No Country for Rural Lawyers. Small-town attorneys face challenges.

• Author: Wendy N. Davis
• Pages: 32-39

When Brian Lohse graduated from Drake

University Law School in 1995, he went

to work at a small practice in Lee County,

a rural area of Illinois.

As a general practitioner, Lohse says

he handled “everything under the sun,”

ranging from trafc tickets to real estate,

from divorces to assisting with a mur-

der trial.

He says he liked the work, but

between student loans and household

expenses, he couldn’t make ends meet on

his small-town salary. At three years out

of law school, Lohse was only making

$27,000 a year.

“It just became economically unfeasi-

ble for us to continue,” he says. “I would

have liked to have stayed there. If the

nances had been there, we probably

would have.”

Instead, he moved to Iowa and took

a job with an insurance company in Des

Moines, working in the claims depart-

ment. Within three months, his salary had

jumped to $33,000.

Fast forward to September of 2012,

when Lohse’s fortunes took a turn no one

could have anticipated: He and his wife

won a $202.1 million Powerball jackpot,

totaling about $91 million after taxes.

Lohse and his wife used some of the

proceeds to create the Lohse Family

Foundation, which donates to a slew

of causes. Among other recipients was

his alma mater, Drake University Law

School, which recently created the Rural

Access to Justice Initiative aimed at ad-

dressing the well-documented shortage of

rural attorneys.

ABA JOURNAL | FEBRUARY–MARCH 2020

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