Dear Joseph

/ Bruce Cameron

Dear Joseph,

I hope you don’t mind the informality, Mr. Flanders seems a bit stiff for this blog (it’s more Carharts & Red Wings than Brook’s Brothers & Edmund Allens around here). First, thanks for the comment to Beyond Our Field of View; I am always flattered to know that someone other than spammers peruse my miscellaneous ramblings on rural law and rural lawyering. Now, to address some of your questions.

I don’t have a good definition of what or, more precisely, who a rural lawyer is. The prototypical rural lawyer lives and practices in a small town, yet some live in small towns but have offices in larger cities, and some live in larger cities and practice in small towns. By the way, “large” and “small” are relative terms depending on the area of the country you live in (what’s “large” out here on the prairie would look pretty “small” were it plopped down by Los Angeles – my guess is that there are more people in one block of downtown LA than there are in the small town I live in). If you are serving small town clients, you are a rural lawyer in my book.

There is nothing wrong with having both city clients and country clients. Donald Landon in Law Careers and Community Context: A Comparison of Rural and Urban Experience noted that to meet the entrepreneurial imperative of building a practice while still making a living, it was not unusual for rural lawyers to arrange their practice so that they drew clients from small towns as well as metropolitan areas – this is what practicing at suburbia’s edge is all about. No matter what, if you are starting a law practice, you are starting a business and you have to think first in terms of being an entrepreneur – unless you are blessed with a remarkably large personal fortune and practicing law just happens to be your way to do that “charity thing”, the point of this exercise is to make money, so take on city clients, country clients, or clients from other worlds (just be sure to get that retainer up front). Continue reading →

Beyond Our Field of View

/ Bruce Cameron / 4 Comments

In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts. — Peter McWilliams

In his March 14th, 2011 article in Forbes, Glenn Liopis talks about the concept of earning serendipity – that by actively seeking out unexpected good fortune it becomes easier to reach out and seize that life changing opportunity. Mr. Liopis points out that in a country of boundless possibilities, we have become myopic; unable to see the opportunities available simply because we are unwilling to pull our focus away from our narrow definition of a successful career path.

While Mr. Liopis writes in general terms about this shift in mindset, I was reminded of the opportunities that lie out there in the dark of the night sky – those opportunities that await the lawyers willing to broaden their field of view and look towards small towns and small firms for that great career opportunity.

Now, I will be the first to admit that rural living and a rural practice are not for everyone – this is not a “go rural young lawyer” call to action. But, perhaps, as you lift your eyes from the metropolitan law firm partner track and gaze out toward those small quiet places that interrupt the space between real cities you will discover that there are other opportunities, unexpected opportunities waiting.

Tech Love

/ Bruce Cameron
Binary Heart

Be Mine, A Tech Valentine

Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn’t all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity. — Henry Bromel

I must admit to being a recovering techaholic. I have yet to meet a small bit of shiny new tech that I haven’t lusted after to some degree or another. Fortunately age and experience have tempered my passion (oh for those days of youth when even a mere passing glance at an IMSAI 8080 could cause my knees to go weak) for no matter how much we are devoted to these sirens of silicon, they are ephemeral mistresses, lasting for but a brief moment before the allure of a younger model draws our attention away.

Despite the indiscretions of my youth (that fleeting experimentation with a Timex Sinclair was but a passing fancy – I may have used, but I never coded), my law practice has given me a stable, healthier relationship with tech. Gone are the carefree days of tech for tech’s sake; now tech must  shoulder the burden of bourgeois profit; dirtying her electrons with the mundane tasks of business – being used as simple leverage, a mere augmentation of a frail biologic. Tech has fallen from the pedestal by the entrepreneur’s implacable rule that investment must show a return. Continue reading →

Some Beach, Somewhere – The Romance of Freelance

/ Bruce Cameron / 3 Comments
Some Beach

Now, this is a desk chair

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed. — Hugh Macleod

I have this recurring midwinter fantasy of buying a snowmobile, putting it on a trailer and heading off in a southerly direction until someone asks me “what in tarnation is wrong with that jet-ski?” The short days, cold nights, monochromatic landscapes, and mountainous piles of snow of the prairie winter are no doubt to blame for these visions of salt water, warm beaches, and a law practice run from beneath the shade of palm tree. Generally, reality (that pesky need to earn an income) quickly steps in to bring me back to the normal world and awaiting Persephone’s return, but this winter, fortune has allowed me to indulge in the dream just a bit longer (seems Demeter has gotten some help with those anger issues) by providing me with a copy of Kimberly Alderman’s new book: The Freelance Lawyering Manual.

The Freelance Lawyering Manual is the fruit of Kimberly’s career as a nomadic lawyer working from the wilds of Alaska to the beaches of the Caribbean and is the first manual to cover this revolutionary type of law practice. Freelance lawyering is not contract lawyering – Freelancers are seldom found in the dark, dank cellars of big law scouring over documents printed in that ubiquitous legal font “tiny, illegible”. These are not the hourly wage earning worker bees of the big law hive. Freelancers work from their own offices on a variety of matters billing their attorney-clients directly. They are independent lawyers running a solo practice complete with all the perks, benefits, overhead, and worries that come with running a business. Continue reading →

The Rural Track

/ Bruce Cameron
On The Fastrack 1/26/12

From "On the Fastrack" by Bill Holbrook (c) 2012 King Features Syndicate, Inc. World rights reserve, http://www.onthefastrack.com

While the rural lawyer is expected to be something of a generalist, there is some wiggle-room in that definition – folks don’t expect a lawyer to do everything. On the other hand, the rural lawyer who refuses to work outside a particular speciality is in for some lean times. The trick is to find that balancing point between doing the stuff that interests you and doing enough of the stuff that small town clients need so that bills get paid, you get fed and your conscience lets you sleep at night.

I arrived at that balancing point by doing transactional work and ADR – there is something about the degree of conflict in litigated matters that just does not sit well with my belief system. Frankly, when I made the decision not to litigate, I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t get clients – after all rural clients are a fairly conservative and traditional bunch and ADR might come across as a wee bit too much like tie-dye and love beads to them – but rural clients “get” ADR; though many were surprised to find out that it could be applied to areas other than union contract negotiations (many thanks TV news).

The thing I noticed most was that it became a lot easier to market my practice when what I did aligned with who I was. It was not just that the ol’ elevator speech sounded a bit more natural, the experience from first phone call to last meeting flowed better. Sure there are some clients that choose to go with the “full lawyer experience” and that’s OK – what’s right for me is not right for them. I do notice that the ones that do go with an ADR solution tend be surprised by the results – I often hear the phrase “our friends told us that their _____ was horrible, this isn’t all that stressful, are we doing something wrong?” It’s always nice to have to confirm that disputes can be settled with a minimum of conflict and that if they are getting the results they want, then they are doing everything right (personal validation, vindication and a paycheck all rolled into one).

My thanks go out to Bill Holbrook, the creator of “On The Fastrack“, for allowing me to use an image from his January 26th, 2012 strip and for reminding me that I’ve got that job.