Small Town Life

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 →

Myopia

/ Bruce Cameron

There are certain presumptions that spring to mind when one hears the phrase “small town lawyer”; the stereotype seems to be a lawyer  (himself a strange amalgamation of Matlock, Atticus Finch, Lincoln, and Oliver Wendell Holmes) who has set up shop in some bucolic backwoods town and divides his time between tending to client matters and whittling. The trouble is that an exact definition of the breed is hard to come by; well the “lawyer” part is fairly simple, it’s that “small town” part that gives one fits. Even the US Census Bureau has problems with defining what a small town is, preferring to use classifications like “micropolitean” (a rural area that contains at least one urban area with a population of at least 10,000) or “place” (a territory, population, or housing unit not classified as urban or designated as an extended city). It’s always nice to know that one’s place in the world is defined more by what one is not that what one is.

Even my definition of the small town lawyer – the lawyer practicing beyond suburbia’s sprawl – is fairly generic, and when you consider Michael Sylvester’s argument, perhaps a bit short sighted. Mr. Sylvester practices in Shenzhen, China a bustling metropolis of 10+ million (not exactly the first place that springs to mind when one thinks “small town”) providing services to the Shenzhen expatriate community – a small (500,000?) city within the larger community. Now out here on the prairie, when a half-million people congregate in one spot we tend to consider that either a metropolis or a really fine turnout for the church potluck (everybody bring a dish to pass), but in a country of 1.3 billion, in a town of 10 million, 500,000 must seem like a tiny drop in a very large bucket.Water Drop

Short Takes

/ Bruce Cameron

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. -- P. D. James

Once again, the rural clock has cycled back to the season of hurry-up when shortened days and the chill of night (those sure harbingers of winter) tell us that it is time to finish up the harvest chores while it is still possible to work outside without wearing insulated garments. So, farmstead maintenance has taken priority over the weekly posting  and temporarily damped the blogging muse – it appears that scrubbing a season’s worth of dust, oil, and grease from heavy equipment does not lend itself to the same contemplative frame of mind that driving said equipment slow over a field does. Given that inspiration and originality appear to be temporarily on hiatus, here are a few items from across the web that caught my eye:

  • Debra Bruce gives a small plug for considering small town practice on the Solo Practice University‘s blog in her post “Deciding Where to Locate Your Law Practice, Part 2.” Have to admit that Debra sums up paradox of small towns pretty well – collegial and welcoming once they know you, closed and standoffish when they don’t. The trick is to be collegial and welcoming first – make that first effort to get to know the town, ’cause if you wait for the town it’s gonna take a while.
  • BYU honors Elder Steven E. Snow for his 30 year career as a small town lawyer. His law firm may have merged with an up scale metropolitan firm in 2003, if you’ve ever been paid in quits, produce or trampolines you’re a rural lawyer. Congratulations Elder Snow.
  • The South Dakota Bar appears to be pleasantly surprised about the power of social media, especially when it comes to their Project Rural Practice initiative. South Dakota Bar Association President Pat Goetzinger comments on the  relevance of social media in his October message “Social Media – Is it great? OR Does it grate?.”
Remember: National Pro Bono Week is October 23-29 – “The public service we render is the rent we pay for a place on this earth” — Steven Snow

Pax maternum, ergo pax familiarum*

/ Bruce Cameron
Ghost Town, Bodie California

If this ain't the middle of nowhere, you can see it from here

It has been pointed out to me that, perhaps, one reason lawyers are not flocking to small towns is that a spouse or significant other may be reluctant to leave their career behind. Fair enough; jobs are tough to come by in this economy and it is perfectly understandable that someone would prefer keeping a sure thing over haring off into the middle of nowhere – even if it is a particularly scenic middle of nowhere. But this may not be the hurdle it appears to be. So if your SO is still talking to you after you first broached the idea of a rural practice, here are a few options: Continue reading →

Where, oh where are you tonight?

/ Bruce Cameron / 2 Comments

Where, oh where, are you tonight?
Why did you leave me here all alone?
I searched the world over, and I thought I’d found true love,
You met another, and PFFT! You was gone! — Marian B. Yarneall

The rural lawyer may not be your true love, but it does seem that they are going PFFT! The good news, according to this article in the Argus Leader and this one in the Rapid City Journal, is that at least one state bar association is taking notice of the problem and starting to do something about it. The South Dakota Bar is creating Project Rural Practice to address that state’s decline in rural lawyers and, in conjunction with community leaders, to find incentives that will attract lawyers to the small towns of rural South Dakota. Many, many kudos to the South Dakota Bar.

Now, I’m one of those people who think that packing up and heading to rural South Dakota to practice law would be an interesting adventure (but then I’m also of the opinion that good neighbors are live a quarter-mile away, it is feasible to raise a calf (for a brief period) in your kitchen, and that starting a solo practice in a recession is a boffo career move), thus my idea of an incentive may be a bit biased and more readily negotiated than those of a normal person.

What would incite you, dear reader, to pack it up and head to the wind-swept prairie? Some things to consider after the break.

Continue reading →