S5:E15 - Getting and Keeping Rural Lawyers with Hannah Haksgaard

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Our guest on today's episode is Hannah Haxgaard. Hannah is a professor at the University of South Dakota Knutson School of Law, and she's the author of the book The Rural Lawyer: How to Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive. Recently at a conference in South Dakota, Hannah approached me and said, "I have a message for your podcast," and I went, "I bet you do. Fantastic. Let's get you on the show," and so today is as the result of that connection. I'm so grateful to Hannah for reaching out. This is a really interesting topic. We're talking about the role that attorneys play in rural community and economic development, how to get one if your community doesn't have one, and the things to think about to help make them feel welcome. It's not— this is not a topic we've ever broached on the podcast before, so we always love when new things come up, and it's a delightful conversation with Hannah. I hope it gives you some things to think about for your own community. So without further ado, here is Hannah. Good morning, Hannah. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me and good morning, Rebecca.

It is so fun. So you're one of those people, I love it. You walked up to me at a conference and you were like, I'd really love to talk about this thing. So you wrote a book. Why don't you, why don't we start there? Like, tell me a little bit about about your background, of course, but like, what prompted you to write this book?

Yeah, so let me start with the title. So the book is called The Rural Lawyer: How to Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive. So I hope just from the title the audience can understand the connection to your podcast. Yeah, and I walked up to you at that conference and said, hey, I want to come talk to you about this.

Everyone's ears are perked. They're, they're sufficiently perked, Hannah?

Yes. So I grew up in southeastern South Dakota, outside of the town of Yankton. So about 15,000 people. So not exactly small, but also not particularly big. I went to law school. I came home. I'm a law professor now at the University of South Dakota, which is planted in Vermilion, which is a town of 10,000 people. So as I've been a law professor now, I just finished my 9th year here.

Oh, congratulations. And lucky to have you, lucky to have retained you in the state.

And I'm so lucky that there was an opening for me to come home. And so that for me is one of the real pleasures, is to get to teach in the state where I grew up, only 45 minutes from my parents. But as I've been at University of South Dakota and have taught, and of course part of my job is writing scholarship, pretty early on I started researching the rural lawyer shortage. Because it turns out that lawyers continue to retire and we are just not replacing those lawyers fast enough. So this book for me was really jumping in headfirst to study that rural lawyer more, rural lawyer shortage more intensely, um, and try to kind of find out really what's going on so we can help solve the problem.

Hmm. Okay. So you said shortly after you were, you were researching this shortage, like how, How did this come to your brain? Was it something that you were experiencing? Was it anecdotal and then you dug into research? Tell me how that came up for you.

Yeah, I mean, that's an amazing question because I'm going to brag on South Dakota here for a minute. Please do. In 2013, the South Dakota legislature passed a set of laws that actually provides a financial stipend to new lawyers. South Dakota was the first state in the country to do anything like this, and we call that the Rural Attorney Recruitment Program, and it is in our state legislation, continues to run today. And so when I started teaching in 2016, just a few years later, that was new legislation, new programming. The first new lawyers who were using this Rural Attorney Recruitment Program were just heading out into rural South Dakota, and it was this new, exciting thing. Thing that the news is covering, and it's kind of like small towns are excited, the legal community is excited. And so for about a decade, we kept saying, South Dakota's the best, we have this awesome program. North Dakota mimicked us, other states have done different programs. But as we got close to that 10-year anniversary, I thought to myself, I've been saying since I started that South Dakota is doing this awesome thing, but somebody should probably go out and actually talk to the lawyers and ask them if it's really working. So the book actually tells the story of not just general rural lawyers, but really how this program ran in its first 10 years. And I went out and I got to crisscross South Dakota going to small towns. I sat down in rural law offices, talked one-on-one with the 32 lawyers who participated in the program in its first decade.

That's awesome. So what— so tell me, okay, let me, let me— a couple things. Um, it's, it's one of those— to me, a piece of legislation like this is one of those things that unless you're either in it in kind of a community development capacity where you're seeing that shortage or you lost your attorney, you know, it's, it's like someone has to become aware of the gap before a piece of legislation like that would even come into existence. And so I think it's really cool. I think it's really cool that that's a thing. I didn't know North Dakota even had that. So it also just goes to show, I think, you know, and maybe I wouldn't be aware of it because we actually have an attorney in our, in our community, you know what I mean? Like, it's just kind of an interesting— to me, it's just kind of interesting. But it also goes to show that, like, I don't know, do you know anything about how the bill came to be? Like, yeah, who initiated it? You know, was it born— was it, was it grassroots and kind of community generated, or was it a specific legislator that was like, I know this is an issue, let's get a bill on the floor?

So I think the reason that South Dakota was the first one to do it is because several pretty influential, powerful people were behind this with the same idea. So we have a chief justice, um, he's now retired, but at the time, our chief justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court He was from the very small town of Sisseton, and he noticed year over year more rural lawyers retiring, more rural law offices sitting empty or turning into other businesses with no new lawyers going to replace them. So as the Chief Justice, he started using that platform to talk about it. So he was one of the big people behind it, but we also had about the same time the state bars, which is basically the organization that all the lawyers belong to. Each year a new lawyer year as the State Bar President, and they always have a new program that they do. And our State Bar President was from this really rural town of Martin, and he came in and he said, I want my project to be focusing on getting new rural lawyers into these communities. So now you have the State Bar President, you have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Dean of the state's only law school at the time was a ranch kid from western Nebraska who understood it. And so you have all of these guys, who have rural experience, and also some level of policymaking power. And they honestly, they found a legislature, they went to the legislature, they found a legislator who viewed this as key to rural economic development. And that sort of the fact that lawyers are important to rural economic development is really what got the legislature on board and what turned it into law.

Yeah, right. Okay, love that. Thank you for the background on that. I just think, again, as our listeners are listening to this and they're thinking— because I think that's something to always consider, and I don't know that we always do, Hannah— the idea that, like, if there's a clear gap in your community, is, is, is that just— are you alone in it? If you're not alone in it, then is there, is there current public policy that would support it? I just think it's, it's Honestly, really interesting. Okay, so you visited with 32 different lawyers that landed in small communities in South Dakota because of this legislation. What did you learn?

I learned so much.

I bet you did.

When I started this project, I was thinking that I'll hear about the program. I'll be able to write this book that maybe will inspire other states to kind of do similar programming. I'll be able to do an analysis of whether this was successful or not.

What I— real quick, can I ask you a real quick question? Was that your intent when you first— yeah, so like when you first set out, was that kind of— you said that's what you were thinking was going to happen. Was that almost the hypothesis, or like, this was a successful program and I believe other— this book will kind of help be a catalyst for other states to model? After us. Is that—

yes. Well, and I, of course, I had to go collect my research, right? So, but right, my hope is that I would go out and I would hear stories and collect research and write this book that would inspire other states to do similar programs.

Okay.

I think this was a great success. So I hope that the people sitting in rural communities across the country can look at this book or send it to their local legislator and say, hey, this is a potential of something we could mimic. So that was, was part of my goal. The other thing I wanted to do, because South Dakota was the first one to do this, is I really wanted to capture human individual stories, right? About what it was like as a new lawyer. And this is, I think, what surprised me back to this question of what did I learn? Mm-hmm. It turned out that I learned a lot more about what is it like to be a new lawyer walking into a rural town. Than I thought I would learn.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to hear, like, tell me, tell me about that. What were some of the, what were some of the key takeaways? Because what I'm guessing, Hannah, that this will be some of what's really valuable things for our listeners to consider. Because I, you know, I don't, I don't know, I guess, what population of my podcast audience are attorneys. Like, I'm not guessing it's a huge population, but all of them or most of them are in these rural communities, right? These small towns, these, these places that may or may not have a lawyer. And I'm guessing a lot of what you heard— and this is a supposition, which you have to tell me now if I'm right or wrong— that a lot of it just had to do with that general welcoming, that what it felt like, like you said, what it felt like to be new. So, yes, like, what can we, what can we learn? What did you, what did you find out when you were talking to these attorneys about that experience?

Right. So let me start with one that, um, if there are attorneys listening, I'll make this quick because there probably aren't too many of you, is a huge factor was mentorship by other attorneys.

Sure.

And so I think that's a huge piece of it that was hugely important. But I also think that the general community members do play a big role in the success of a new attorney coming to town. And I actually dedicate an entire chapter to What is it like to walk in and are you accepted by the community? And then I dedicate another chapter to legal work. And now I think those are interrelated. I think that the first thing you think about as a, a community member where a lawyer walks in is there's this question of, are you going to take this new lawyer your business?

Mm-hmm.

Are the local people going to show up to this new lawyer and actually use them? And the answer for that was almost almost always yes. There were only a few lawyers who had trouble getting ahold of a client base, but it tended to be the most community members. As soon as they kind of connected and knew the new lawyer was there, they were willing to start bringing their business local. I mean, that's key, right? You can't make a career as a rural lawyer if you don't have business. So I think that's a first step, but I think there's a lot of steps beyond that of whether the new lawyer feels accepted in the community. Right now, that's going to be a big difference of, are you a returner? Did you grow up in this particular town, go off to college and law school where you're by definition gone at least 7 years, and then come back? That's easier. But we also have a fair number of lawyers who did not go back to their hometown or perhaps not even their own, like sort of their original part of the state. And for those folks, getting accepted into their new communities could be a challenge.

Interesting. So did all 32 attorneys— were they all South Dakota natives?

No.

Okay, so that was a question I was going to have about the legislation, which, you know, shame on me, if we have it in North Dakota, I should know this. But honestly, until just today, I didn't know that was a thing. Um, I wasn't sure if that was one of the requirements, right? Like you had to have been raised there. Like, again, that idea of kind of keeping, keeping our talent instead of losing it. But so they weren't— that's not a requirement.

So there's no— right, so there's no requirement about ties to South Dakota. Now, the requirement— there's several requirements of what the lawyers do, but I think the most important one in terms of community development is that the lawyers have to live in the county where they practice.

Okay. Yep. Great.

And I think that's super important because you need your new professional to not just be embedded in the community, but you knew that— need that new professional buying a house, buying their groceries, putting the money that they earned back into the local economy, and just being a good community member. So that's the, you know, the legislation focuses on the tie to the community once you're there, but it doesn't require that you have a prior tie. So there, most of the lawyers who are in the program are from rural South Dakota. Almost all of them went to the University of South Dakota Knutson School of Law, which is the state's only law school. So if you're going to go to law school in South Dakota, you're going to come where I teach. But there have been several that didn't have prior connections. So for example, there's two women who read national sort of news stories about the program and they thought, you know what, I want to do that. And they moved to South Dakota almost sight unseen to these rural communities and moved in and started being lawyers.

And they're still there, to your knowledge?

Yeah. So both of them are still in South Dakota. One has transitioned. She still lives in her small town, but she actually works for, um, an organization in Sioux Falls. So we've kind of lost her legal work to the city, but the other one is still firmly planted in her small town doing legal work for her rural community.

Yeah, it is, it's super cool, it's super cool. And I think too, it just— I, I always want to just remind everybody that when we— if there's anybody in your community saying nobody without ties would ever move here, that's just— it's just not true. And that's part of the narrative that I think we all have to actively work hard to rewrite, because it's not the truth.

Correct. And when I talked with these lawyers, I mean, I asked them all sorts of questions about what was it like to move to this town. Things that came to the forefront was housing. Like, this attorney who heard us on the news, and she's been in her small town and is still practicing there with no prior ties to South Dakota. She talked about how when she walked into town, somebody's sister was a real estate agent and she went out of her way to find her housing. And when she didn't like the first place she found, you know, this real estate agent found her a new place. And, you know, that lawyer talked to me about how the whole time she has been there, people have gone out of their way to make her feel comfortable. She broke her leg at one point and she said several people volunteered to help me. 'Cause of course it's like winter, right? You always break your leg in the winter when it's icy, right? And community members stepped up and they helped her and just people were reaching out to make her feel welcome in that town.

Yeah, that's really cool. That's a really cool story. Okay, what else? What else did you hear? What else did you learn? What do you think? What are the key takeaways for the average community member? From your research, from your book?

I, so I think one of the takeaways is that when the average person in rural America thinks about lawyers, you think about them being well compensated, kind of upper middle class. They're doing well financially. And I think that by the end of the career, that's true. But I think that one thing that we don't realize is how financially strained a new lawyer is. Student loan debt is a big deal for these lawyers. Most of the big national programs about student debt forgiveness require that you work for the government or a nonprofit, and there's no full-time legal jobs like that. And so most of our new graduates who are heading to rural are doing small firms or solo practices where they don't qualify for the big loan forgiveness programs, but they're not making enough to feel great about their debt. So that brings me to a couple of things. One is that housing is an issue. And to the extent that rural communities can help with housing, that's a huge deal because these lawyers probably can't come out and build something new initially, but they're going to want somewhere to live, right? Housing is always an issue, right? The other thing, and I think this is interesting to me, and I learned quite a few you know, little snippets about this is that those first few years of, of law practice are really thin for lawyers in terms of financial earnings. And it's one thing if there's, if you have a lawyer in your town, that lawyer can hire on the new guy, provide office space, and it's probably gonna be pretty easy. But if you're starting with zero lawyers, you really have to think about how you can make it work for the new people. And so A few things that can happen is perhaps the most important one is getting free or really cheap office space for the first few years that a lawyer's there. Now, by the time a lawyer's been there for a decade, they can afford office space.

Mm-hmm.

But if you think about the earnings in year 1 or year 2, man, they're really just eking by as they get their foothold. And so I heard about communities who did different things. So one community had a city-owned, it just like a very small one-room office, but the city gave it essentially rent-free to this new lawyer. So she would be on Main Street and didn't have this big cost. Other communities found space in their kind of city buildings or county buildings, like, hey, we have an empty office. You can just set up your shop in the county courthouse. Doesn't cost anybody, anything. In another community, one community member just said, hey, I'm going to pay rent for your first year to decrease your costs.

Wow. Yeah, there's, there's, yeah, there's, there's a lot of generosity in that. And I think, I think the thing that you're saying that I think is most important about this is just kind of reframing maybe the, the perception of attorneys, like in terms of earnings, like you said, especially early on, because the big picture goal is to, is to get that attorney to like fall in love with the community and stay right. And then they build not only their practice, but they build their entire life in your community. And so those, those, if those incentives can be determined or figured out in some way, my goodness, like play the long game here, friends, right? It will come back to you in spades. If that attorney ends up building a successful practice there and all, all of that, whether it's they build a home, but just even the giving back and more than likely contributing in lots of ways to the community, you know, both their time, talent, treasure, all of it. Right. That it does it. I just think sometimes we get a little short-sighted about incentives like that. So I think it's cool that you heard such clear examples of people making it easier. For an attorney to land in their town. I think that's really cool. The Growing Small Towns show is recorded locally at the Growing Small Towns podcast studio located in Oakes, North Dakota. It's produced by Pheasant Canteen Studio in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with marketing support from Cassidy Johnston in Canyon City, Colorado. Our intro music was created and produced exclusively for Growing Small Towns by James Bergman, singer and songwriter from Fargo, North Dakota. Local and small, it's what we support and it's who we love. Get your community a shout out on the podcast. Call 701-203-3337 and share your small town success that you just don't feel is being celebrated quite enough and let us shout you out. You can also share your biggest people challenge and we'll dedicate an episode to offering ideas to help. Hell, you can basically tell us anything and we'll do what we can to answer. We can't wait to hear from you. Today's small town shout out is to Burke, South Dakota. I have 3 lovely ladies that had things they wanted to share about Burke. Meredith said that one of her favorite things about Burke is the Get Fit with Jenny fitness classes that she gets to attend. Kelsey talked about the farmers market, and they have a gorgeous park that's a source of pride. And finally, Cheyenne shared, um, that overall she loves Burke because of the love and the legacy built on a foundation for the future. It is always so much fun to hear people share their stories of what makes their community great, and it sounds like Burke, South Dakota is a great place to be. Congratulations to Burke.

Yeah, and I think that you are exactly right in how you're talking about this, is you need to make sure that attorney survives about the first 5 years. And then at that point they're going to be running, they're going to have a good business going, and they're not going to need the community to be stepping in and helping them anymore, right? Suddenly you're going to turn from a new attorney who they need help to get going, and in 5 or 10 years that attorney's office is going to be funding the softball team and donating—

right—

and donating money You know, once they can get going, but I do think that communities need to think about this of what can we do for those first few years to make sure that they can pay their student loans, which are big because they've, again, they've been in school for at least 7 years and how they can do that and make enough money so that they feel comfortable until they're really rolling in their business.

Well, I think the other thing you brought up, which I, you know, I'm not, I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of loan repayment, like school loan repayment for attorneys. But I think it's, it's one of those things, like small communities, we need to be a little bit creative sometimes to, to attract an attorney or anybody really. Like, you, you know, if those programs only count if you stay in a bigger metropolitan area, basically, like you said, work for the government, work for nonprofit, those opportunities aren't going to be plentiful in small places. That's just not common. And so I just think it's not— I'm not saying that we need to offer loan forgiveness, but I think we need to understand that that's a benefit they're likely giving up to choose our places, right? And so what can we do? What could it look like? And how do we show them that we want them there?

Yes, I think it's true. And I've dug pretty deep into the loan forgiveness world, especially for lawyers. And to just encapsulate it, I want you to Imagine that if a lawyer graduates and goes to the biggest city in your state and becomes a prosecutor, they are going to have a full-time job. It will be salaried, and because it's for the government, it will qualify for the better loan forgiveness programs. If the lawyer graduates from law school and comes to your small county, very likely your county does not have a full-time prosecutor. They have a part-time prosecutor, and part-time government work doesn't qualify. So even though they're doing the same exact job, they're at this big disadvantage because they've gone to a place that's small enough that does not have full-time government jobs, right?

And that also means then they're filling that gap with their own small business or their small practice, right? I mean, they're filling, they're filling in there, and they're likely not I say filling the gap, they're likely not filling the gap, right? Like it's— they're rounding out what would be a full-time salary maybe in the market of the community at large, but you're not necessarily backfilling it to the same rate that if you had gone to a bigger town. And I get it. There's, there's so many other things besides money. Like, I really do understand that there's reasons that, you know, lawyers would maybe want to choose a small community. And those are the things we need to continue to think about. But I think if we can, if we can just see that for what it is, that disparity that exists. Um, and that's why I think it's great that the legislature stepped up and actually did something to make that simpler. So, um, or more possible. So you— it's a stipend, you said. Do you know what the actual stipend— what is it? What's the— what's the program, right?

So the program provides— it's right around $12,500 a year for 5 years. So you get over like $60,000 total over the course of 5 years. And the hope is that by the time you're done in 5 years, you are embedded in that community, you're going to stay, but you also have a good enough law practice that you don't need financial help anymore.

Right. So to just give our listeners a, a perspective on this. What is— if you took out no— if you got no financial aid and you went to USD for law, what are you walking away with in terms of debt?

That's, um, so you're actually walking away— it, you know, I mean, there's always like, how much do you take out for living expenses and all of that, but I think that you're actually walking out with a little more tuition debt than what, um, we're paying back. So you're gonna be about $50,000 of tuition debt, but then there's also interest that accrues while you're in school. Add on top of that cost of living loans, any loans you have from undergrad. It's not right— it's surprising for a lawyer to walk out with $100,000 in debt even if you make smart choices and go to, um, the, the local state public school that costs less. Because a lot of the law schools in rural states like South Dakota and North Dakota and Wyoming and Montana, they are the cheaper law schools to go to, but it still adds up after your undergrad degree.

Yeah, for sure. Um, okay, what— let's talk a little bit about the role lawyers play in community and economic development, because that was something you said. Um, I believe that was what you said, the Chief Justice felt that there was this really strong connection. I think that was who you said— you said that earlier, I believe I'm attributing it correctly. Um, that, that was something he felt really strongly, like he saw this clear tie. I don't know that Everybody might. So yeah, help kind of connect those dots if you can.

Right. So I want to make two points about this. So the first is, is that— and this kind of perfectly ties back into the conversation we were just having, having about should communities invest. I think the first thing that a local lawyer does is it's going to save your government money. So if your government decides to kick in and help provide free office space, whatever they do, you're probably going to get paid back that amount of money in your cost savings because you have to have a prosecutor, you have to have a city lawyer, you have to have under the Constitution defense for indigent criminal defendants. If you do not have a local lawyer, your county is spending their dollars to pay lawyers who have to drive an hour or two to drive in, and then you pay those lawyers to drive in, and they take their money home and they spend it in their bigger communities. So I think like step one of the rural economic development is if you have a lawyer in town, now your criminal defense budget, you're paying a lawyer in town, and that lawyer in town is paying local property taxes, they're shopping locally, right?

Right.

I think that is a key piece of it. And the lawyers I talked to, they were very aware of that, right? They were saying, I know that the government spends money on me for my legal services, but I'm leaving that money in the community, and they're saving a whole lot of dollars of not paying mileage for that city attorney to drive in, right?

Yep, makes perfect sense.

Yeah, I mean, so that's like one cabin of how it matters. I think the second big grouping of how it matters is that the legal services provided by a local attorney can in like directly impact economic development beyond simply having another business in town. The lawyer is an easy place for local residents to go to form nonprofits, to form businesses, right? So you're going to see a lot of these lawyers were doing nonprofit formation, they're doing business formation, Even once you get those businesses formed, there's a whole lot of regulations out there in the world that your average rural resident may have not even heard of. But that local lawyer can provide legal services to a company to make sure that they comply with law, state and federal law. And if you comply with law, you're going to do better economically because you're not going to run into these problems where, oh, I have a legal violation, now I have a big cost. So it's the compliance work to keep businesses running. It's the formation. I mean, it's sort of doing all of that stuff that keeps local businesses healthy. And that I think was a real big driver for why the South Dakota legislature said, yeah, we'll throw money at lawyers. They did that because they realized that having a lawyer on Main Street would help other businesses thrive. Yeah.

Okay, great. I— that all makes perfect sense to me because like I just even think about in the different businesses that I've— that I have— have been a part of, even contracts, right? Like having a— having a proper contract written up, drawn up, any sort of selling of real estate. Yes. I would not— I would never navigate— navigate those things without an attorney. One thing I do want to ask you about, and you didn't know this was coming, so I hope this is okay. I've heard a lot of AI. Is something that, again, there's— and even LegalZoom, let's— I mean, if we go back a few, you know, years where it was like getting these things done without the qualifications or the actual, you know, experience of an attorney. How do you feel about the future of an attorney's work, rural communities or not, really just as a profession? How do you— what do you see coming What concerns you? What doesn't concern you? I always like to ask people about this just because it's important for us all to be thinking about, I think.

Right. So I think that my hope is that AI will make lawyers more efficient. And if lawyers become more efficient, then their services don't take as many hours. And if I'm not billing as many hours for the same thing, clients can end up having a lower bill. And so I, my hope in sort of what does AI do that's good is that it makes lawyers more efficient. I do not see a future where AI replaces lawyers. In the legal world, we call each other counselors, right? When you approach sort of court, a judge says, Counselor, do you have any more questions? And that label of counselor maybe doesn't fit with how we often picture attorneys. But I think that the reason that that language has been used for lawyers and is continued to use for lawyers is because a lot of lawyers see people for the hardest time in their lives.

Mm-hmm.

And a lawyer is not, of course, a counselor of like— they don't have a degree in counseling. But what they do is they sit down face to face you see the lawyer at the low points of your life and the lawyer helps work you through it. And I love the idea that technology can help make that more efficient, but I don't think technology will ever replace the value that you have of sitting across the table from somebody who can help you work through your problems.

Yeah, I agree. I just, like, for the record, I'll just state it. I agree. I think that, um, AI will— it does exist already to help us be more efficient. And even though like some of the doomsday people about AI will say like it's going to learn how to create empathy just as much as we do, I— and maybe this is just a straight up refusal, Hannah, to believe that that's actually true because I just think human to humans, you know, the beautiful conversation you and I are having can't be replicated by any other two humans. Right.

It's—

we're each, you know, we're each bringing everything that we respectively have to the table and in real time are navigating something, right? That's— it's the reason it's valuable is because it's not artificial. So I feel really strongly about that too. And I think again, for, you know, anybody listening to this, if AI is something that like concerns you about your profession, I seriously then encourage you to think about what makes What makes your approach to your work unique? And what skills, what human skills do you want to continue to hone or develop within yourself to continue to have that advantage? Because I just, I don't know, that's my personal take on it. I just thought I'd ask because that's this. The legal profession is a profession that I've heard people kind of flippantly say, well, we won't need them in 10 years. And I'm like, that's just not true.

Well, and I think you'll appreciate this, is earlier this month, my colleague who teaches business associations, he gave his final exam a little bit untraditional. So what he did was he went on AI and had AI draft business formation documents for a fake business. And the exam was he handed out these fake AI-created documents, and the students had to go through and find all of the problems that AI created. And so I think there's a little bit too of, yeah, people are going to use AI. You're going to have more clients who say, hey, I, I went to AI and they came up with a business plan for me. Hey lawyer, will you review it? Right? So my lawyers need to have those skills. But I would say is even if AI gets better and stops making all the silly mistakes it makes, because it makes a lot of mistakes in the law, uh-huh, even when it gets better, AI doesn't know your community. AI doesn't know your personal goals. AI doesn't know your family situation, any of that stuff. And so even if it can get you close and can give you some pieces, you're still going to want to sit down with that local lawyer who again, just looks you in the face and says, I know you, I understand what your goals are. And I will help you draft a business formation that's going to get you where you want to be.

Yeah, I think, I think that that's what we're talking about, is the difference between a produced set of documents and real partnership.

Yes.

You know, I mean, an attorney is— if you have a good attorney experience, right, that person should feel like a partner. To you, like, invested because of the care and concern they have for you, for your situation, you know, whatever it is, if it's running a business or if it's, you know, family law situations, right? Like, it just doesn't— it just doesn't matter. Um, and that's— that'll be— I mean, that's gonna— I, I kind of love it, frankly, because I think it's a— it's a call to action for all of us to think a little bit more about how we're showing up, how we approach our work, and how do we do it in a way that's unique to us? Because then that's just that much harder to, like, rip off and replicate in an AI-laden environment.

But yeah, exactly. And, you know, lawyers, they do a lot of the same stuff over and over. And so you can imagine how AI fills in, but there's still this personalization. And I would say another thing that came out in the interviews when I— and when I talk to these lawyers, is they felt there was a lot of meaning towards serving the same people over and over and sometimes multi-generations of the same family, right? You might be helping Grandpa write an estate plan for his farm at the same time that you're helping the next generation navigate child custody, that you're helping a cousin with a business formation, And so they feel like they get these big connections with families where they really can get to know their clients. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, that's what's special, that, that makes them like a part of the fabric of the community, which is really the hope for all of us, right? I mean, when we— when you're in a community, that's— we want to feel that sense of belonging and connectedness. And, and that's how that happens. And I think that's the beautiful thing about small communities. A lot of times there's multi— a multi-generational impact or effect. And I can see that that came through. That's really cool. Okay. This was lovely. I really, again, I appreciate so much that you just walked right up to me and you were like, let's have this conversation because I just think there's all of these kind of different lanes that we're all— that are all part of making a community really great.

Right.

And this is a profession that I have no connection to other than needing legal services at times in my own life. Right. So I love that you, you— well, love that you wrote a book. We will get the book link on, uh, in the show notes, um, and make sure that everybody can find you, uh, if they have questions. Um, thank you for, thank you for writing this book. Thank you for highlighting such a specific aspect of, of rural places. It was really, really cool to, to hear. How it came to be and all of that.

So, and Rebecca, I want to make one final plug for you.

Please. Yeah. Oh, please.

Because we've talked this whole time about lawyers coming out the other end, but I want people in rural America to think about going to law school.

Oh, love that.

And I would say a couple things. One is if you are an adult and you're in a rural community and you're not happy with your job, you can go to law school and come back in 3 years and run your own business and have financial success. If you're a high school kid or you have high school kids, you can talk to them about a law degree as a way to go out, get educated, and come home. And sometimes I think we miss that conversation. Law school is not— it can be a ticket out, but it can also be a ticket to come back home and have good steady employment.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for saying that, because I also think that even your entire approach, the way you're talking about it, it's not exactly demystifying the law profession, but it is, I think, making it more— it feels more accessible the way you're talking about it. There's an accessibility to it that I think is really important because, like, again, if all of these attorneys are retiring and we're not replacing them, All that is, is opportunity. And so like you said, it's not just a ticket out, it's a, it's a way back in. And I think that's really cool. Thank you for, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for coming on the show.

Uh, thank you so much, Rebecca.

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