In the News

Small-Town Attorneys Practicing in a Legal Desert

While nearly a quarter of the U.S. population lives in rural America, only 2% of attorneys practice there. Phil Garland has spent 50 years as a general practice lawyer in Garner, Iowa — population 3,000. He has been his town's one-stop shop for legal representation and created a thriving practice through his relationships with residents, local businesses, and other lawyers in his county.

But finding young lawyers to consider small-town practices is a nationwide problem. As chair of the Iowa State Bar Association’s Rural Practice Committee, Phil spearheaded a Rural Practice Program to encourage summer clerkships in Iowa’s small-town legal practices to give law students another option after graduation. His current partner Carrie Rodriguez benefited from that program. Together these Sticky Lawyers give us a glimpse of the benefits (including short work commutes) and challenges of small-town practices.

 

Guest Insights

  • Introduction to the concept of legal deserts. [0:00:00]
  • Phil Garland’s background and entry into legal practice. [0:01:11]
  • Establishing a general civil and criminal defense practice in a small town. [0:03:42]
  • Challenges and benefits of a small-town general practice. [0:07:06]
  • Average work week and changing dynamics of the legal profession. [0:10:07]
  • Phil Garland’s greatest hits and trailblazing experiences. [0:12:48]
  • Impact of legal deserts on rural communities. [0:15:47]
  • Phil Garland’s involvement in addressing the issue through the Rural Practice Program. [0:17:20]
  • Carrie Rodriguez’s journey to becoming a lawyer and joining Phil Garland’s practice. [0:20:35]
  • Benefits and challenges of being a new female attorney in a small town. [0:28:28]
  • Phil Garland’s perspective on Carrie’s contributions to the firm. [0:28:28]
  • Involvement in the community and paying it forward. [0:31:11]
  • Structuring the succession of the practice and the importance of not seeking top dollar. [0:34:02]
  • Importance of small-town lawyers being part of the community. [0:36:57]

Links From the Episode

Transcript

John Reed [0:00:02] – You may be familiar with the term “food desert,” areas with limited access to affordable and healthy food. But what about a legal desert? Research shows that while roughly 20% of Americans live in rural areas, only 2% of lawyers practice in those regions. You may be surprised to know that an estimated 75-85% of litigants on one or both sides of a legal dispute represent themselves. Other statistics show rural counties, despite lower crime rates, incarcerate a disproportionately larger number of people for longer periods of time compared to metropolitan areas.

[0:00:42] – The bottom line is that a substantial portion of the U.S. population is denied access to representation and access to justice. There are various reasons for our country’s legal deserts: law school debt driving lawyers to higher-paying jobs elsewhere, systemic issues in the legal system, economic disparities, what have you. I’ll leave that discussion for others who are much smarter than me. Instead, I want to focus on the response to the problem and what one sticky lawyer is doing to address it.

[0:01:11] – Phil Garland entered the practice almost 50 years ago and soon after hung his proverbial shingle in Garner, Iowa, maintaining a general civil and criminal practice since then. Garner’s population of 3000 hasn’t fluctuated much since then, nor has the number of lawyers: five. But the ages of those attorneys has, including Phil’s former associate and now partner, Carrie Rodriguez. Phil and Carrie join me today, and I’m excited to hear their stories.

[0:01:39] – Welcome to you both.

Phil Garland [0:01:41] – Thank you.

Carrie Rodriguez [0:01:41] – Thank you.

John Reed [0:01:42] – Phil, let’s start with you. It’s 1973. You spent two years in the army. Thank you for your service. You’ve earned your law degree from Creighton University Nebraska, and you’ve just passed the Iowa Bar exam. How and where did you enter the practice and what was your intention then?

Phil Garland [0:01:59] – I started with a firm in Omaha. I took the Nebraska Bar as well as the Iowa Bar. I took the Iowa Bar even though I had an offer and a job in Nebraska because I sort of felt I probably would end up in Iowa. I had clerked as a law student in the firm for about two years, got along with everyone well there, and thought, well, this might be the place that I’m going to stay. But as things worked out, eventually I came to Iowa. It was a nice separation from the firm. I still maintained a good relationship with a couple of the lawyers there that were partners when I was practicing. So, I think it was kind of a mutual benefit for me to be there and me to leave as well. So, I came and took an assistant county attorney’s job in Cerro Gordo County, living in a little town called Ventura, which is about 7 miles from Garner.

[0:02:53] – Had not even heard of Garner before when I first moved up here and ended up coming to church here one day. And that sort of started my relationship with the community.

John Reed [0:03:01] – Okay, interesting. And I take it that your time in the bigger law firm was kind of finishing school. They say when you graduate from law school, you know a lot of things, but not how to practice law. So, you cut your teeth there, and then you were able to move on with that great experience, I take it.

Phil Garland [0:03:17] – It absolutely was a very much a learning experience, even though, as I say, I’d clerked there for a couple of years. When you’re really making the decisions yourself, it was a very beneficial educational experience for me.

John Reed [0:03:30] – Okay. As you say, you moved to the smaller town. When you first got there, how did you establish yourself in your practice? How did you get known and build up your clientele?

Phil Garland [0:03:42] – Well, I was an assistant county attorney, and that was a part-time job, so I was able to open up my own office in Mason City. A lot of lawyers there in the community were very, how should I say, forthcoming and making referrals to me. And I got in good with the bank there, which we do have title insurance now, but it’s still kind of a corollary to what we call abstract reading and doing title opinions.

[0:04:12] – So I started doing a number of title opinions for a couple of different banks there. I mean, everybody was so gracious to me. It’s kind of hard for me to believe, even looking back. So, I was able to establish probably as much of a practice on referrals and working with a bank as anything and sort of got my name around and about. And about three years after, I left the county attorney’s office. I opened up an office in Garner and was in both towns for a number of years and eventually closed my practice in Mason City.

John Reed [0:04:47] – The part-time assistant county attorney. That sounds unusual today. Tell me about that and how you got that position so early on in your career.

Phil Garland [0:04:57] – It was a part-time position. Cerro Gordo County, which is Mason City, had a part-time county attorney and four part-time assistants. And frankly, you know, it was a great system because it enabled a lot of young people like myself and almost every attorney in the office a chance to have an income, but at the same time be able to establish a law practice. Unfortunately, most of our counties, I think at last count suddenly, of our 99 counties in the state of Iowa, now have full-time county attorneys, even a lot of the smaller counties. So that opportunity kind of has evaporated. I think Cerro Gordo County now has six full-time county attorneys— a county attorney, and five assistants, I believe.

[0:05:46] – So, an opportunity to do what I did, and so many others before me and a couple after me to develop their own practice, just evaporated. And that’s one of the things that’s kind of hurt small-town Iowa is those types of part-time jobs have just disappeared.

John Reed [0:06:03] – And I would imagine simply because of the small number of attorneys, most of your colleagues probably rotated through that same part-time position as well. So, you had that in common.

Phil Garland [0:06:15] – There were a lot that did that. That’s what I said. It was a good learning experience and a good time to develop your own alumni network.

John Reed [0:06:25] – Yeah. Today a truly general civil and criminal defense practice is probably the small exception in a profession that’s filled with niche practices. I mean, even in Garner, I see there’s a lawyer who focuses only on estate planning. Was it your intention to have a general practice from day one, or was that just a necessity?

Phil Garland [0:06:44] – No, I think it was always my intention to be a general practitioner, and I think that works probably better in a small town. I mean, I do refer quite a bit of business out with things that I’m not specialized to handle. One of the big things that we run into all the time now, for instance, is Medicaid issues. And we stay away from those because it takes somebody who’s really a very good specialist.

[0:07:11] – I used to do personal injury work, but now at my age, I’m not doing that anymore. So, I’m limiting my scope somewhat. But I had the opportunity to do all of that. But laws become a little bit more complex. I shouldn’t say a little bit more, a lot more complex. So, I don’t think many lawyers would be able to do what so many of us were able to do 50 years ago.

John Reed [0:07:36] – And as a general practitioner and given your presence in the town, I imagine that for many clients, you are, have been, and still want to be their first call for whatever issue pops up. Is that true? I guess, first question. And secondly, have you encouraged that type of relationship with your clients?

Phil Garland [0:07:56] – I think that’s very true. Because I am approaching retirement years, I have so many people that come up to me and just want me to stay on board. And they just don’t know where they would go once I leave. Change is tough for the older generation, and I understand that. You really develop a good relationship. I always say that the two best things about small-town practice is you know your clients personally, which can be a problem, but I think it’s really not that big a problem, and it’s more gratifying to have one as friends and clients both, I feel.

[0:08:33] – The other thing about small-town practice is no traffic.

John Reed [0:08:39] – I hadn’t thought about that. That is true.

 

Phil Garland [0:08:41] – Carrie’s line when she came here, she emailed one of her friends and says, it only took me five minutes to get to work today, and that was on my bicycle.

John Reed [0:08:50] – Well, it’s better for you, too. I’m glad you pointed out that you’re– not only from a business perspective but also from an ethical perspective– you’re meeting your ethical obligation to refer cases out that are not necessarily your strong suit. You have your obligation to the client, and you’re certainly meeting that. But when you have referred work out, when you have referred clients to other attorneys, particularly clients that have come to rely on you, I’m just curious, do they understand why you’re referring them, or do they want you to be their lawyer no matter what?

Phil Garland [0:09:21] – I don’t think they fully grasp the complexities of some issues. And I think I’ve lost clients permanently because I have referred them out, because they’ve sort of felt I just pushed them out the door. That’s not very — how do I say it? It’s kind of upsetting to me, but I just feel inadequate in a lot of areas now to represent people. Like, I say, Medicaid being a very complex issue, and qualifying somebody for that. And I have an elderly clientele that I have to refer those people out.

John Reed [0:09:54] – With the general practice, there’s court, there’s transactions, there’s meetings. It may sound like a silly question, but is there such thing as an average work week? And what does that look like in terms of your day-to-day activity?

Phil Garland [0:10:07] – Well, my average work week is I usually work every day and Saturday mornings, and I usually come in a couple of hours on Sundays as well. My day used to be handling just about everything. Now it’s not quite that much. I do a little real estate, probate. I do some divorces. Yet even though I’m still steering away from litigation, I’m about out of the divorce business as well. I haven’t slowed down time-wise.

[0:10:36] – I’ve certainly slowed down mentally, and I think it takes a little longer to get things done. Everything’s become more complex. What would be routine matters in the old days take a little bit more time. So, like I say, I don’t think the generation today would be able to do the work that so many of us did years ago.

John Reed [0:10:56] – Looking back over the course of your career, what do you consider to be your greatest hits? And I guess what I mean by that — matters that have challenged you, that have made the greatest impact on the client, outcomes of which you’re particularly proud. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on what you consider to be your hall of fame matters.

Phil Garland [0:11:17] – It’s kind of hard for me to say. Sometimes I think survival alone is pretty good or a pretty well-done accomplishment. I’ve done some things that other people hadn’t done before, had never seen before, and sometimes I’ve been trailblazers. They haven’t necessarily been the biggest and most important cases in the world. I had something come up this past year that there wasn’t a lot of case law on it, and nobody around here had ever done it before.

[0:11:47] – And surprisingly, I had two of those come up at the same time, and you sort of have to do your own thing, and you don’t have much for guidance. We’ve got some form books and some things like that, and you can look up some Supreme Court cases that help you. So, it’s always been kind of fun to be a pioneer and do some things. And frankly, after I started on both of these lawsuits and they have to do with real estate, then I received calls from two attorneys locally that had the same problem come up, and they had never had it before, and they were longtime practitioners.

[0:12:22] – Tried one of the cases in front of one of our judges, and she had never had it. And she’s been a judge for 17 years, didn’t see it as a lawyer. So that’s always been kind of fun to be out and doing something that nobody else has done or that you don’t have a lot of guidance. You still get some guidance because you call your fellow lawyers and ask them what their thoughts are and things. So, I’ve had several areas where that’s come up.

John Reed [0:12:48] – That must be very fulfilling.

Phil Garland [0:12:50] – It’s very fulfilling, and sometimes you just get lucky when you’re doing those things as well.

John Reed [0:12:57] – Sure. It’s kind of like being a kid on the basketball court and you dream about the three-point shot in the final game. This is the kind of the stuff we think about when we go to law school, having that opportunity of making new law, and you got to do it. So that’s great. We’ve talked about the complexity of the law. What else has changed in the law, and maybe more in terms of the people and the professionalism and civility?

[0:13:19] – I’ve heard different answers to that question when I’ve asked.

Phil Garland [0:13:22] – I think the biggest change is the difference between the younger lawyers and older lawyers. I think there was so much more camaraderie when I first came to town in the Cerro Gordo Bar back in those days. We had probably 50 lawyers, and they had meetings, not during the summer, but the first Tuesday of every month. So, nine meetings a year. And you almost had to have a doctor’s excuse to miss a meeting.

[0:13:53] – So 45 lawyers out of the 50 would be there. Certainly, that was the most important thing to me. I got to meet a lot of lawyers, and they referred me a lot of business, but you got to know everybody. Everybody was there to help each other. I felt we had a spirit of competition to a degree, but there wasn’t that big a dynamic. Now our bar associations just rarely meet. The Cerro Gordo Bar, which is much bigger than Hancock’s.

Phil Garland [0:14:23] – They haven’t had — COVID, probably hurt it as much as anything. But where we used to have 45 out of 50 members, the last few years before COVID we probably wouldn’t get 15 or 20. And most of those members were over the age of 50. So, the young people, they’re busy with their families; both parents work. So, there’s just a different dynamic that we see. I think our children are much busier so that takes more time away. So, I think it’s been a big dynamic just in the way that the younger generation think about things and do things.

[0:15:03] – So, I think the camaraderie has been the biggest change, which I don’t care for. I always kind of say it’s tough to be a jerk when you’re breaking bread with somebody, and I think that’s hurt our profession more than anything.

John Reed [0:15:18] – Yeah, you mentioned there can be competition, there can be an adversarial context to what you do, but it doesn’t have to be hostile. Right? Understood. Switching gears just a little bit, because you’ve really done some interesting things when it comes to the idea of the legal desert, this concept of a legal desert: large populations and even whole counties without lawyers. What’s your take? What effect is that having on Garner, on Hancock County, and other rural communities?

Phil Garland [0:15:47] – Well, I think it’s negative because the people aren’t here, the lawyers aren’t here. I think it hurts us a lot too, because the people expect to have somebody that they know and can trust just by way of knowledge. A lot of them have to travel. A lot of them, I think people are going online, which I do not think is in their best interest. So, we’re seeing counties, I think we’re down in Iowa. I think we just have one county that only has one lawyer, but there just isn’t the availability of lawyers.

[0:16:18] – Plus, I think my generation — I don’t think it’s quite so true with the younger generation — but I think my generation was much more involved in community activities and boards and things of that nature. I just don’t believe that that’s out there today like it was. So, it affects people not having somebody there that they know and trust. And that’s what small-town people want, somebody that they know. They have to go to different areas to get that help.

[0:16:45] – Sometimes it’s not the best help, especially if they’re going online. And I think a lot of the volunteer work, especially volunteer legal work for nonprofits and things of that nature, has really weakened over the years.

John Reed [0:17:00] – So, the whole community suffers, not just those with legal issues.

Phil Garland [0:17:04] – That’s my opinion.

John Reed [0:17:06] – Interesting. But of course, you’ve been trying to remedy that. You’ve served as the chair of the Iowa State Bar Association’s Rural Practice Committee. And you helped start the Rural Practice Program. Can you tell us about that?

 

Phil Garland [0:17:20] – Yes, Frank Carroll was the president of the bar approximately ten years ago. And it was kind of funny because Frank asked me to head up the committee, and what he really was looking for at that point was to see just where the practice of law would be in rural Iowa within ten years. I somewhat jokingly said to him, “Frank, all we have to do is get in a car and drive through southwestern Iowa and I can show you what it’s going to be like.”

[0:17:49] – Unfortunately, that was a little bit flippant on my part. But that’s happened throughout our state where we’ve seen the decline of legal representation in small towns. And depends on your definition of a small town, but there are even some towns that are 4000 and 5000. One of my friends goes down one day a week with somebody from her office in a town that has attorneys. She has kind of a satellite office there for one day out of the week, and it’s amazing how much business she has just developed there.

Phil Garland [0:18:23] – And again, that’s just a shortage of attorneys in that town that’s a pretty good-sized town. So that was the thought that Frank had, is I think he was hoping to find a way to stop that. So, we tried to introduce a program. We eventually worked our way into a program where we wanted to establish clerks that could go and work for a lawyer in the summertime and then be a little bit more road ready once they were graduated.

[0:18:48] – And unfortunately, just, in a small town trying to find a place for a law student to live for two or three months and work them in has been difficult. I had never had a law clerk. I had three, and I’m sorry I didn’t have them years ago because it’s a great relationship. I still have a good relationship with the three clerks that were here. And Carrie, I met her through this program, even though she didn’t clerk for me. And if we had office space here now, which we don’t, I’d have a clerk right now.

[0:19:19] – They’re very beneficial. They don’t really cost you anything, and it’s a good kick-the-tires approach, but it’s just been difficult to really sell that product to small-town lawyers because of either no good place for them to stay or just office space. So, I certainly can relate to that myself.

John Reed [0:19:38] – It sounds like what you developed, this program, is grassroots. You’ve got to have attorneys that are willing to employ those clerks for the summer and maybe even help out with housing and things like that. Whereas in other states, South Dakota has a program where it’s almost like a Teach for America. There’s a certain amount per year that a new lawyer can make coming out of law school to offset law school debt.

[0:20:04] – Nebraska’s got even a pre-law program where, almost like ROTC, if you commit to the program and maintain a certain GPA and a minimum LSAT score, you get some benefits that way, too. So, you mentioned her name. We didn’t want to forget about her. This is where Carrie enters the picture. So, Carrie, switching gears and talking about you now, did you always want to be a lawyer? And second, when you decided to become a lawyer, what type of practice did you envision for yourself?

Carrie Rodriguez [0:20:35] – Well, I did not always know I wanted to be an attorney. I am the typical nontraditional student. I don’t really want to talk about my age or anything, but I did return back to law school later in life and I had already had a career. I worked for ten years. I ran a childcare center in Iowa City. During that experience, I felt like I wanted to take my knowledge of kids and go back to law school and be an advocate or a guardian ad litum and advocate for children.

[0:21:09] – So that’s basically what kind of got my foot back into the legal field, I guess you’d say.

John Reed [0:21:14] – So you got your walking papers, they admitted you to the bar. Where was the first stop?

Carrie Rodriguez [0:21:20] – Well, I, at that time when I graduated, I had three young children and my husband and I lived in rural West Branch, Iowa. So, I had connected with Phil my last year of law school because I had heard about the program through the law school, and I thought that having him as a good connection. He seemed to know a lot of attorneys. that maybe he could help me connect with somebody in my area and help me either kind of hang my own shingle or join up with an older attorney locally so that my husband and family could stay in West Branch, and I could start my career there.

[0:21:59] – So I made that connection with Phll, and him and I started emailing and we’d have phone calls and he actually invited me up to Garner in February of my final semester of law school. And I just kind of remember thinking how cool it was because I was going to get to go to court with him. We were going to do a whole Friday juvenile court day. So, it was pretty exciting, and I was excited to come. And I don’t know what Phil was actually thinking on his end, but I left my trip from Garner with the job offer. And that was the last thing that was going through my head at the time.

John Reed [0:22:36] – So I’m curious, you had a great reaction. When you look around your graduating law school class, how many others do you know of that have gone the small-town rural lawyer path?

Carrie Rodriguez [0:22:48] – Well, interestingly, I do have some classmates that ended up in rural Iowa. There’s a few that didn’t stay in rural Iowa. And that’s one of the things that Phil and I discuss a lot when we talk about his rural practice program, because how do you get attorneys to stay when they don’t have roots to the small town that they’ve gone to? There really needs to be a lot of work done to try to get them ingrained into the community and kind of get to know, what are the benefits of staying? I know that pay is a big one, of course. Right.

[0:23:24] – And that was one of the things that Phil did for me and has been advocating to other attorneys in small towns, is you still need to be comparative in your salary. And that’s what Phil did. He looked at what are Des Moines attorneys getting. He looked at all of those things in order to say, “I don’t want you to not come to rural Iowa because you’re not going to financially make it here.” So that was a very important part.

Carrie Rodriguez [0:23:51] – Obviously not the only reason, though.

John Reed [0:23:53] – Yeah, I’m curious. You talk about these other factors, lifestyle, professional growth, work-life balance, maybe others. Can you speak to those things about all the considerations that went into not just liking Phil and thinking he’s a great guy and leaving with a job offer when you came to visit, but all these other things that drew you to Garner and frankly have kept you there?

Carrie Rodriguez [0:24:14] – You know, I have to admit that I am a small-town girl at heart. I never really anticipated a big move to Des Moines or Chicago. I am more of a small-town person. But Garner is a very welcoming and inclusive community and I’ve never thought about leaving. Some of the great things about working in a small town is that work-life balance. Like I said before, I have three young kids. We have activities, we’ve got other things going on. And being able to work this 8 to 5 job and go home at night, I think is really important. Because I do keep or try to keep work life a little bit separate so that I can come back in the morning and feel like I’m 100% ready to hit the job again.

[0:25:04] – As Phil mentioned before, riding your bicycle to work or taking five minutes to get to work is a huge benefit because I’m not spending time in the car. And even when I lived in West Branch, I was working in Iowa City. So that was about a 20-minute commute one way. So being able to live close to your work, being able to keep those types of hours. I think the other really big thing, as Phil already touched upon, is the fact that we really have a chance to get to know our clients.

[0:25:36] – And that’s important to me, and it’s important to be able to know who you’re representing and advocating for.

John Reed [0:25:44] – Now, for you entering the practice more recently than Phil. I’ll be very respectful of how I say these things, Phil. The times are obviously different. What are the different benefits and challenges that you’ve experienced? Specifically, I guess not being a part of the community to start? I wonder if there’s any challenges by being a female attorney in a small town. I don’t know if there are or there aren’t.

[0:26:09] – I think in my canvassing of the attorneys in Garner right now, they’re all men, except for you. So, I’m just kind of curious what you’ve experienced in your acclimation, or you did experience in your acclimation to the community.

[0:26:20] – Well, like I said, the community here has been very welcoming. There weren’t necessarily a lot of challenges for me. I always tell this story because I love the school system here in Garner. DHB is a great school. They went out of their way to give us a tour of the school on the weekend and, you know, really include my kids. And that was important to both my husband and I. So, not necessarily challenges within the community, but I think practicing as a new attorney is extremely challenging in and of itself because we get this fancy law degree, and we don’t really know how to practice. I think that’s kind of something that you and Phil touched upon earlier.

[0:27:06] – You know, we have this fancy piece of paper, but we don’t really know what to do. One thing that I want to comment on, and Phil mentioned earlier, that you know, having clerks didn’t really cost him a load of money, but you have no idea how much time that Phil dedicated to those girls and to myself. I often make the joke that I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without asking Phil because I just needed his guidance and his assistance in everything. I’d like to say it was a few months, but it really was more like years.

[0:27:41] – So that’s a challenge. And if you don’t have a mentor to kind of help walk you through those things, I think it would be extremely challenging to start practicing.

John Reed [0:27:50] – Well, I think that’s so important. I mean, what we’ve seen generally in the profession is with pressures, firm revenues, client expectations, mentoring has really taken a hit. So, to have that — not only to have the mentoring but have that one-on-one mentoring — I’m sure has given you an advantage that many, many other attorneys just wouldn’t have otherwise.

Carrie Rodriguez [0:28:16] – It’s been invaluable, honestly.

John Reed [0:28:19] – So, Phil, I have to ask you, and Carrie, you can cover yours if you want. What has Carrie brought to your firm and what have you learned from her?

Phil Garland [0:28:28] – She’s brought a new dynamic to the firm. It’s been good. She’s taken over a lot of the title work, real estate work, that I did. All I do was proof her work now. I rarely do a title opinion.

[0:28:43] – She’s allowed me to do more of what I would like to do and narrow my practice a little bit. That’s been important to me, especially as I’ve gotten older. More important, I think, is that she’s been accepted into our community so well. I mean, I had a couple of man clients stop by my office and just thank me for bringing her to our community. So, I just think overall, it’s been a big help in my practice. If somebody’s here when I’m gone, it’s somebody to bounce things off of when I have questions. It probably doesn’t go a day or two that I don’t go in and ask her her opinion on something.

[0:29:24] – So it’s been very beneficial to have a sounding board. I’ve always had four or five lawyers that I relied upon, but they were all lawyers my age. And now all of them are done practicing. And she’s gotten the experience. A lot of times, it’s not anything that she really does, but it’s just, she’s got a general grasp of what’s going on and so I can ask her questions. And we probably, like I say, have two or three of those come up a week, either one of us, and can kind of talk out the problem.

[0:29:54] – Just yesterday we had one come up that it’s kind of an amazing thing that this has gone on for 40 or 50 years and nobody’s ever really discovered what we discovered. At least we don’t believe that. And it’s just good to have somebody say, “yes, that’s correct,” rather than just say, “why did everybody do it this way when it should have been done the way that we think it should be done?”

John Reed [0:30:17] – And no disagreements about modernizing the office or changing the magazine subscriptions in the lobby or anything like that?

Phil Garland [0:30:25] – I don’t think we’ve had any disagreements of that nature. Surprisingly, we don’t have a lot of people hang around the library. I think most of the time they’re here and they’re in and they’re gone.

John Reed [0:30:37] – We had the opportunity to talk before, and one thing that really actually touched me, you talked about bar association activities taking a hit, but you are both very visible in the community with civic groups, charitable groups. Phil, you mentioned your church and it sounds like that’s kind of replaced or at least served as an adjunct to those bar activities. You get to know your community, you get to contribute to your community, and you build your practice along the way too. Can you talk about that?

Phil Garland [0:31:11] – You know, I probably came to Garner as much as anything, you mentioned my church. And we’d never heard of Garner before. We lived in the little town of Ventura, and we came over here to church. And the first day we were there, the usher came up and asked who we were. Well, we introduced ourselves and went back; we came back the next week, and same thing. He wasn’t ushering at that time, but he came up. He couldn’t remember our name but he took us around, introduced us to five or six different couples. And we went to church there for probably five or six weeks. And a fellow that I didn’t know came and asked if I wanted to join the men’s group.

[0:31:48] – So this town was very welcoming to me. The bank here had some collection work that they wanted me to do. This was after a couple years, and that was what kind of precipitated our moving to Garner was he wanted me to open an office here, the bank president. And they would send us quite a bit of business, which they did, and they still do. So, it was just being accepted in the community. But I think part of that was just because of being involved in various activities. So, we’re always looking for volunteers, I guess. And again, I think you become a part of the fabric of a community much more readily in a small town and probably even more by necessity in a smaller community than you ever do in a big city.

John Reed [0:32:33] – And Carrie, I think you told me if this law thing doesn’t work out, you can work in a movie theater slinging popcorn. Isn’t that something you’ve done through Rotary?

Carrie Rodriguez [0:32:41] – Yes, I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer a lot through our local Rotary program, and I’ve really gotten to know people in the community a lot better. Just like I said, volunteering at the movie theater or at the concession stand during one of the high school sporting events, the Duesey Days Parade. Just a lot of different activities that way. But Phil’s also kind of helped me get involved with helping at the local mock trial for middle school and high school groups and then just being part of different mentorship programs with the local high school kids. So that’s been really rewarding, and he gave me the push, but it’s been really enjoyable.

John Reed [0:33:24] – And actually, I think what I’m struck most by from this conversation, our prior conversation, is you both are embodying the idea of paying it forward. Phil, I think you told me your GI bill paid for your law school education and you look at somebody like Carrie and you want to help her. And then Carrie, you’re paying it forward by mentoring the community. Let’s talk about the economics with law school debt and the price of a practice. If you were going to sell it to the extent that you want to reveal the information, how have you structured this succession between your practice, Phil, and onto Carrie?

Phil Garland [0:34:02] – Mainly when Carrie came here, I probably was aware of student debt before 99.9% of the country. We had a couple of students who went to Drake to undergraduate and then to law school, and this was back in the early 2000s, and they had over $250,000 debt, which I found just staggering. So, I became very much aware of that. I looked at how I started. Like you’ve indicated, I had the GI bill. I got out of lw school with no debt.

[0:34:37] – When I came up here to open my office, my medical insurance was like about $130 a month and that included pregnancy coverage. And so, I realized just how much current graduates have by way of debt but also obligation, when doing what I had to do when I came up here was pretty easy. The part-time jobs assistant county attorneys have evaporated, medical cost is outrageous, as I was trying to pay off student loans. And so I think my encouragement to Carrie was basically when I walk out the door, the business is hers. She does have to get rid of my old files, which is a pretty big bargain for me. But I don’t intend to charge anything for the practice. That’s been sort of our contract.

John Reed [0:35:24] – And you’ve been on record as trying to promote this idea of not looking for top dollar when retiring lawyers, rural lawyers, are looking to get out of the practice. How is that message being received amongst your peers, Phil?

Phil Garland [0:35:42] – Not too well. I think a lot of lawyers really want to sell their practice. And what we’ve seen lots, is we see more and more satellite offices. I know there are offices in bigger communities that have offices in smaller communities. In Council Bluffs, there’s a firm out there that I think has five or six satellite offices in small towns, small communities. And I don’t think those individuals who are not there on a day-to-day basis, which is oftentimes the case, is what a small community really needs. 

[0:36:15] – And again, they don’t become a part of the fabric of the community, which I think all of our lawyers do here in this community and in this county and in most small towns. I think that’s a real dynamic that hurts the profession, but it also hurts the community.

John Reed [0:36:31] – I think that’s a great point to wrap up on. I think you said it very well. I’m just so impressed. It’s certainly tough to fly under the radar in a small town. Clients are friends. Friends are clients. Friends are opposing parties and opposing counsel. And you seem to conduct yourself every day not only being the lawyer in the community, but as you say, and I think the phrase is appropriate, being part of the fabric of the community.

[0:36:57] – So, Phil and Carrie, I’m grateful to you for giving us a glimpse of your world and for a better understanding of just how important small-town lawyers are in the communities where they work and live. In case anyone wants to learn more about you or contact you, we’re going to put up a link to your website and a few of the articles that I’ve found about you. But I really want to thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.

Phil Garland [0:37:17] – Thank you.

Carrie Rodriguez [0:37:18] – It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

John Reed [0:37:20] – If you’ve listened to this episode and maybe some other episodes of the podcast, congratulations. You’re a stickler, a Sticky Lawyer’s listener. Whether this is your first time with us, or you’ve been here since the beginning, I hope you’ll take a moment to, one, subscribe, and two, leave a comment about what you like and what you’ve learned. You can do both of those wherever you get your podcasts — Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever — or by visiting stickylawyers.com.

[0:37:48] – The word is spreading about Sticky Lawyers, and it’d be great if you could lend a hand in getting others to hear our guests’ important and compelling stories. Until next time, I’m John Reed and you’ve been listening to Sticky Lawyers.