Lawyers in rural areas are often given short shrift by their city counterparts, who are more likely to jet to Hong Kong than Coober Pedy. 

For many, the focus is on Sydney, Melbourne and maybe even Brisbane or Perth – even other capital cities are often overlooked, and the map goes fuzzy at the city limits.

Yet rural practice today is a far cry from the outback lawyer of popular imagination, with a dusty Akubra and an office out the back of the local pub. Firms are pursuing growth and innovation, whether through new technology or targeted recruitment.

What remains the same is the country lawyer’s primary duty – to serve their communities, no matter how remote.

One of the gang
While all lawyers are called upon when their clients are in a tight spot, in the country there’s a much higher chance of running into them at the local cafe.

Frank Jongkind, owner of Charleville practice Frank Jongkind & Co, believes the sense of community in country towns is both a blessing and a curse.

“You feel more a part of their lives, their community and their experiences.

“It’s more rewarding on the basis that you’re working with people you know well,” Mr Jongkind says.

“The possible downside as well is if you don’t receive the optimal result, you’re going to see this person for a long time afterwards. It certainly puts a bit of extra pressure on you.”

To Mark Houlahan, director of two-office firm Webb & Boland, business in the country is almost always personal. A lawyer’s success can rest on their reputation among the wider community, and word spreads quickly.

“In a lot of cases, you know clients or they are personal friends. If you don’t know them personally, you know of each other,” Mr Houlahan says. “Depending on how you’re perceived in the community, that may or may not be a good thing.”

Empathy is also vital for any rural practitioner. While first-hand experience of farming is not a necessity, understanding bush life is an absolute must, Mr Houlahan believes.

“It helps if you have some empathy or understanding with their circumstances, and it gives them a bit of comfort and confidence that you’re providing a good service to them.”

Call of the country
For all lawyers spoken to for this piece, life in the country was a non-negotiable. The great outdoors, the close ties, the relaxed lifestyle – none of these lawyers were willing to switch with a city colleague.

Yet making the case for country life to outsiders might not be so clear-cut. Recruitment is the number one hurdle facing country practices. While Webb & Boland is large for a regional practice, with about 10 lawyers, Mr Houlahan has had to pursue a targeted recruitment strategy. Lawyers without some kind of personal connection to the town don’t tend to stick around.

To secure new recruits, Mr Houlahan identifies local students who have left to study law and offers them summer clerkships. If that goes well, a job offer is not far behind. This approach is not without its drawbacks, however. Graduates need nurturing, Mr Houlahan says, and the firm invests considerable resources in supervising new employees before they can add value to the firm.

At his two-solicitor practice in Charleville, Mr Jongkind struggles to recruit even high-quality support staff. He explains the problem as a lack of pipeline – there are few employers to offer training, so people with skills are hard to find. His approach has been to hire entry-level employees and teach them from the ground up. In one case, a woman he trained to become a paralegal is now considering studying law, which Mr Jongkind describes as “extremely gratifying”.

Even HWL Ebsworth, a firm with considerable brand power, had trouble attracting talent. Charlie Martel, partner at HWL Ebsworth in Alice Springs, says the firm tries to sell recruits on the benefits of country life, particularly those with young families.

“Getting people out of the bigger cities is very difficult,” Mr Martel says. “I'm not sure how you can incentivise them to do it, other than try to sell them the lifestyle.”

He is baffled by lawyers’ reluctance to look outside the major centres – in his experience, leaving Perth allowed him to leapfrog ahead in his career.

“I was a partner in a bit over 12 months and I actually felt on a personal level like I was contributing. I had people pick up the phone and actually want to see me, not someone who was more senior.”

However, he also warned that training could be thin on the ground for juniors at small firms, where it’s often sink or swim.

“Sometimes juniors get left on their own a bit in regional areas,” he says, although emphasising this was not the case at his firm.

“But I do think you get a chance to run your own files more readily – you just have to step up to the plate.”

Mr Jongkind also highlights the potential to run your own practice at an early stage, as well as gaining experience in a wide range of practice areas.

“It’s an excellent background for somebody to learn the broad spectrum of legal practice,” he says, suggesting city lawyers are more likely to be channelled into a specific practice area.

While his firm separates litigators from solicitors, Mr Martel agrees that all their lawyers take on a broad range of work: “We’re bigger all-rounders than you would ever see in the city.”

Busy bees
Even as lawyers shun rural practice, the regions are crying out for qualified legal services. Mr Houlahan says his business has continued to grow in recent years, despite drought ravaging the local community.

“For capable lawyers, there definitely is work out here. It’s a service industry and if you provide the service to the client, you’ll build a practice,” he says.

In the agri-business sector, he routinely deals with multimillion-dollar transactions and major clients.

“Certainly, some of the city firms would be surprised at the size of the transactions their rural cousins might have been involved in,” he says.

Mr Jongkind’s practice comprises about a third conveyancing, but also family, estate, criminal and commercial law. In addition, he provides a substantial portion of pro bono work, which he says “comes with the territory” in a small town.

While his own business remains robust, he believes rural areas have become more challenging in the past two decades.

“As the services available in country areas continue to deteriorate, we’re feeling the impact of that in work being drained out of the area and into the cities.”

People now routinely travel to the nearest large town – in his case, a drive of almost seven hours – to visit service providers.

“That means you are to a greater extent competing with lawyers from a wide geographical area,” Mr Jongkind says.

Nonetheless, he believes there is room in the country for more localised legal services.

“The fact of the matter is, outside of my particular town, you have to go 270 kilometres to find another practice,” he says. “If younger lawyers were prepared to cross the [Great Dividing] Range, they would probably find some great opportunities.”

Mr Martel is in a different situation. The firm for which he was working in Alice Springs, Cridlands MB, was recently bought by HWL Ebsworth, Australia’s largest legal network.

“The support we get is greater than we got before, just by weight of numbers,” he says.

“We've got access to 24-hour IT support, 24-hour secretarial support and everything else that goes with being in a large firm.”

However, he does not see this national network model working in other country regions. In his view, Alice Springs is not just any other town, boasting its own Supreme Court, law library and international airport.

“I think it’s the unique position that works in Alice Springs,” he says. “I don’t know that I can see any of the bigger national firms going to regional centres.”

Looking to the future
Distance used to be a major hurdle in the country, but 1,000 kilometres is not what it once was. Technology is shrinking the gap between the big smoke and the bush.

“The changes [from the internet] have been absolutely enormous,” Mr Houlahan says. “Our resource material, access to legislation, precedents – it’s all online. It’s integral to the way we practise these days.”

While he acknowledges some smaller practitioners remain resistant, even to email, he believes most firms are fully embracing the technology revolution. Mr Jongkind believes the internet has brought top-tier resources to the small business owner.

“When I started 24 years ago, resources were less available to you in the country than they are in the city. But the internet is rapidly addressing a lot of those issues.”

For Mr Martel, technology enables his entire working life. For the past three years he has worked remotely for the Alice Springs office from his farm in rural Victoria, visiting for one week a month.

“What I do now […] I probably couldn't have done in 2004,” Mr Martel says. “Right now, I could be sitting anywhere in the world and still be at work. There weren't even smartphones 10 years ago.”

In particular, regional lawyers are often called upon to travel: Mr Martel says smartphone technology has allowed them to bring their office in their pocket.

Yet even back when living in the country meant going days without phone reception, Mr Martel has always loved the rural lifestyle. With so many young lawyers out of work, he urges them to rethink a country life.

“When I left Perth, my mates thought I was crazy. ‘What are you going there for?’ That’s mad. I said I was going there for opportunities and that’s exactly what I got.”