Landmen?

I wouldn't want to be jumping into the pot right now. You have all these idiotic landowners who think that their 1 acre is worth freaking $200,000 for a 3 year lease. The greed has truly made some of these people delusional.

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You mean its not?

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For probably 98% of this play, it's not. Even the most optimistic assessments have the average real value of the gas per acre at about 40,000. Why pay more than $40,000 to lease it? You see these jokers on haynesvilleshale.ning.com asking stuff like "why settle for 25% royalties when I can get 100%?" Some people really have no idea what they are talking about. Once the boundaries are more well known, there WILL be lots of people who missed out on life changing amounts of money because they let greed get the best of them. Kinda like those people on Deal or no Deal who wait to long to call it quits.

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They will pay for the training (3 day seminar in BR).

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Not sure what kind of landperson you'll get with only 3 days training - it's a four year degree program at Oklahoma and at USL. Many companies only hire PLM graduates or law school graduates to be landmen.

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Not sure what kind of landperson you'll get with only 3 days training - it's a four year degree program at Oklahoma and at USL. Many companies only hire PLM graduates or law school graduates to be landmen.

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any thoughts on whether this is a waste of a law degree or not? I know of a couple folks that went this route with BIG oil companies and are making a good deal of money, plus their hours seem better than some other law school grads. I was thinking that as long as you still take/pass the bar when you get out of law school and you are working for a reputable company, then it's not a bad route to go.

I'm sure some others on here have opinions though..just curious to hear them

I'll jump in as to the law degree - I'm an attorney who worked as a landman in the early '80s. I loved it! But I will say that as "just" a landman, you won't weather the downturns of the industry as well, or at least I didn't. The company landmen and the legal staff of the companies will fare better in the lean years.

When I got into the game during that last boom, it was after much of the leasing activity had occurred, and the drilling had begun. I was working as a curative title person, which I really did like more than the cutthroat leasing business. The field work was fun - I did like doing the investigative end of it, walking old property lines to do an affadavit of ownership, researching heirs for unleased interests, etc. I like running chains of title, which some people think is insane of me. I believe strongly that every attorney needs to learn how to run a chain of title, at least in a rudimentary sense, and I've taught more attorneys how to do so than I can count.

I shake my head at how much easier it all must be these days. Word processing to prepare a lease - no more tearing up 4 pages of carbon paper lease forms! GPS and Google maps to find addresses. The internet to search for names. Satellite maps to see property lines.

Go for it. I must say, I might not have loved the work as much if I had had to travel a lot. I was able to stick close to home - north Louisiana territory was all I ever covered.

I've spent the last 25 years doing legal work as far removed from that as possible; I'm a public interest lawyer. That said, if anyone could use a notary in the field (I'm in DeSoto Parish) or someone to do some follow-up work on a part time basis, email me at rita205 at yahoo.com.

TD ~ Glad to see you're still posting. . . I noticed the Haynesville thread pretty much died out once the one with the gift of bloviation took over. I definitely understand what you're saying about the greed factor. Our family has been offered $2000 an acre bonus which we thought was a very generous offer, but they're only offering 20% royalty instead of the 25% that seems to have become fairly standard. Everyone keeps warning us that difference of 5% can be a HUGE difference. I would appreciate your thoughts on that. Also, have you heard any credible info regarding the Messenger well ~ we've been told repeatedly that the success of our area depends largely on the success of the Messenger well (although we're also not all that far from the Martin Field in Red River Parish.)

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at Oklahoma and at USL

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you're showing your age blueridge.

you are also old