Leadership Quote by Bill Janklow

“I like practicing law” lands like an odd little confession from Bill Janklow because it runs against the grain of how power usually gets narrated. Politicians are trained to talk about service, values, or “the people.” Janklow reaches for something narrower and almost private: the work itself. That specificity is the tell. He’s not selling a cause; he’s signaling a temperament.

In context, Janklow’s career was built on hard-edged executive authority - sheriff, attorney general, four-term South Dakota governor, then congressman - with a reputation for being combative, impatient with critics, and relentlessly strategic. Law, for someone like that, isn’t merely a profession; it’s a set of tools: leverage, argument, procedure, the ability to turn conflict into a winnable format. Saying he “likes” it softens the blade without hiding it. The understatement works as image-management: not the caricature of the bully, but the craftsman who enjoys the craft.

The subtext is appetite. Practicing law means pressing claims, interrogating stories, narrowing messy human events into rules and outcomes. It also telegraphs comfort inside institutions even when you’re fighting them - a politician’s paradox. Coming from Janklow, the line reads less like civic-minded pride and more like a glimpse of what animated him: contest, control, and the satisfaction of making systems bend.

There’s an accidental irony too. Janklow’s public legacy was repeatedly shaped by legal consequences, most notably the fatal 2003 car crash and his later conviction. The “like” in that sentence starts to sound not innocent but revealing: he enjoyed the arena, even when the arena eventually judged him back.