Practice Matters

Happy Law

/ Bruce Cameron

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. — Bertrand Russell

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years. — Bertrand Russell

The other day I was participating in a webinar (that godsend to rural lawyers everywhere) and was struck by a comment made by a member of the live audience. He prefaced his question to the speaker by mentioning that he was in the process of transitioning his practice from family law litigation to, as he put it, the “happy law” of estate planning. While I found both the question and response that followed to be unremarkable, the phrase “happy law” stuck with me.

For those unfamiliar with family law litigation, it is an emotion-laden, stress-filled morass characterized by petty bickering, pointless arguments, and infighting and political maneuvering worthy of the US Congress – and that’s just what it’s like for the lawyers. So, it is easy to see why a lawyer would describe a transition to an area of law where there are courteous and willing clients as happy law – the hours are regular, the clients want to reach the same goals, there are no more 4 AM complaint calls; in general the work/life balance thing gets better (the work-life balance also gets better if one transitions to a rural practice, but that’s a whole ‘nother post). Continue reading →

Thanks-giving

/ Bruce Cameron

Wild Turkeys

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Living around farmers reminds one that life is an ephemeral thing, something that waxes and wanes with nature’s rhythms (today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon) but, for the vast majority of us these small reminders are merely items of interest and not something that we focus on (the chicken that provided the eggs for your breakfast was interested in it, the pig that provided the bacon was really focused on it). Yet, when a friend’s holiday letter mentions they’ve been diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma a few weeks prior, I find myself becoming a bit more focused, so this Thanksgiving, I find myself a bit more thankful for my health, my friends, and my family. I also find myself reviewing my office’s “in case of …” kit.

My “in case of …” kit is basically my backup system for me. Basically, it’s a set of documents that provide a quick guide to my filing system, mission critical software, and basic procedures so that my backup attorney has some rudimentary grasp of how to either run my practice in the short term or close it down if necessary. Ideally, I would review my kit on a regular basis (hey, I back up my computer daily, I should at least back up myself every few months), but the reality is that it takes life handing me a good swift kick before I get the impetus to block out the time. This year, it looks like I have something to do on Black Friday other than being mauled at the mall.

Happy Thanksgiving and Slàinte mhòr agus a h-uile beannachd duibh (’cause gaelic makes a nice change from latin).

Solo by Choice – The New Release

/ Bruce Cameron

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. — Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday, Carolyn Elefant announced that the second edition of her book Solo by Choice (actually it is a two volume set – there is also a companion volume entitled, appropriately, Solo by Choice, The Companion Guide). In a nutshell, Solo by Choice 2011-2012 brings the original work into the age of Social Media, Cloud Computing and the realities of being a post-2008 economic collapse solo attorney and adds to Carolyn’s remarkably lucid and thoughtful prose the voices of other solo attorneys – basically, Carolyn explains the theory, the greek chorus provides a bit of in-the-trenches reality.

For anyone thinking about starting a solo practice, there are two must read books – Jay Foonberg’s How to Start & Build a Law Practice and Carolyn’s Solo by Choice. In my opinion, Carolyn’s book has always been the more accessible of the two and has been much more relevant to this rural solo – I’ve found that her take on things finds more resonance with my rural clients (perhaps its just that she’s just better at explaining things in ways I understand).

This new edition maintains those qualities – Carolyn’s text is still a joy to read; yet I am of two minds about the material provided by those other solos. I like having other voices, other explanations of the whys, wherefores and what-works and think its great to have those been-there-done-that experiences as object lessons. Unfortunately I find that the change in the “voice” of the work slows the flow of my reading.

Now, this new edition is not all roses and Skittles. There are a few places where a little tighter editing would have caught the odd typo – this is more apparent in the companion volume where the answers to the 34 questions read as if they were taken verbatim from an interview. While this doesn’t really affect the books’ readability, its does make them seem slightly less polished. But this is a minor nit – my biggest concern is that my copy of the new edition will become as dog-eared, tattered, and abused as my copy of the original.

Follow up: Yesterday’s Myths, today’s needs

/ Bruce Cameron

Thomas and I have been having an e-mail conversation over my post “Yesterday’s myths, today’s needs“, and with his permission, I am posting a few of his insightful comments regarding the state of the rural solo down in Texas. Any errors in grammar, punctuation or spelling are due to my faulty transcription (Thomas you have my apologies & I’ll give some thought to your suggested post topic).

I think that most of the people who spread the misconceptions about rural law practice are, frankly, lawyers who aren’t making money in the big city and use these myths as excuses for not opening a rural practice.  “Oh, I’m struggling now, but think how bad I would have it if I practiced out in the country!”

You’re right that the rural bar is aging and many lawyers are retiring (although some of them don’t… there was a story about a lawyer in Weatherford, TX, who died in the past year at the age of 101 and practiced law pretty much up until the day he died.)  I’m 27 and relatively few people in my generation (particularly relatively few lawyers) grew up in a small town, so there are far fewer people my age with the contacts already built up that they think are necessary to build a small-town practice.

And there’s also far less competition from the big-city lawyers than one might assume.  In the county seat 40 miles from Dallas and Fort Worth where I practice, it’s very rare to see lawyers from either of those cities in the courthouse.  Although, these aren’t exactly small towns any more… more like exurbs.  I still need to move farther out.

In fact, the good ol’ boys network tends to be a lot more prevalent in these sorts of towns than in real small towns — where the local attorneys, particularly the older ones (who have been practicing there since it was a dot on the map), feel a bit threatened by the big-city lawyers who might poach their cases.  This is particularly true as suburban and exurban cities grow and the new people feel less identification with the town.  So, for example, the county has a rule that in order to get on the list for court-appointed cases, 80% of your pending cases must be in this county — obviously a move designed to keep Dallas lawyers from getting on the “wheel.”

The Texas Bar has a lot of information about its lawyers posted online, so I thought it would be good to look at some of the information. According to the state bar, the average lawyer in Texas is 48 years old and has been licensed to practice for 18 years.  They also have information on the six largest counties in the state:

  • Harris County (Houston): 47/17 years
  • Dallas County: 47/17 years
  • Tarrant County (Fort Worth): 48/17 years
  • Bexar County (San Antonio): 49/18 years
  • Travis County (Austin): 47/16 years
  • El Paso County: 50/20 years

Considering that 57 percent of the state’s lawyers have their office in one of three counties (Dallas, Harris, Travis), and in all three of those the average lawyer is younger than the state average… yeah, that means that the average lawyer outside the major cities is older.  (El Paso’s a bit of an outlier, but then it’s not really the kind of place that young lawyers are dying to go to…)  Overall, two thirds of the state’s lawyers practice in the five largest counties.

Well, I looked into the county where I currently reside, its average lawyer is 45 and has been licensed 15 years.  So that’s actually a more extreme example of where the younger lawyers are going. On the other hand, in three smaller cities in west Texas — Abilene, San Angelo, and Wichita Falls, all of which have a population around 100,000 — the average lawyer is 55 and has been licensed for 25 years.  So half the lawyers in those cities will be hitting retirement age in the next decade.  (Abilene actually has a lot of younger lawyers as well, though… evidently not many lawyers set up shop there in the 1980s and 1990s, for whatever reason.)

I’ll live

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. – Voltaire

I’ve spent the week clumping around in the medical equivalent of a ski-boot – no big deal, a few torn ligaments in my ankle that will repair themselves given time and immobilization (hence my new footwear). With the exception of making it difficult to operate the clutch pedal in my case, this is no big deal, as injuries go it’s a long way from anything of real importance (I’ll live).

The beauty of it is that this week has been one of those rare moments where there are no pressing client demands and no scheduled court dates so there was no need for me to head into town and clump around the office when I could be just as productive clumping around at home. So an e-mail to my receptionist service asking them to route my calls to my home number and I was in business smugly content in the flexibility of a solo practice. This blissful glow lasted slightly longer than the novelty of my newly acquired footwear – working (actually being able to get something productive accomplished) from home is, as I soon discovered, not for the faint of heart. Continue reading →