I bought a law firm...well, actually two

How I ended up at Thompson Law

I didn't go to law school because I had some lifelong dream of being a lawyer. I went because I wanted to help farm families.

Estate planning. Farm succession. Business succession. Helping families figure out how to pass along the farm, ranch, land, business, and everything they've spent a lifetime building.

That's always been the mission.

After law school, I spent a couple years at a general practice firm. I learned a lot and worked with great people, but I kept finding myself pulled toward estate planning and succession work. I cold called and, eventually, wore down the owner of Thompson Law enough that he hired me.

I had set my sights on Thompson Law as the best estate & succession planning firm in the state long ago, so this was a huge win.

Carolyn Thompson founded the Sioux Falls firm in 2003 as South Dakota's first “boutique” estate planning law firm. She built an incredible business with an incredible reputation before passing away much too young from cancer.

Fortunately, Carolyn practiced what she preached.

She had a succession plan.

The firm continued. Her clients continued to be served. And the attorney who succeeded Carolyn was eventually the guy who hired me.

I started at Thompson Law in January 2025, and it didn't take long to realize I'd found my place. The firm did almost exclusively the kind of work I wanted to do. Estate planning. Trusts. Business planning. Succession. Estate administration.

And 75%+ of our clients had some connection to agriculture.

Farmers. Ranchers. Landowners. Ag business owners.

My kind of people.

Then came August

About eight months after I joined the firm, the owner took me out to lunch and asked a pretty straightforward question:

"Would you be interested in taking over Thompson Law?"

You ever have to literally bite down on your tongue to keep yourself from answering too quickly?

I did.

I managed to wait a respectable amount of time before saying, "Absolutely."

The truth is, he knew what I knew. I'm an entrepreneur trapped in an attorney's body.

I'd owned businesses before becoming a lawyer. I love building things. In addition to the legal work, I like thinking about people, systems, marketing, finances, growth, and all the other stuff most attorneys probably went to law school specifically to avoid.

Eventually, I was going to own a law firm.

So why not Thompson Law?

There was just one person whose opinion mattered quite a bit more than mine.

My wife.

A pretty big family decision

My wife and I had some long conversations.

Not the "Hey, what do you think about this?" kind.

The sit-at-the-kitchen-table-after-the-kids-are-in-bed kind.

She had left her job just a few months earlier to stay home with our four young kids. And I'll put this kindly... she's a little more risk-averse than I am.

Stability and consistency are pretty much her love language.

I tend to have that eternal optimism necessary of self-employed people seizing opportunity.

She tends to be more grounded and a realist who will ask the “what-if” questions I prefer to avoid.

It's a good combination.

But more than anything, we prayed about it. A lot.

We prayed for wisdom. For discernment. For doors to open or close. We talked about what this opportunity could mean for our family, but also whether this was actually where God was leading us.

Because buying a business is one thing. Buying the business that provides for your family while your wife stays home with four young kids makes the numbers on the spreadsheet feel a little more real.

We talked about the finances. The risk. The time commitment. The employees who would suddenly depend on us. What it could mean if things went well, and what it could mean if they didn't.

Eventually, we had peace about it.

Not because all the risk disappeared. It didn't.

But we believed God had put the opportunity in front of us for a reason, and that we were supposed to walk through the door.

So we did.

Due diligence. Valuations. Negotiations. Financing. Purchase agreements. Transition planning.

All the fun stuff I routinely tell business owners they ought to have figured out.

Turns out it's a little different when you're sitting on the other side of the table.

Then the trail took a turn I didn't see coming.

A trip to an estate planning convention

While we were working through the Thompson Law purchase, I attended an estate planning law firm convention and met a wonderful couple in their 70s from Grand Forks, North Dakota.

He'd practiced law for more than 40 years and had spent roughly the last decade building what was essentially North Dakota's version of Thompson Law.

A boutique estate planning firm: German Law.

As we talked, I learned something else. He'd known Carolyn Thompson and had received a lot of guidance from her over the years as he built his own estate planning practice.

Small world.

He also mentioned that he was ready to start slowing down.

There was just one problem.

No successor.

Now, if you've read much of my stuff on farm succession, you know where my mind immediately went.

Here was a good business. Decades of reputation. Similar structure as Thompson Law. Great clients. An owner ready to transition.

And no next generation identified.

I've seen this movie before.

Usually it involves cows or combines instead of conference rooms.

So I asked him a question:

"Would you be interested in selling the firm to me and merging it into Thompson Law?"

His answer?

"Yes."

Well...

I guess we're buying two law firms.

And, once again, that meant more conversations with my wife. More prayer. More asking whether this was ambition talking or whether God was actually putting another opportunity in front of us.

Ultimately, we believed it was the latter.

So we kept walking down the path.

January 1, 2026

Suddenly we had a target date.

January 1, 2026.

Two law firm purchases. Two teams. Two client bases. Two states.

One future firm.

There were plenty of days where it felt like we were trying to change tires on a pickup while driving it down the interstate. We still had clients to serve, employees to lead, families to take care of, and two transactions to get across the finish line.

But we got it done.

Then came the harder part: actually putting the two organizations together.

People. Technology. Procedures. Billing. Documents. Phones. Marketing. Culture. You name it.

Effective this July, the merger became official.

Both firms now operate as Thompson Law.

Two offices. Sioux Falls & Grand Forks.

One firm.

And we're just getting started.

So... where have I been?

I just gave you the long answer to a pretty simple question.

I've been busy.

For the past several years I've enjoyed writing about estate planning, farm succession, family businesses, land, taxes, management, and the sometimes messy intersection of all of them.

Then life got full. Really full.

Something had to give for a while, and unfortunately writing was one of those things.

But the dust is finally starting to settle a bit, and I'm ready to start writing again.

So you'll begin hearing from me more regularly about the same things I've always cared about: estate planning, farm & ranch succession, family business succession, land, management, and how families can do a better job preparing the next generation to carry forward what they've built.

One housekeeping item...

Going forward, these emails will come from a Thompson Law email account.

And one final thing.

If anything I've written over the years has helped you think differently about your farm, family, business, or estate plan, I'm glad.

That's why I write.

And if you're wondering how to say thanks?

Send someone our way.

Referrals have always been the best compliment our clients can give us. They're also how we prefer to grow Thompson Law.

We don't have some massive marketing budget, and I don't particularly want one. I'd rather do good work, provide useful information, take care of people, and have a farmer tell his or her neighbor:

"You ought to go talk to these guys."

That's hard to beat.

Anyway...

That's where I've been.

It's been a pretty wild year. I'm grateful to my wife for believing in this mission, grateful for the folks who trusted me with two firms they spent decades building, grateful to our top-notch teammates eager to take on this new season of the firm, and most of all grateful to God for opening doors I certainly couldn't have planned myself.

Two law firms later, I'm looking forward to getting back to writing.

We've got plenty to talk about.

-Clint

Going to Dakotafest?

A quick heads up for those of you headed to Dakotafest this week:

I'll be speaking on Farm Succession Planning Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. in the Dakotafest Education Building.

Thompson Law will also have a booth there all three days at #235W. Stop by, say hello, and meet myself and some of our team.

Hope to see you there!

DISCLAIMER: What you just read is not legal advice. It is not an offer to represent you or perform legal services. Reading this doesn’t enter us into an attorney-client relationship. It’s just informational and hopefully a bit entertaining—take it as that and nothing more. When in doubt, talk to your own lawyer.