SPOTLIGHT

Farming Sets the Stage for a Career in the Law

Here's how to make the first year of law school seem almost fun:

First, farm the land from the time you learn to drive a tractor at age 8. Suffer through a couple of years in which bad weather reduces your crop, and thus your income, causing you to fall behind in your loan payments. Then go through a drought that kills off your crop completely and causes you to lose, oh . . .up to $100,000 in just one year. Then find out you have Hodgkin's disease and need both chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Suddenly law school looks like fun, and that crushing educational debt is a whole lot less worrisome.

Welcome to Hollis Burklund's life. Burklund is a third-year student at Baylor University Law School in Waco, Texas.

Burklund farmed his entire life before entering law school, most recently working with his father and two employees to grow 2,800 acres of cotton, corn and milo, a feed grain. The weather has a big impact on a farmer's life. The crop has to be planted on time so it can mature on time. If the plants aren't mature by the time the summer heat sets in, they won't yield as much. One year Burklund averaged 96 bushels per acre; the next year he averaged 16. Then when it's time to harvest the crop, it's got to be done immediately; some years, Burklund had to work up to four weeks to get the crop in.

If a drought reduces your crop, you probably won't earn much-and worse, you may not be able to pay back the loans you took out at the beginning of the season to get the crop in the ground. And when that happens, it will be an entire year before you can even begin to recoup any of that money. As a farmer, Burklund found he couldn't break out of that cycle. "I was like a gerbil, only I couldn't get off that wheel," he says.

Burklund also got tired of the isolation of farming. "I like people, and I was out by myself every day," he says. So he visited the career office of his alma mater, Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, where he took an aptitude test that pointed him toward a career in law and politics. He took the LSAT, got admitted to Baylor, and filed for bankruptcy the day he started law school.

Burklund is divorced, and moving to Waco meant being about two hours from his three children, aged 10 to 17. His children don't especially like the change, but they understand. "They're pretty proud of me, and their friends are impressed," he says. He sees his children regularly and hopes he's setting a good example. "This shows them they are not going to be stuck. Later on in life, if they don't like what they're doing, they'll be OK."

Burklund was elected president of his first-year class, and just completed his second term as student bar association president. Burklund says that being older than most of his classmates hasn't hurt. "Maturity helps," he says. "You can handle the whole thing and not get overwhelmed."

Last year, Burklund discovered a lump in his neck. It turned out he had Hodgkin's disease. A course of chemotherapy and radiation treatment seems to have worked. Burklund stayed in school during the treatment. "It was tough," he says. "I was down, and I was weak, but I could still read. And that helped to keep my mind off any bad things that were going on."

Burklund hopes to graduate in May 1999. And after that? Possibly civil litigation, possibly lobbying work in Austin, the state capital. "I know what I do well, and what I do well is meet people," Burklund says. "But if something else comes along, I'll go for it. I'm game for whatever comes along."

In 1994, Burklund lost 500 acres of corn to a hailstorm. "You get slapped down a few times [as a farmer], but you get back up-so law school's not that bad," he says with a laugh. "They stand you up and hammer you, but so what?"

Lee Farbman