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Small Town Law

The facades along Main Street in Belle Plaine, Iowa, showcase the staples of small-town life. An independent pharmacy, a general store, a coffee shop. A single-screen movie theater—its marquee ringed in lightbulbs—and a hair salon—its windowsill filled with mannequins in brightly colored wigs.

At one end of the street, in the center of this town of 2,500 people, sits the privately owned law firm of Kollmorgen, Schlue, and Zahradnik.

Jennifer Zahradnik, LW’03, co-owns the firm with semi-retired attorney Larry Schlue, and practices alongside fellow Drake Law alumnus James Ries, LW’03. The trio have careers that differ considerably from those of lawyers at larger firms—as Zahradnik and Ries explain in the video below.

Read the Fall 2014 issue of Drake Blue (coming soon to www.drake.edu/magazine) to learn more about small-town legal practice and what Drake Law is doing to reverse a shortage of lawyers in rural areas.