prices, profits and losses are the primary topics of most casual conversations. The fall months also see an uptick in the rural lawyering business as clients look to close those little, optional matters like estate planning while the weather is still pleasant and cash comes a bit more readily to hand. Profits, losses and budgets are on a rural lawyer’s hit parade as well, for fall also brings sales reps for the phone books, the local school sports teams sponsorship opportunities, and the requests for various and sundry donations – everyone is aware of when cash is flowing through the community.

This fall, a small town lawyer passed away. I didn’t know him and were it not for the internet, I would have never heard of his passing. However, serendipity, the season, and the vagaries of a Google search led me to a small obituary in the Valley News Dispatch and got me thinking about how rural lawyers are paid. It’s true that a rural lawyer’s net income is less, perhaps substantially less than that of our big city, big firm counterparts – a fact that we hope is balanced by the fact that the cost of living is lower for those of us out here in the sticks. But does net income really sum up the totality of a rural practice’s earnings or is there something more to a rural lawyer’s compensation?

skyscrapers and smog anyone?

Now, I’ve never had the privilege of seeing a city sky line from a high-rise corner office and I must admit that my desk now sits in a window-less room in a building perched perilously close to the city limits and the ragged edges of suburbia, but when I step outside at the end of the day, I am rewarded with views like this:

It may just be me, but this always comes down as a plus in the compensation column.

But it is a couple of lines at the bottom of those few column inches spent on the passing of a lawyer that stick with me. The lines read in part: “The Valley News Dispatch will occasionally run obituary stories on notable local residents. They are news items…” In small towns, lawyers make a difference and their passing is newsworthy, not just noted by a paid listing in the back of the classifieds. Those column inches do more than simply mark the death of a small town lawyer, they’re the last installment on his compensation package.

Rest in peace Mr. Ambrose and thank you.

The Four Tech Groups – Balance in Your Tech Diet

/ Bruce Cameron

Sham Harga had run a successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease, and burnt crunchy bits — Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

In the spirit of Sham Harga, one runs a successful law practice by always smiling, never extending credit and having your tech properly balanced between the four tech groups: security, redundancy, utility, and cost. These are dynamic forces often in opposition with each other. If I want my systems to be perfectly secure, I must sacrifice utility (for others not to access my tech, I must also limit how I may access my tech) and invest in cost (firewalls, DMZ’s, encrypted communication, and 24/7 monitoring come with large price tags). Should I wish perfect utility – unlimited access, 24/7/365 availability – I must sacrifice security and invest in redundancy and cost. But there is a point where all four forces lie in balance – costs comfortably within our budget, security contained comfortably between extreme paranoia and laxness, and systems that are sufficiently redundant so that they can attend to the tasks required of them now and for the reasonably foreseeable future with only minor, rectifiable hiccups.

While there are undoubtedly precise mechanisms that will spit out one’s ROI when investing $X in amount Y of security or amount Z of redundancy, this point of balance is more than a simple evaluation of a couple of the forces in isolation. This is more a matter of personal intuition for what we are evaluating is a fluid system and the balance we achieve today may not be the right balance tomorrow. It is a bit like yoga – today I find my balance in child’s pose and even though I might find it in mountain or tree tomorrow, right now a simple solution addresses my needs and that is all that matters for the moment; let tomorrow bring a new balance with it when tomorrow comes.

Yet being in tech balance is more than simply being able to find the right balance between the four tech groups – there is finding balance while engulfed in the ever-present white noise of our interconnected tech; of finding those small moments of quiet midst the cacophony of social networks, list-serves, RSS feeds, blogs, and e-mail if for no other reason than to find some time to actually do some paying work. I find that when the din becomes too much and the well-considered advice of the efficiency experts no longer lifts me above the noise I take a retreat from my tech for a few days – deliberately disconnecting from the cacophony of interconnectedness – choosing instead to regress to more primal state of tech. One in which afternoon naps are more likely to be interrupted by the dulcet tones of a landline than the strident chirp of a cellphone and where word processing is a product of ink on paper rather than electrons on phosphor.

Admittedly, putting one’s tech on hiatus is not easy (a small town’s lack of reliable connectivity goes a long way in helping me ignore tech’s siren song) but I find that doing so reminds me to have a more deliberate, purposeful relationship with my tech; that my tech is there to facilitate my mission, not dictate it. Seems everything needs to be rebooted ever now and then.

A Rare Species

/ Bruce Cameron

Well, yesterday was the good news (see Canada, eh?), today, unfortunately, is the bad. Peralte C. Paul reports on the dearth of rural lawyers in rural Georgia in the August 30th edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As Mr. Paul points out, the problem is not a numbers issues (after all there are some 28,000+ lawyers in Georgia) it is one of distribution and simple economics; 69% of the Georgia Bar practices within the 5 counties surrounding metro Atlanta, leaving just under 9000 lawyers spread across the remaining 154 counties and it’s not a uniform distribution – Mr. Paul reports there are 35 counties that have fewer than 4 practicing attorneys (and yes 0 is less than 4).

The article contends that, at its core, this due to simple economics. That without some form of incentive program (like those available to medical doctors), the majority of new lawyers are simply unable to afford to practice in rural counties. Seems that small populations with low annual incomes just don’t provide the type of steady client stream needed to meet the income needs of new lawyers trying to service their student loans.

The lack of access to any legal representation and the lack of access to affordable representation (when it is available)  is having a trickle-down effect in the form of increased workload for the Georgia Legal Services Program (70 lawyers, 11,000 cases), an increased reliance on the public defender system (and we know how under worked these lawyers are to begin with), and an increase in pro se litigants.

To read the full article, click here.

Canada, eh?

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

In this month’s Canadian Lawyer, Bruce LeRose has an excellent article on the ongoing demise of rural lawyers in British Columbia and the steps the B.C. branch of the Canadian Bar Association is taking to try to encourage new lawyers to take on the challenges of rural practice. Mr. LeRose points out two of the more serious factors contributing to the demise of the species: the march toward specialization (small towns simply don’t have the work to support the boutique lawyer – it’s breadth not depth that pays the bills) and the closure of small town courts (a problem that is rapidly marching toward my neck of the woods as the legislature’s economic priorities don’t include a fully funded judiciary). But for all the doom and gloom, there is hope.

The bright spot is that the B.C. Bar’s Rural Education and Access Program (REAL). Thanks to REAL, rural law firms are starting to hire new staff and about a third of those new hires are students or new lawyers. Through REAL, students are being introduced to rural law firms, the advantages of rural practice (networking is easier, overhead is lower, and success comes quickly through hard work and passion), and the personal benefits of small town living (an improved work-life balance, a family friendly supportive environment).

To read the full text of the article, click here.