Rural Practice

The RuralLawyer Book

/ Bruce Cameron / 2 Comments

Becoming A Rural Lawyer - A Personal Guide to Establishing a Small Town Practice by Bruce CameronWell, it’s official – Becoming a Rural Lawyer is here. Like RuralLawyer the blog, RuralLawyer the book is designed to help you decide if you’re meant to practice in the 128,000 small towns dotting the US landscape. Becoming a Rural Lawyer looks at the myths of practicing in small towns, discusses emerging areas of rural practice, talks about the rhythms and (unwritten) rules of small town life, and  includes advice, tips, and words of wisdom from rural lawyers from across the US.

Becoming a Rural Lawyer is available through Amazon.com (where I welcome your impressions of the book).

End Of An Age?

/ Bruce Cameron

If you listen to the tech-savvy pundits, the age of the transactional lawyer will soon be coming to an end as cloud-based artificial intelligence software will soon be producing all the legal forms a person could ever want at prices so low, no lawyer could ever compete. The thing is, this is not what a law practice, especially a rural law practice, is about.

A rural law practice is not about the “product” – those forms, those missives of legalese we lawyers produce on behalf of our clients – if it were, law firm size would be measured in terms of the number of paralegals rather than the number of attorneys. I have no doubt that software can produce a form that is correct in all particulars, that clever engineers can gin-up an interface that will ask all the necessary questions to have the form comply with statutory requirements, and that this cheap, elegant, correct form will be totally unsuited to a client’s specific situation.

Practicing rural law is not about asking the necessary questions, it is about asking the right questions and understanding not only what the client wishes to accomplish, but why as well and only then moving on to the how. The oft-told stories among family law lawyers about spouses asking and getting the family home in the divorce settlement who turn around a sell the property within the year simply because they could not afford the property on a single person’s income are classic examples of understanding the what-a-client-wants part of the equation while ignoring the why; understanding the why allows the lawyer to function as councilor not just as advocate and opens up the possibility of other options that may provide a better outcome and a better service to the client. Technology will always get the “what” part, but it is unlikely to ever get the “why” part and therein lies its weakness.

A rural law practice (or most solo or small firm practices for that matter) is about service – service to clients, service to community. Technology, even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence software, can’t provide service – it simply cannot make that intuitive leap that uses both “what” and “why” to get to “how”. The lawyer who forgets that his true value lies in service not in product will not last long in rural practice. If you provide quality service and market your practice on the value you provide you need not be concerned about being replaced by CheapLegalForms.com any time soon.

SB 218

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

993663_88639576So, what does a state do when 65% of the state’s lawyers practice in 4 of the 66 counties and 19 counties have 2 or fewer practicing lawyers. Well, if you are the South Dakota Senate, you float a plan to subsidize law student tuition in return for a promise that these students will open a practice in a small town or rural county.

It’s a cool idea – the county in need ponies up 1/3 of the student’s school fees, the state’s Unified Judicial System covers the remainder and the student contracts to keep their grades up and upon graduating to live and practice in the supporting county for a set number of years – and, a good start to reversing the declining rural lawyer population – let’s hope it passes.

But realistically, this is just a first step (a good one, but a first one). It will take more than simply releasing a few dozen newly fledged lawyers out into the wild. If these future rural lawyers are to have a fighting chance to develop a thriving practice, they’ll need more than a debt-free education; these new lawyers are going to need mentors, help with the administrative side of things, and a good education in keeping their overhead low. I’m betting the SD Bar has some ideas on how to solve these problems as well.

Tip of the hat to The Daily Republic for reporting on this.

Library Science

/ Bruce Cameron

A tip of the hat to SD Rural Lawyer for pointing out Susan G. Fowler’s study: “Results of Participant Observation in the Fifth Judicial District,”

 

In this 2007, Ms. Fowler takes a look at the research needs of the average rural Kansas lawyer and finds that because the rural lawyer is a generalist, their research needs tend to be limited to the basics (case-law updates, statutory changes, access to state resources) and they do not spend a great deal of time or money on specialized research materials or access to expert opinions. All well and good if you are planning on how best to restore a rural law library so that it will best serve it’s clientele.

What interested me were Ms. Fowler’s observations on the information processing skill and daily activities of the rural lawyer (not that I participated in the study, seeing one’s day reduced to frequency counts by an outside observer is something of an out-of-body experience – the initial reaction of “it can’t be” is quickly followed by “now that I think about it…”). So, for those of you who have any doubts about the adrenaline-packed, action-filled, exciting life of the rural lawyer, you are absolutely right – the top 5 things rural lawyers do are:

  1. Talk on the phone (communication reduces surprises)
  2. Use a some form of technology to obtain or transfer legal information (the adaptive generalist is always relearning)
  3. Prep for court (there is a marked preference to settle out of court, but you never know…)
  4. work on a case
  5. build relationships (rural lawyers practice in small ponds – adversarial relationships are left at the courthouse door – so building professional/personal ties to the rural bar and to the community brings in business and establishes credibility)

Ms. Fowler also observed that rural lawyers are information power-users (constantly assessing information as they learn and relearn) and hard core multitaskers – though rural lawyers tend to be “time slicers” rather than “parallel processors” when it comes to multitasking; preferring to quickly switch between tasks (spending a few minutes on one before moving to the next) in a round-robin fashion. This form of multi-tasking seems to be facilitated by the rural lawyer’s preference for print rather than digital resources.

So there you have it – a brief look at the life of the rural lawyer through the eyes of the rural law librarian.

Catch Up

/ Bruce Cameron / 3 Comments

A quick update on the world of rural lawyering:

I recently ran across Jennifer Gumbel’s postings on Lawyerist.com (a tip of the hat to sdrurallawyer.com for pointing out a great resource right here in my back yard). Her article on legal “ruralsourcing” (outsourcing to small towns) shows that, once again, the internet opens up opportunities for rural lawyers. The low overhead of the rural lawyer combined with the almost instantaneous communication of the internet may make the rural lawyer the next “goto” source for document review, due diligence work, and freelance legal research. In a lighter vein, Ms. Gumbel’s “Observations on Rural Stereotypes” is good for a quick laugh.

Over on Greedy Associates, Andrew Chow recently posted on “Why you shouldn’t rule out rural law“. I’m honored to have this blog quoted so prominently. Thanks Mr. Chow.

Finally, there is a great thread over on jdunderground on the wisdom of going rural. You’ll have to sift through the snarky to get to the gems, but the thread is worth a read as there is some good common sense advice lurking there.