Practicing law in regional Australia: Don Olney

I wrote my first post on this blog about regional legal practice, Practising Law in Regional Australia, back in October 2006.

One point that I have made that I need to return to is that the returns from professional practice in regional Australia all depend upon your needs. I was reminded of this by the obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald of Dubbo solicitor Don Olney. I quote from the first few paragraphs of Malcolm Brown's story.   

Don Olney, born at the end of World War II, was a brilliant student at Normanhurst Boys High School, where he studied under the benign dictatorship of legendary headmaster Tom Pearson and had energy to burn.

He was admitted as a solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court in 1969 and there was no stopping him. He had already met the love of his life, secretary Rhonda Howells, during his daily train trips from Hornsby to the city and had married her in 1967 while still a student.

Completing his articles with the legal firm Baldich, McPherson and Walsh, he found himself a fully fledged lawyer, virile, with a beautiful wife and the world at his feet. But where was he to go?

He went bush, a reverse of the trend of young professionals who prefer the comfort and convenience of the metropolis. During his long and successful career in Dubbo, in central western NSW, he showed just what a young professional could do in a regional area.

I leave you to read the rest. It's just that the story illustrates my point.

Related post: Sydney barrister tree-changes to Glen Innes

Job opportunities in Regional Australia - July 09

During the week the Law Council of Australia released a report on shortages of legal professionals in Regional Australia. At a time when big city firms are retrenching, 43% of those surveyed in Regional Australia say that they have insufficient lawyers to meet client demands.

This is not an isolated example. A recent survey of businesses in a substantial NSW regional centre found that something like half the businesses surveyed had job vacancies that they could not fill. Again, this holds at a time when unemployment in major metro centres is on the rise.

Not all regional communities have vacant jobs. Some especially dependant on mining have recently seen lay-offs. However, for those facing an uncertain metro job market, now is not a bad time to consider a move to Regional and especially inland, Australia.  

Opportunities for the professions in Regional Australia - Introduction

Back in October 2006, I put up Practising Law in Regional Australia dealing with the opportunities open to those who wanted to practice law in Regional Australia. At the time, there were opportunities because so many new lawyers were opting to stay in the metro areas.

Two years later the position is just the same. Now the Law Society has put forward proposals to try to redress the situation by, for example, forgiving HECS debt. Legal Eagle alerted me to this in her post Bush lawyers. This includes a link through to the original newspaper story.

The reasons for the current shortage of lawyers in regional Australia as well as other professionals are quite complex, combining structural and cultural reasons. Discussions on the reasons, and I am no exception, generally focus on the nature of the problem. In doing so, we ignore a simple fact, the opportunities open to those who are prepared to move.

Given this, I thought that it was time that I revisited the opportunity side in a series of posts, setting out the reasons why the Regional Australia option is worth considering. I will add later posts to the end of this one as they are completed.