Small Town Life

Follow up: Yesterday’s Myths, today’s needs

/ Bruce Cameron

Thomas and I have been having an e-mail conversation over my post “Yesterday’s myths, today’s needs“, and with his permission, I am posting a few of his insightful comments regarding the state of the rural solo down in Texas. Any errors in grammar, punctuation or spelling are due to my faulty transcription (Thomas you have my apologies & I’ll give some thought to your suggested post topic).

I think that most of the people who spread the misconceptions about rural law practice are, frankly, lawyers who aren’t making money in the big city and use these myths as excuses for not opening a rural practice.  “Oh, I’m struggling now, but think how bad I would have it if I practiced out in the country!”

You’re right that the rural bar is aging and many lawyers are retiring (although some of them don’t… there was a story about a lawyer in Weatherford, TX, who died in the past year at the age of 101 and practiced law pretty much up until the day he died.)  I’m 27 and relatively few people in my generation (particularly relatively few lawyers) grew up in a small town, so there are far fewer people my age with the contacts already built up that they think are necessary to build a small-town practice.

And there’s also far less competition from the big-city lawyers than one might assume.  In the county seat 40 miles from Dallas and Fort Worth where I practice, it’s very rare to see lawyers from either of those cities in the courthouse.  Although, these aren’t exactly small towns any more… more like exurbs.  I still need to move farther out.

In fact, the good ol’ boys network tends to be a lot more prevalent in these sorts of towns than in real small towns — where the local attorneys, particularly the older ones (who have been practicing there since it was a dot on the map), feel a bit threatened by the big-city lawyers who might poach their cases.  This is particularly true as suburban and exurban cities grow and the new people feel less identification with the town.  So, for example, the county has a rule that in order to get on the list for court-appointed cases, 80% of your pending cases must be in this county — obviously a move designed to keep Dallas lawyers from getting on the “wheel.”

The Texas Bar has a lot of information about its lawyers posted online, so I thought it would be good to look at some of the information. According to the state bar, the average lawyer in Texas is 48 years old and has been licensed to practice for 18 years.  They also have information on the six largest counties in the state:

  • Harris County (Houston): 47/17 years
  • Dallas County: 47/17 years
  • Tarrant County (Fort Worth): 48/17 years
  • Bexar County (San Antonio): 49/18 years
  • Travis County (Austin): 47/16 years
  • El Paso County: 50/20 years

Considering that 57 percent of the state’s lawyers have their office in one of three counties (Dallas, Harris, Travis), and in all three of those the average lawyer is younger than the state average… yeah, that means that the average lawyer outside the major cities is older.  (El Paso’s a bit of an outlier, but then it’s not really the kind of place that young lawyers are dying to go to…)  Overall, two thirds of the state’s lawyers practice in the five largest counties.

Well, I looked into the county where I currently reside, its average lawyer is 45 and has been licensed 15 years.  So that’s actually a more extreme example of where the younger lawyers are going. On the other hand, in three smaller cities in west Texas — Abilene, San Angelo, and Wichita Falls, all of which have a population around 100,000 — the average lawyer is 55 and has been licensed for 25 years.  So half the lawyers in those cities will be hitting retirement age in the next decade.  (Abilene actually has a lot of younger lawyers as well, though… evidently not many lawyers set up shop there in the 1980s and 1990s, for whatever reason.)

Reviewing the last century

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

This post marks the first century of my odd ramblings about practicing as a solo out in rural America and I thought I’d mark the occasion by reviewing some of the topics I’ve covered. Rather than doing it through my eye’s, I thought I’d let the words of a keen observer of humanity do it for me, a man who once observed that “Adults are just obsolete children” and whose nonsense has helped to wake up our brain cells and enabled us to laugh at life’s realities – Dr. Seuss.

To keep things straight, the good doctor’s words are in italics. Continue reading →

Be a Rural Lawyer, Success Guaranteed – only 49.99 + s/h Special TV Offer Only

/ Bruce Cameron

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm – Sir Winston Churchill

There are fifteen steps that, if followed precisely and in the correct order, will guarantee your small town law practice will be a successful, profitable enterprise. Unfortunately, the last person who knew what these steps is also the only person on record to have found a way to successfully transmute lead into gold. So, rural entrepreneur, you will have to be satisfied with these few suggestions to ease your way between failures.

Get paid up front

I cannot claim credit for this – this is, after all, Foonberg Rule #1.⁠ Discussing fees and collecting a retainer is the first of many difficult conversations you will have with clients, but it is something that must be done and is necessary if your practice is to thrive. It is far easier to get paid up front than it is to try to collect when all is said and done. If you aren’t collecting fees, you are doing pro-bono work and that is simply an expensive way to fail slowly. Develop a reputation for providing quality service at a reasonable price and most rural clients are not going to quibble about the price; but they also aren’t going to volunteer to pay it either – you’ve got to ask.

Give it everything you’ve got

This is more than just a reminder about working hard, in a small town there is little distinction between the profession and the professional – what you do is part and parcel of who you – so accept that you are going to be a lawyer 24/7/365 regardless of what your office hours are. Until you are established as a community fixture, you and your business are going to be evaluated, weighted and measured. You are going to be always building your reputation, so give this endeavor everything you’ve got and use every skill you have. After you are established as a community fixture – you’ll still be a lawyer 24/7, you and your practice will still be evaluated, weighted and measured, and you still have to maintain your reputation, but at least now folks will have funny stories about the day you… to tease you with – this is a good sign, it means you’ve been accepted. Continue reading →

Yesterday’s Myths, Today’s Needs

/ Bruce Cameron / 3 Comments

We must not be hampered by yesterday’s myths in concentrating on today’s needs — Harold Geneen

There are a number of reasons not to embark on a rural law career – the daily Starbucks run is going to take a good hour (and then there is the wait in the store), your typical small town is not, generally, one of those places of rarefied refinement and culture attractive to the movers and shakers of the business world, so it’s not ideal for a lucrative mergers and acquisitions practice. However, there are a few common misconceptions that should be put to rest.

1. There is not enough work out there

It may not be raining soup, but there is work out there. The rural bar is small (only 20% of practicing lawyers practice in towns with populations of 50,000 or less), aging, and getting smaller as rural lawyers retire. Yet the need for legal services remains constant, so the result is that access to legal services is reduced and small town folks end up having to either travel to find legal representation or do with out. The secret is: people in small towns prefer to spend money locally – create a favorable environment (affordable services, a reputation for competence) and the work will come.

2. I can’t afford to work at a lower rate Continue reading →

Its a Small Bar

/ Bruce Cameron / 2 Comments

Think this is hot, try it in a suit

As I was driving through God’s Country (at least that’s what the sign on the barn said -generally this appellation is applied to any section of a county where the roads aren’t laid out along a rectangular grid and one can’t see across a section by merely standing on a gopher mound, but a sign makes it official) that small towns and rural law are places where tradition often supersedes practicality. Here I was dressed in the traditional lawyer’s uniform on a day where the heat index was in the triple digits and heading to record levels, on my way to a Sheriff’s sale – an event still held, in this particular county, on the courthouse steps.

So there we gathered – 3 lawyers and 1 deputy, all dressed to the 9s – on the unshaded southern steps of the courthouse for what had to be the fastest Sheriff’s sale in county history; 3 sales, 15 minutes and the deputy even read the complete particulars for each sale – it may have been fast, but the formalities of tradition had been met. While I did not time it, I am sure that new records were also set for the 25 yard stair-dash that followed the conclusion of the sale as all participants headed to the courthouse doors.

Outdoor temperatures had kept the usual small talk in abeyance prior to sale, but now safely ensconced in the air-conditioned courthouse lobby, one could expend the calories necessary for extraneous talking without the risk of spontaneous combustion. These pleasantries are usually limited to an exchange of names, a comment or two on the weather, the state of the crops, or perhaps the success (or lack there of) of whatever major league sports team is currently playing. On this occasion, one of the lawyers and I had one of those “I know we’ve met before, but can’t place where” moments – after running down the usual suspects – bar meeting, bar section meeting, court – and drawing a complete blank, we turned to one of the tried and true subjects – tractors which in turn, as these things do, to hay (this being the time of year for first crop), then to cows and finally to vets which brought us back to the original question – where had we met before. Turns out, we use the same large animal vet and had met at the vet’s shooting range – if your vet decorates his office with a bear trap, a half-dozen rifles, and sundry pieces of reloading equipment, is it any surprise that he has a shooting range. Small world.