Patrick Goetzinger, Life Fellow, and his co-author Robert Morris published a follow up to the article they’d written in 2014, on the journey of rural practice in South Dakota. The first addition was Project Rural Practice: Its People & Its Purpose, published in 2014, and the follow-up is titled Project Rural Practice: Its People & Its Purpose – the Next Chapter; both were published in the South Dakota Law Review.
The initial article told the origin story of Project Rural Practice, from 2011 to 2014 and was part of the South Dakota Law Review’s inaugural symposium on rural practice issues in the Fall of 2014. The follow up issue took place after the Law Review’s follow-up symposium in 2023, with an invitation for the co-authors of the initial article to continue to story, now from 2015 to the fall of 2023. At the time that Project Rural Practice was created, 65% of the active in-state members were located in four cities and there was a marked decline in attorneys practicing in rural communities.
Pat Goetzinger is currently a partner with Gunderson, Palmer, Nelson, & Ashmore, where he leads the firm’s Business and Estate Planning Group. He served as the President of the State Bar of South Dakota from 2011-2012 and is a current member of the South Dakota Bar Foundation Board of Directors. He received the 2022 Marshall M. McKusick Award, given annually to an outstanding member of the South Dakota Bar for contributions to the legal profession.