Albert Lea lawyer Holly Wallace doesn’t have goals. She said he has accomplished the goal of becoming a lawyer and is OK where she is at.

Wallace, 38, grew up in Neillsville, Wis., a city of 2,600 that is seat of Clark County. It is 135 miles east of St. Paul.

She has a brother, Doug, 45, who lives in Florida, and a sister, Melanie Faust, 36, who lives in Austin. Faust is the director of purchasing for Hormel Foods. Wallace lives in a house in Austin she bought from her sister.

Wallace studied biology and earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She was interested in resource management and worked as a water chemist first on the UW-Stevens Point campus, then for four years with the Army Corps of Engineers and finally for a year at the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota.

She said she had hit the ceiling as a researcher without an advanced degree and considered going to graduate school. She was mulling the GRE but then decided to try the LSAT. She did well. GRE is graduate record examination, a test that is an admissions requirement for grad schools, and LSAT stands for law school admissions test, the required test to get into law schools.

Wallace said she thought environmental law would be interesting, so she enrolled at Hamline University in St. Paul. But she didn’t pursue environmental law.

She said there was tension between her love of nature and between living close to family and in a small town. Environmental law is a specialty where you work only where the jobs are available. General practice can be done in any county in the country.

“Small town kind of won out for me,” she said.

Wallace said she always has excelled in school and said she would go to college full-time if she could. Her studious ways paid off, and she said found herself doing well at Hamline, too.

“There’s a saying about law schools,” she said. “The first year they scare you to death. The second year they work you to death. The third year they bore you to death. I’m glad I stuck it out.”

She is glad she earned a law degree but could live without the debt — somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 grand, she said as she pointed to her law degree on the wall. She said she has concerns about the rising tuition many college grads face these days when entering the work world. Many these days deal with high debt no matter what level of education they receive.

Wallace passed the bar exam in Wisconsin and sought work there. She had been an intern for the St. Croix County Circuit Court in Wisconsin so she did volunteer work there as a mediator while looking for work. Because St. Croix County was close to the border, she took the Minnesota bar exam and passed.

“And then I ended up on the border of Iowa,” she said, jokingly.

An advertisement at the Hamline Web site touted an opening at the Goldman, Sturtz & Halvorsen law firm in Albert Lea. Robert Sturtz and Allan Halvorsen acquired their juris doctorates at Hamline, too.

Naturally, Wallace knew Albert Lea was close to Austin, where her kid sister lived. She did an interview with Sturtz, Halvorsen and Bob Goldman. Goldman was scaling back his workload as he inched toward retirement — though he still works all the time — and that is why the position was open.

Sturtz said Wallace had small-town values that fit well with the firm. He said she is bright and swift when it comes to legal research and she is deft on the computer. Many times she does the legal research for cases in the office because she is fast, he said.

So in 2003, Wallace moved.

It’s a general practice law firm, so the lawyers at Goldman, Sturtz & Halvorsen handle a range of cases. She said she enjoys working with Goldman, Sturtz and Halvorsen. She does work as assigned by them and handles cases that come to her.

She is single and not in a relationship, but she does have a dog, Bailey, whom she adopted from the Mower County Humane Society. She likes spending time with her sister’s family.

Wallace also likes cooking and trivia. She gardens year-round, too. Wallace is a member of the Lions Club and the Audubon Society.

She enjoys libraries because she reads a lot. One of her favorites is “To Kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee. She also enjoys the writing styles of John Steinbeck and Mark Twain. She reads mainly fiction but has had stretches of nonfiction, particularly stories of triumph over adversity.

In her job, she doesn’t experience people in the best situations, she said. Reading helps escape from work.

The lawyers she works with say she has her clients’ best interests at heart.

“She cares very much for her clients and wants to do the best she can for each one of them,” Halvorsen said.

She said she listens to her clients, sees things from their point of view and gets to the root of their problems. She said the legal system is stressful enough for clients, and she said she strives to take people through it with as much understanding as they seek. She said she also is clear about the financial aspects and the options available to reduce legal fees.

The justice system is an adversarial process, making many situations challenging for all involved. Nonetheless, it all pays off when she succeeds in court, she said.

Even when a case is uncertain or weak, she maintains a strong front so she can be assuring to the clients, she said.

Wallace said she likes that more courts are using mediations. The legal system is set up where one side wins and one side loses, but sometimes there might be middle-ground solutions. Mediation helps find them.

Halvorsen said he was proud of how Wallace served as president of the Freeborn County Bar Association at the time of the addition to the county courthouse in 2005. She arranged for many area and state legal dignitaries to come for the groundbreaking ceremony.

“She stuck out after just a few years of being here,” he said.