During his nine years practicing law with a small firm in northern Mississippi, Bill Knight learned the most emotional cases involved children, he said.

But land issues - easements, power lines and anything else that could happen when one property met another - came in a close second, and that's not even counting the state and federal lands Knight will deal with as Natrona County's new attorney.

"I think I'll fit right in," Knight said Thursday.

While federal land issues are rare east of the Mississippi River, his background as a real estate attorney and landowner will serve him well in central Wyoming, he said.

"In the old English system, land is wealth," Knight said. "I appreciate anyone's zeal and zest in defending property rights."

After a search dating to last fall, the county commissioners hired Knight. The county attorney position pays between $70,000 and $90,000 per year depending on qualifications.

Unlike most Wyoming counties, the Natrona County attorney does not prosecute crimes. That job belongs to the Seventh District Attorney's office, which has its offices in the Natrona County Courthouse but receives funding from the state.

Knight will greatly ease the burden of interim County Attorney Heather Duncan-Malone, who filled in after former County Attorney Eric Nelson went to work for the Casper firm Brown, Drew & Massey at the end of December.

During her six-month tenure, Duncan-Malone had to deal with wind tower regulations and a petition to reverse the Feb. 3 decision allowing Chevron Global Power Co. to build its 11-tower wind farm; a dispute over whether a lecture on Buddhism at the county library was preaching; new county authority about large-acreage subdivisions; and giving advice to the five commissioners.

Now its Knight's turn for those and other matters including the county's relationship to the nonprofit Wyoming Medical Center Inc., which leases the county's hospital assets; zoning; liquor licenses; recreation including the county's management of the federally owned Alcova Reservoir; and quite probably strip clubs.

Land and energy - from fossil fuels to wind farms - intrigue him, he said. "You've got old and new here."

Natrona and other Wyoming counties are grappling with how to harness one of the state's resources without having wind turbines consistently cluttering the landscape, Knight said.

"In some respects, you're going to be the first going down that road," Knight said.

His own road to Natrona County took some hard turns.

Knight grew up in eastern Arkansas, where his grandfathers were sharecroppers.

About 1980, the tire factory where his father worked closed, and a severe downturn in agriculture devastated the local economy, he said. So Knight's family moved to be near relatives in Pontotoc, Miss., where his father bought a small grocery store, he said.

In the late 1980s, Knight attended Mississippi State University where he played defensive lineman and defensive end for the Bulldogs.

As graduation loomed, several NFL teams approached him with invitations to try out, but he had no interest in going pro, he said.

In 1990, he graduated from MSU with a degree in business administration, and began working for Roadway Package Systems - now known as FedEx Ground - first in operations management and then sales, he said.

After five years, he finally yielded to the desire to become a lawyer.

In 2000, Knight graduated from the University of Mississippi in Oxford with a law degree and a concentration in real estate.

During breaks from his nine-year job at a small northern Mississippi firm, he vacationed in the Rocky Mountains when he could, he said.

"I've talked about moving to Montana, Wyoming or Colorado for years; I came out here for recreational purposes," Knight said. "I'm a huge big-game hunter and like to snow ski."

He convinced his wife, Stephanie, to move to Wyoming with their two boys ages 6 and 10. This fall, she will teach reading for special education students at Dean Morgan Junior High School, he said.

Knight took the Wyoming bar exam, passed, and began his job hunt, he said. "I started looking for jobs, and here we are."

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at tom.morton@trib.com. Read his blog at tribtown.trib.com/TomMorton/blog.