Short Takes

/ Bruce Cameron

A New Office

The rural lawyer is going to be a bit discombobulated for the next couple of weeks as the ol’ law office gets packed up and moved across town – well, it’s really only about 17 blocks between locations, but out here, that’s across town. Small town office space is often hard to find and good locations (easy access, up to date facilities) can be expensive and it is often a seller’s market, so when a bargain appears it is often worth taking a look. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I came across a deal too good to pass up and am now hustling to move in, so be prepared for a week or two of spotty posts.

Moving From Big Law to Small Town

Speaking of moving, I came across this great blog post by Shane Penfield. Mr. Penfield discusses his return to his home town in rural South Dakota and the challenges of being a small town lawyer.

Right Place, Right Practice, Right Time

An often heard complaint about being a small town lawyer is that small town lawyers don’t handle interesting cases. Well, for most of us, that may be true as we muddle through the banal legal matters that only impact an individual client, but there are those small town lawyers like Lawrence Piergallini who just happen to have the right practice in the right place and the right time. Mr. Piergallini’s Tiltonsville, Ohio practice is smack in the middle of shale gas country and he has become a leading expert in shale gas leases – representing land owners as they negotiate leases with oil and gas companies.

Paranoia and Security

/ Bruce Cameron

I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position — Pat Conroy

Let me make something clear right from the outset, when it comes to the security of the technology that supports my business, I am not a raving, paranoid lunatic; I am completely capable of carrying on calm, quiet, rational conversations.

Back in the day, when hard drives were the size of washing machines, tape drives consumed half-inch tape on 12 inch reels, computers were huge blue boxes serviced by a cadre of adoring acolytes, and networks were comprised of tin cans, bits of string, and acoustic couplers security was simple – those without the blessing of the high priest (the systems administrator – a god-like being capable of patching a OS binary on the fly). The concept of an external attack was practically inconceivable simply because (a) it was the rare computer that supported even dial-up access, (b) dumb terminals and acoustic couplers were not your typical household appliance, and (c) an attack coming in at 300 baud (about 30 characters per second) is something you would notice. It was a halcyon time, carefree and innocent. A time where security was a backup tape and a warm blanket. A time doomed by its own success and the crushing inevitability of Moore’s Law.

Today, if your tech is connected to the outside world though anything other than a electrical power cord (and I have my suspicions about those), it is vulnerable to attack; it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. Therein lies the faustian bargain we make with the Internet – access to untold amounts of knowledge, pleasure, and power in exchange for our tech’s soul. But fear not, for tech also offers some hope of salvation if not complete redemption. Continue reading →

Rural Transformation

/ Bruce Cameron

To Imagine, To Create, To LearnThrough out America, rural communities are changing, evolving, and transforming themselves as they work to reverse the effects of  a few decades of outmigration, youth drain, and the general malaise of the rural economy. Big ideas whether from the rush to alternative energy (nothing helps an agrarian economy like $9/bushel corn) or the information economy sweeping in as high-speed internet slowly but surely marches into small town USA.

ReImagine Rural  explores how people are building a new future for rural communities. I can across ReImagine Rural thanks to Bob Morris’s post: I Guess I’m A Rural Lawyer — Go Figure. A great essay on where a rural practice can take you, even if you don’t know you’re a rural lawyer. Sarah Larson’s post: Downtown to Small Town: A “City Girl’s” Transition to Rural Practice also speaks to me as her path to rural lawyerdom mirrors mine. 29 years ago, This city boy married his college sweetheart, a wonderful gal whose soul was drawn to rural and wild places, and learned to enjoy rural life.

Serendipity and the Wild Paradigm

/ Bruce Cameron
Barn Fire

Barn + Hay + Match = DISASTER

March is well on its way to being written up as a decidedly odd month; strangely dry, unusually warm, and replete with eccentric client requests – law school really does not prepare one for the question: “where can I get a good medical kit for disasters?” Now, from a client’s viewpoint, I suppose that a lawyer’s stock in trade does center around disasters – after all, when the average client walks through the door looking to hire a lawyer something in their life has really blown up in a big way – though I am not sure that there is a 1 to 1 mapping between being able to resolve disasters of a legal kind and being able to handle disasters mother nature throws our way.

Now, my search for a good medical kit lead me through the highways and byways of the internet and along the way, serendipity re-acquainted me with Don Lancaster (or at least a Don Lancaster inspired “nickel generator”). For those of you unfamiliar with the geek world’s paleolithic era (the 1970’s), Don Lancaster was an advocate for the concept of micro-scale businesses (at that time the tech world’s solo practitioner) arguing that it was only this type of business that was agile enough to recognize and react to the coming (remember, this is the 70’s) paradigm shifts. Continue reading →

A Techie Spring Cleaning

/ Bruce Cameron

It’s in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

mopping

From a photo by Roma Flowers & used by permission

I cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be confused with a clean-freak. My private office is kept in a state of carefully managed chaos, occasionally disrupted by a biannual reorganization of the piles, the odd vacuuming, or an irregular exposure to a dust cloth, isolated from the ravages of the cleaning crew that patrols the public spaces of my office keeping them to the impeccable standards of the attorney I share space with.

Even the physical manifestations of my digital world embody this laissez-faire approach to neatness – cables run freely along baseboards, bursting from their cable ties to add a bit of kinetic color to the drab, industrial black demarcation of the boundary between wall and floor. Printers, routers, disks and CPUs are scattered between bookshelves, desktops, and tabletops; often sitting check by jowl with books, orchids, and the occasional stuffed frog – location being determined more by the availability of an electrical outlet than any cohesive plan – it’s feng shui colliding with Thomas Edison.

But cross the digital divide, and it is a far different story. My digital desktop is a stark expanse of lovely, precise (almost compulsive) order. A few files (my most immediate matters) sit with military precision along the periphery of my monitor, leaving vast expanses of uncluttered pixels to be managed by virtual desktops – one to a file, each corralling the applications needed for that matter. Continue reading →