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Mom, Apple Pie & Rural Lawyer Assistance

/ Bruce Cameron

Even if one counts judges, prosecutors, public defenders, county and city attorneys and all the other categories of lawyers not generally available to the general public, there would still be 6 counties in Georgia that lack lawyers and a couple of dozen counties with fewer than 5 lawyers (see this article).

So, on Saturday, the State Bar of Georgia Board of Governors approved a plan to attract private civil attorneys to rural areas by offering state-funded repayment of law school loans to any attorney who moves to an underserved rural community. Even through the plan was described as “a great idea”, “a great idea”, and “mom & apple pie” it’s passage was not without some debate (see this article).

Frankly, these types of assistance programs are a good first step, but there needs to be more in place if young lawyers are going to succeed in rural practices; things like mentorship programs and community buy-in. It also would help if there were clear ethical guidelines on the use of technological innovations like client portals and virtual law offices. There needs to be an effort made to show the potential rural lawyer that practicing in a county that’s more pine barrens that people can be profitable, not just sustainable; that it can be a career rather than a set number of years of pro bono and ramen before moving on to better things and bigger law.

My hat’s off to the Georgia Bar for taking that first step. I wish them success and I hope they continue to help young lawyers build rural practices.

Weights and Measures

/ Bruce Cameron

From the Rural Lawyering 101 videos:

This particular clip was the result of a bit of serendipity; I had recently been in an e-mail conversation with a pre-law student interested in eventually starting a rural practice and how one might choose a suitable law school to achieve this laudable goal.

Turnkey

/ Bruce Cameron
real estate signs

J. Vachon, photographer, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USF34-063713-D

While buying an existing practice is not for the faint of wallet, it can be a way to bootstrap your small town legal career. An existing practice comes equipped with community connections, a client base, the possibility of an in-house (or at least in-town) mentor, and existing overhead. Just because the average rural law firm buyer is an established lawyer looking for a quieter place for a solo career, this does not mean that the newly graduated shouldn’t consider this option (just be sure your financial ducks are in a row).

Before shopping for a practice, its a good idea to do a bit of planning before hand. Have some idea of where you’d like to practice, the type of practice you’d like (it is hard to change the course of an existing small town practice – your clients will have certain expectations and these are not going to change overnight just because you’d rather do estate planning than family law), and the type of deal you’d like (what will the transition period be like & how long will the seller stay on with the firm, how payments will be made, etc).

Once you have an idea of the where, what, and how and have located a few potentials, it is time to do your due diligence. You’ll need to find out things like: just how much of the practice’s book of business is transferrable,  how the firm obtains new clients (is this all due to the reputation of one individual?), the percentage of referrals, the percentage of repeat clients, the firm’s overhead, and the method used to determine the firm’s value, just to name a few.

It takes a great deal of hard work and out of the box thinking to track down and get into the right existing practice, but it is possible – it is even possible to structure a deal that requires little upfront cash (granted these deals usually require extended payment periods, balloon payments or payments based on future revenue).

If you don’t mind being out here in the frozen prairie, there’s a nice little real estate/estate planing/municipal law practice for sale over by the Mississippi river. If you’re interested, give Roy Ginsberg (roy(at)royginsburg(dot)com) at shout. Roy’s not the one selling, he’s simply acting on behalf of the owner.

One Day

/ Bruce Cameron
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, fsa 8a42222

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, fsa 8a42222

The second of May saw 13 inches of heavy wet snow descend on my little part of the prairie – a noteworthy event even by Minnesota bachelor  farmer standards (a group that is notoriously parsimonious with praise). Like all good storms worth of the title “the great ______ of [insert reference year]”  (e.g.: the great wind of ’36, the great frost of ’09, etc.) this one left a bit of havoc in its wake. One particularly inconvenient bit of havoc left me without power for 14 hours.

For those of you who might brush this aside as a minor inconvenience, here is what no electricity means for my neighbors and me. No power means no water (we’re all on private water, aka wells, out here), no heat (takes electricity to power blowers, pumps and thermostats), no internet (those DSL routers don’t run on peanuts) and no computers (well at least nothing that’s not battery-powered). And, given that I had already changed the oil in my truck and tractors from the light weight winter oil to the heavier weights diesel engines prefer during the summer months, no power means that my snow removal equipment is not going to start (under 32 degrees, these summer time lubricants take on the same fluidity as wet concrete and need a bit of coddling and a bit of electrically generated heat before they are willing to flow) leaving me sitting on the waiting list for the local snowplow – at a quarter-mile long, my driveway is not one that lends itself to being shoveled by hand.

So, here’s the question – is your practice – that digital masterpiece of paperless perfection – robust enough to go 1 working day without power? Having just completed a review the hard way, the best I can say is that mine can, but things could be better. Continue reading →

Spring Niches

/ Bruce Cameron

After a longish winter (snow on the 26th of April is a bit over the top), the annual rights of spring are finally upon is – the fishing opener is but a weekend away and the wild turkey season is in full swing. For those not familiar with these activities, both are exercises in which the participants spend far more than is strictly sane to obtain a food stuff that could be had at a reputable grocer for a tenth the price. For those of us who spend our time participating, these rights are about more than simply nurturing our inner hunter-gatherer, they mark the transition when snow-shoveling (sure there is skiing & snowmobiles, but it all has to do with that frigid white stuff) gives way to far more varied ways of being outdoors.

Turkey hunting is something of a solo activity – after all, if you are armed, dressed like a bush, and making sounds like turkey, the last thing you want is another armed, turkey sounding bush anywhere in the vicinity – while fishing tends to be more a small firm activity – 2 or 3 gathered together to wash worms, sit in contemplative silence or to debate the great problems of the world as mood suits. When fall comes around, the big law model hits the woods and fields as groups head out to spend time in the deer camps of the great north woods.

785286_48781848But places to hunt are fading away as more landowners close acreage to hunters – set aside acres are being put back into production, woodlots and non-tillable lands are being put into private preserves, and some are simply closed thanks to, I’m sorry to say, the poor husbandry of the hunters themselves. As more and more land is closed or put to more profitable use than simple outdoor recreation there will be people interested in preserving their ability to pursue their form of communing with the great outdoors.

I’m not sure that a recreational land practice would ever be a full-time profit center, but then again it might with the right mix of estate planning, real estate, contracts, and entity formation;  after all, hunters are not the only ones wanting to preserve the space needed for their outdoor activities – there are equestrians and mountain bikers looking for places to ride, snowmobilers looking for places to run trails, and cabins on the lake to preserve for the next generation. The potential client pool encompasses anyone with a hobby that takes place outdoors and requires a bit more space than your average backyard.

Marketing this type of practice is may be a little tricky – most likely it will be mainly be by word of mouth and will involve a delicate balancing act so as narrow the niche too far; the recreational land practitioner would need to recognize that the various elements of their client pool may have divergent requirements (equestrians aren’t going to want to share trails with dirt bikes, and those looking to spend a quiet snowy evening alone in their cabin tend get a mite peeved when a herd of snowmobiles shatters the mood) and that the best marketing would project this understanding to the client pool.

The only other caveat I can think of at this juncture, is that this would not be the type of practice that confines itself to a small geographic area. At the very least, this is the type of practice that would span counties if not an entire state – the recreational land practitioner should expect a bit of travel time in their future.

I should note that I’m not the only one thinking about the niche practices offered by the outdoorsy folk – sdrurallawyer offers this prospective as to why a lawyer should be included in a hunting party.