Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504290022
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Lawyers and others in the coalfields are working to establish an independent law school at Norton or in some other coalfields community. They estimate the school could mean over $10 million annually to their struggling regional economy.
The State Council for Higher Education at its meeting at Hollins College on April 11 gave the school's boosters the right to use its proposed name, Appalachian Regional Law School, and to take the first steps toward making the school a reality.
It would be Virginia's seventh law school. The state now has three public and three private degree-granting law schools with a total enrollment of 3,627. The closest one to the coalfields is a four-hour drive, at Washington & Lee University in Lexington. The University of Tennessee's law school at Knoxville, the closest out-of-state school, is about a three-hour drive from Norton.
The proposal for another law school started a little over a year ago as a dream of Norton lawyer Joe Wolfe, who is chairman of the school's steering committee. Wolfe was motivated by how tough it had been for college students working as interns in his law office to get into a law school, even though they had good grades.
American Bar Association figures show only one in two students applying to law school is admitted.
In the 1992-93 school year, according to the ABA spokeswoman Nancy Slonim, 139,306 people took the Law School Admission Test, fewer than that actually applied to a school and about half of the applicants - 42,093 first-year students - were enrolled in U.S. law schools.
Lu Ellsworth, a professor at Clinch Valley College in Wise and secretary of the law school steering committee, said the committee is working with the ABA looking for a consultant to study the feasibility of a school. The ABA requires a feasibility study as part of its accreditation process.
Typically, a law school applies to the ABA for accreditation after its first year of operation. It then undergoes a self-study and is inspected by the ABA's accrediting committee. If it substantially complies with the association's standards it is given provisional accreditation and then has three years to fully meet the standards.
The school also will have to comply with requirements of the State Council for Higher Education before it's allowed to award degrees to students. Those requirements relate to the size and quality of the faculty, the course work and accreditation. The idea is to make sure that students get a bona-fide academic experience, said Mike McDowell, a spokesman for the council.
For now, the school's supporters are preparing for a grand opening in a few days of a temporary office in the NationsBank building in downtown Norton, a 5,000-population city in Wise County. The committee has picked a recently renovated former hotel building on the other end of the same block as the likely first home for the law school.
The school was chartered by the State Corporation Commission in January and the steering committee is in the final stages of acquiring its non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service, Ellsworth said.
Plans call for the school to admit its first class in 1997. It would offer the juris doctor degree with an emphasis on administrative law, particularly in dispute resolution.
The school's boosters expect to attract some students from far Southwest Virginia and others from across the nation.
To help finance the institution's start-up costs, the committee has been seeking contributions from private benefactors and talking with state and local officials about the possibility getting some government economic development funds.
The school "will bring vital dollars to the region" through its spending and the spending of its faculty and students, says a document intended to explain the need for the school.
Additionally, the school would help speed revitalization of Norton's downtown and help attract other new employers to the region; and its faculty and students would help enrich the region's quality of life, the committee said. The school would also enhance the "status and visibility of Southwest Virginia" and "change the image of the area to a more refined, educational society," supporters say.
Wolfe brought the school idea to him last year at a time when many mines were closing and laying off their workers, Ellsworth said. A preliminary economic impact study, prepared by Ellsworth and reviewed by the staff of the Lenowisco Planning District Commission, estimates the school by its fourth instructional year, 2000-2001, would contribute $10.14 million a year to the regional economy.
Ron Flanary, executive director of the Planning District Commission, said he agreed to serve on the law school's steering committee because of the economic development potential the school offered, which he compared with that of a medium-sized manufacturing facility.
The region has faced a "pretty daunting task" in replacing the coal industry, which has been the cornerstone of the region's economy for so long, he said. But he added that big strides have already been made to diversify that economy.
When fully operational, the school would serve 335 students with a professional staff of 28, including 18 faculty members, and a support staff of 17, according to a plan developed by the school's boosters.
The school's proposed operating budgets have been reviewed by administrators of other law schools in Virginia and Kentucky, who have said they are realistic, Ellsworth said.
In the fourth instructional year, the school would have a total operational budget of $3.6 million, of which $3.4 million would be covered by student tuition and the remainder by private donations.
by CNB