Lawrence Bender has too much work and too little help. Even if Bender, managing partner of Fredrikson & Byrons Bismarck, N.D., office, could find the lawyers he needs to hire, he wouldn’t have the staffers to support them.
Oil exploration in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation has flooded the state with legal work, and there simply aren’t enough attorneys to go around, say practitioners, judges and other legal professionals in the region. Some of the demand is directly tied to energy production, like mineral leases and equipment transactions, and much of it stems indirectly from the industry that has lured thousands of oil-patch workers and their legal problems to the state.
