Richard W. Olson was born on July 25, 1944, in Northwood, North Dakota. He was born during the Second World War and grew up in a state that had joined the Union in 1889.
Northwood lies in eastern North Dakota, a region where the state's public universities at Grand Forks and Fargo later formed the setting for his higher education and early legal career.
Olson received a Juris Doctor from the University of North Dakota School of Law. The school was founded in 1899 as the first professional school within the university and gained approval from the American Bar Association in 1923. During his law studies he served on the editorial staff of the North Dakota Law Review from 1973 to 1974; the journal originated as the school's Law Bulletin, first published in 1914.
He earned a Bachelor of Science from North Dakota State University in 1966. At that time the institution was called North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Sciences; it had been founded in 1890 as North Dakota Agricultural College, the state's land-grant institution, and took its later name in 1960.
Olson received a Master of Education from Montana State University in 1971. The Bozeman institution was established in 1893 as the Agricultural College of the State of Montana and became Montana State University in 1965. His graduate study overlapped with his Air Force service, which lasted from 1967 to 1971.
Olson served as a captain in the United States Air Force from 1967 to 1971. The Air Force had become an independent military service in 1947, and his service during this period coincided with the later years of the Vietnam War.
After his admission to the bar, Olson worked at the University of North Dakota School of Law as a clinical instructor in its Legal Aid Clinic from 1974 to 1975. Clinical legal education gives law students supervised experience with real client matters, and the program at that school was part of the law school's professional training. From 1975 to 1976 he was assistant city attorney for Grand Forks, North Dakota, the city in which he later established his law practice.
Olson was admitted to practice in North Dakota in 1974 and in Minnesota in 1976. He later served as city attorney for Emerado, North Dakota, from 1984. He practiced as a partner with the Grand Forks law firm Olson, Juntunen & Sandberg, Ltd., where his work covered general civil practice, banking and corporate matters, real estate, probate, personal injury and negligence, and agricultural law. He also served as an interim county judge for Nelson County and as a special assistant Grand Forks County attorney.
Olson belonged to several legal associations that serve different levels of the profession. The American Bar Association, founded in 1878, is the national voluntary association of American lawyers. The State Bar Association of North Dakota and the Minnesota State Bar Association serve lawyers admitted to practice in those states, while the Grand Forks County Bar Association provides a local forum for lawyers in that county.
He was also a member of Phi Alpha Delta, a professional law fraternity, from 1972 to 1974, during his law school years.
