I go to small towns and I see some little store front law offices here and there, and not always in the county seat across the street from the courthouse. I imagine those guys across from the courthouse do a lot of criminal work, drawing on a county-wide pool of scofflaws.
What do these other small town lawyers do to pay the bills? I realize the cost of living is lower in small towns, but you still gotta eat. The client pool is seemingly small in a rural blue collar town and folks in many small towns are not wealthy enough to pay attorney fees to handle litigation and such.
I can see maybe doing an occasional estate plan or deed, but I can’t imagine how that keeps a small town lawyer busy all day. I also can’t see doing a lot of car accidents, slip & falls, and divorces in rural counties. I also find it hard to believe these small town attorneys are true jacks-of-all-trades in all practice areas, doing a competent job handling everything under the sun.
I guess I can’t see the town folk as being generally wealthy enough to have an attorney handling big cases, and I can’t see how there are enough people in a rural areas to do some kind of “volume” practice.
Back in the day, I worked in a small town law office, and we were as busy as hell, though it was hard to make a lot of money. A lot of real estate conveyancing (might not be a big money-maker in the States, where I gather the title insurance companies usually look after this), divorces, custody and support, DUI and assorted penny ante crimes, motor vehicles accidents, landlord and tenant, pretty much what came through the door. It’s amazing how many things can come up in a small town, and it helps if you take Legal Aid. (Again, may be different in a jurisdiction with a Public Defender system.)
Pretty much anything and everything. You get quite well-versed in the “common” law, that is, the sorts of things everyday folk run afoul of in living. Contract disputes, family law (big), estates and trusts (stiffs and gifts), basic personal injury law, etc. Anything bigger than you can easily and expertly handle, you pass off to experts in the county seat.
I’m not a lawyer, but I grew up in a small town. So what the others already said, plus quite often there will be one or two “land barons” or other decently wealthy people even in a small town.
The town I grew up in had 10,000 people, but also had two multi-hundred employee business owners and at least one guy who owned a significant percentage of land anywhere within about a 20 mile radius (that wasn’t government land.) Between those three, you’ve got fairly good odds of getting a pretty good paycheck fairly regularly. (Wealthy people will generally be involved in some form of litigation at any given moment.)
I live in a small town (about 15,000 folks) and use a local firm (3 partners).
They have sorted my house purchase, my will and all the work to do with my parents passing (probate, death certificates, taxes, inheritance, power of attorney etc).
It’s really useful to be able to walk 5 minutes and sign a document, or to get basic legal advice.
There’s a charming TV program starring Stephen Fry as a country solicitor:
I am of the deeply held belief that the more Stephen Fry there is in the world, the better a world it is, so I rejoice that we have come into his Kingdom at last. That’s country solicitor Peter Kingdom, assayed by Fry in ITV1’s new six-part Sunday-night drama, Kingdom. His flourishing practice is run from his lovely listed Norfolk home in the picturesque market town of Much Smuggery, somewhere deep in the idyllic Weald of Equity.
I grew up in a small, rural town and live in one now…it’s pretty much like Sage Rat says.
I’m wondering what gave you the idea that most folks in most small towns are too poor to afford legal counsel. Any small town that I’ve lived in has had pretty much the same distribution of wealthy, middle class and poor folks that cities have.
IME, estate, probate, real estate dealings, DUI and divorce tend to constitute the lion’s share of small town practices. The large businesses usually retain some local legal counsel in addition to their corporate attorneys and some of those corporations are actually headquartered in small towns. There is usually at least one practice devoted to contingency cases, covering folks who otherwise couldn’t afford legal counsel in damage suits.
