President's Perspective: If they won't come, we've failed

By Steven R. Sorenson

"No one wants to come," wrote a Tomah-area lawyer, bemoaning the difficulty in finding a law school graduate willing to practice in rural Wisconsin. With graduation only weeks away, hundreds of new lawyers will decide where to begin their careers. Why do so many new lawyers fight for the few jobs in the large metropolitan areas, rather than accept the challenge of practicing law in a small community?

The evolution of the legal practice in Wisconsin is similar to that of other professions. The migration of lawyers to urban or suburban environments continues, while fewer seek rural locations. The emphasis on consolidation and practice concentration has led to more large or moderate-size firms and fewer small, general practice arrangements. Even in Wisconsin's moderate-size communities, satellite offices from major metropolitan-area firms have increased versus the creation of small, general practice organizations.

The Tomah attorney listed the benefits of rural practice, including lawyers' involvement in the community and the importance of lawyers to local school systems, churches, Chambers of Commerce, and service clubs. The letter writer also acknowledged these negative perceptions: Rural general practitioners may not find the same academic or sophisticated challenges compared to those of a large-firm practice; success measured in dollars only can be achieved in a major metropolitan area; and there are few social and cultural opportunities outside metropolitan Madison and Milwaukee.

Our global population and the corresponding emphasis on distance traveling to buy services have significantly affected rural practices. As mentioned, several metropolitan firms have opened satellite offices. Even more have provided local telephone or 800 numbers that suggest a local presence. The result in many communities has been the erosion of the rural practitioner's market. The clients who once provided the income that allowed rural practitioners to serve the less fortunate now, in many cases, have abandoned the local firm for the larger, more metropolitan practice. Often, through indirect solicitation and advertising, metropolitan firms have eroded the very base that rural practitioners depend upon for their livelihoods. Only a very few rural lawyers have been able to buck the trend by establishing relationships with large local businesses or statewide affiliates.

Maybe this evolutionary process is fine, for why should anyone interfere with the natural evolution of the economic system? Why should we care about the frustrations of the retiring attorney in Tomah who cannot find anyone to take over his practice? To answer these questions we need only turn to our State Bar mission statement. The State Bar has pledged to provide quality and accessible legal service to all individuals. But the economic reality is that unless a rural practitioner can maintain a base of wealthier business and professional clients, the rural practitioner is not able to serve the needs of the less fortunate. Unless metropolitan firms provide assistance to local practitioners, fewer quality lawyers will opt to practice in rural America where they can help the less privileged and the less mobile population.

This situation is not limited to rural America; it also exists in metropolitan areas. Often, it involves neighborhoods or communities within the larger metropolitan area. Lawyers may attempt to provide legal services in their neighborhoods but end up only being able to serve the less fortunate because wealthier business leaders and professionals have taken their business downtown, or the larger personal injury cases are lost to the extensive advertising of wealthier firms that skim the cream.

I will never forget that a leader in our legal community said his firm could not afford to represent certain individuals because the firm's overhead was too high to justify writing wills for middle-class laborers or solving landlord/tenant disputes in college neighborhoods.

The more time I spend as president of this association the more I recognize the dichotomy that exists in our organization, and the more committed I become to rectify it. Our association needs to provide a forum for rural attorneys and small, urban practitioners to share some of the wealth and opportunity that once was available to them. The Solo and Small Firm Conference, scheduled for La Crosse on April 29 to May 1, will address such topics. It will assist these practitioners in recognizing and dealing with some of the problems they face in their practices. It is a good start, since it is local and inexpensive, but we need much more.

We need to restructure our dues system, the cost of our CLE programs, the cost of our books and publications, and the cost of all other services to recognize the inequities and the various financial abilities of our members. We also need to deal fairly with the majority of our members when we examine the budgetary expenditures of the Bar. We have a limited amount of funds available, and if we are to be true to our mission statement and our members, we need to first use those funds to support lawyers in their practice.

We cannot and we should not divert the precious resources of this organization to solving global or societal problems. We need to use those resources to make the practice of law viable in our communities and for our members and their families. We need to recognize that a lawyer with disposable annual income in excess of $100,000 needs far less consideration in the pricing of Bar services than a lawyer whose disposable income is less than $30,000. We need to recognize that those of us who are fortunate enough to have found economic success need to give more, or at least a proportional amount of our disposable income, back to the profession. It makes no sense to ask new lawyers who depend upon guardian ad litem work to pay the same amount for Bar services as senior practitioners who may spend as much on an evening meal at a fine restaurant as they would for their annual Bar dues.

Personally, I have yet to figure out how to fairly construct such a program within the State Bar of Wisconsin, but I recognize that it should be done. I also recognize that there are many lawyers practicing in rural America or in inner-city neighborhoods who are very successful and who are very content with their practice. I know there are lawyers earning well into six figures who are unhappy and who feel unfulfilled. The perception that we need to support lawyers in different ways is a reality.

We need to ask why they just won't come, and what we can do about it. Because if they don't come, then we as an association have not fulfilled our mission and our duty.

Wisconsin Lawyer