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Point-Counterpoint
on
The
Appalachian School of Law
In
the last edition of Bacon’s Rebellion (“Law
Schools
and Baseball Stadiums?”
October
4, 2003
)
I asked what people in Southwest Virginia
were thinking when they funded the Appalachian
School of Law. Did
Virginia,
I queried, really need more lawyers? Does a law
school, I wondered, contribute to the long-term
economic competitiveness of this mountainous region?
Would it not have made more sense, I suggested, to
have invested the same resources in promoting
R&D and product innovation in a leading industry
such as mining machinery and services?
Well,
I found out what they were thinking. Two written
responses are worthy of being quoted in full. But
they also raise issues, which I will address below.
First
this:
I
just read your article about the Appalachian School
of Law and how senseless it was of the people of
Southwest Virginia
to think that their community may benefit from
forming an institution of higher learning.
I
graduated from ASL in 2002. I was not from
Southwest Virginia, but chose to attend ASL to earn my law degree. I
am not the minority. If you would have done a little
bit of research, you would have learned that only a
very small percentage of students at ASL are from
Southwest Virginia. The rest have moved to the area, where they pay
rent, buy homes, groceries, cars, clothes, etc.
Also, if you had made a few phone calls, it would
have been easy to obtain statistics on the effect
that ASL has had on the local community. The figures
were in the millions before the school even reached
capacity. The school now boasts over 300 students.
Instead
of knocking a community that had the gumption to try
something different to get the economy going, maybe
you should applaud them on their innovation. Go to
Grundy and look around. See the impact the school
has had on the community.
I
know that you could probably care less about ASL or
Southwest Virginia
and you write articles only for the sake of writing
them. But, if
you are truly concerned for the citizens of
Southwest Virginia, then put some work into your articles and see what
is really happening. These
people need to be applauded, not chastised. You've
got this wrong and I challenge you to correct your
mistake.
J.
Todd Ross
HUNTER,
SMITH & DAVIS, LLP
Kingsport,
TN
37664
tross@hsdlaw.com
Saving
substantive comments for below, I would interject
only that I very much do care about the
people of
Southwest Virginia. I spent four years covering the coal industry for
the Roanoke Times in the early 1980s and have
made numerous trips back to the region since then. I
made many friends there and maintain many of those
friendships still. My aim is not to belittle the
efforts of the people to improve their lot but to
stimulate thinking by providing a friendly and
well-meaning outsider’s perspective.
And
then this:
I
just read your piece on what you proclaim to be the
folly of Grundy. I have served on a board at the
Appalachian School of Law since its inception and
have taught there. It is a truly remarkable
institution that serves an underserved region. Yes,
there are no law schools in the Appalachian region,
at least not the southern portion of it. And none of
the Virginia
law schools you mention has curricula whose aim
is to train attorneys for the meat and potatoes
practices of small-town
Appalachia
or elsewhere. Rather, the Virginia
law schools to the east of us by and large lust for
the bright lights of big-firm corporate-type
practices in places like NY, DC, Atlanta
and Houston. The sort of law that is practiced here, and in
much of small-town America, is simply off their radar screens. The only
exception to this may be Pat Robinson’s Regent
University School of Law, which many prospective
students shun because of the religious orientation
imposed on the school by its founder.
Meanwhile, Buchanan
County
seems quite pleased, thank you, with its offspring.
I say this because it was announced yesterday that
plans are being made for a new 300-student pharmacy
school in Grundy, to capitalize on the success of
the law school there. And, a few months ago, at an
ASL meeting, I was shown preliminary drawings for a
multi-college higher education center proposed for
construction behind the law school. It would be a
smaller version of the Southwest Virginia Higher
Education Center in Abingdon, and we were told
several colleges then had expressed interest in
offering courses in this proposed center.
Frank Kilgore, a Wise
County attorney and creative thinker, appears to be the man
behind the pharmacy school, much like another
innovative Wise
County
attorney, Joe Wolfe, was the person who had the idea
for the law school (and donated a cool $1 million of
his personal funds to help get it started). I think
it was a Buchanan
County
supervisor who was quoted in yesterday’s Roanoke
Times as saying they would like to change the
economy of their county from one that relies on
extractive industries to one based on knowledge-based
industries. And Kilgore chimed in with a statement
to the effect that the jobs and spin-off benefits of
a pharmacy school will not flee overseas after a few
years.
Also, the mining equipment industry, which you
glorify, is closing shop in our region in droves. No
one has suggested that more technology or better
ideas would help them stay in business here. Their
market simply is drying up. The most recent was Joy
Mining Equipment whose Abingdon plant will close
about the 17th of this month. That plant, which I
know fairly well, has made very sophisticated
long-wall miners and Joy is one of the most revered
names in mining machinery. Neither of these was
enough to keep Joy in this business, at least not
here.
Investing in
George
Mason
University
rather than a baseball stadium well may make sense
for NOVA. And with its VCU connection, I can see how
it is possible that
Richmond
would benefit more from a new arts academy than an
upscale performing arts center. But I strongly
question whether you got it right for
Southwest Virginia. None of the best and most innovative minds here,
including those involved in the coal mining business
and the economics of this region, has even suggested
what you declared to be a certainty. That tells me
something.
Jackson S. White, Jr.
The White Law Office
Abingdon, VA
jackwhite@whitelawoffice.com
Let
me credit my correspondents at the outset for
illuminating aspects of the law school that I did not
fully appreciate when I wrote the column two weeks
ago. Clearly, the Appalachian School of Law is doing
the right thing by instructing students in a kind of
law – small-town practice – that the larger law
schools ignore. Equally clearly, the school has been
successful in attracting students from outside the
region. Thus, it has become, in economic parlance, a
primary
industry – providing services to customers from outside
the region, or providing services locally that
Southwest Virginians would have had to go elsewhere
to obtain. Bringing economic activity into the
region is vastly preferable to investing in
projects, as many communities do, that simply
shuffle economic activity from one location within
the region to another.
Also,
I will concede, the pharmacy school initiative is
news to me. I presume that, as with the law school,
the curriculum will be geared to pharmacy practices
in smaller communities and, will be designed, like
the law school, to attract students from outside the
region. Thus, the program would address a real need
– the local shortage of pharmacists – while
creating another primary industry.
Southwest
Virginia’s
investment in a knowledge-
intensive
industry like education represents a dramatic break
from past thinking and is to be applauded.
No one was thinking remotely like this 20 years ago
when I was writing about mine worker strikes and
strip mining. I did not sufficiently acknowledge in
my last column the importance of this fundamental
change in philosophy. My bad. Twenty lashes.
However,
Misters Ross and White miss the larger point that I
was making:
Investing in
knowledge creation is good. But investing in
knowledge creation that leverages a prominent local
industry is even better.
Southwest
Virginia
will never become a major center of legal practice
the way, say, Washington,
D.C.,
is, or, on a smaller scale, even Richmond
is. It will never become a major pharmaceutical
center. Institutions for the instruction of law and
pharmacy do ensure that the region is well
supplied with lawyers and pharmacists -- no small
thing -- but do
nothing to build any primary industry other than the
schools themselves. Furthermore, they do nothing to
leverage the existing businesses and human capital
in the region.
Mining
in
Virginia’s
thinning coal seams may be in irreversible decline.
Mine machinery manufacturing may be in retreat –
talk about bad timing, I was unaware also of Joy
Machinery’s decision to close its Abingdon
facility. But there still are numerous companies
active in coal mining, equipment manufacturing,
distribution and supply, engineering, geology and
services, and the region still possesses a deep
reservoir of skills in these fields, not to mention
access to the incomparable department of mining engineering
nearby at Virginia Tech. And, though local markets for these skills may be shrinking, the global
market for them is growing.
By
failing to invest in its primary industry, I would
argue, community leaders of Southwest
Virginia
are writing off the greatest economic assets their
region possesses. While coal mining in Virginia
may be unsalvageable, I’m not convinced
that
mining services
are in irreversible decline. If Southwest Virginia,
backed by the Tobacco Indemnification and
Community Revitalization Commission, Virginia Tech
and other state agencies made the commitment, the
region could, perhaps, become a center for R&D, product
innovation and services related to underground coal
mining – an industry that, in the obsession with
“high tech” industries, every other state and
region in the country has largely written off.
Finally,
let me stress, I am not -- repeat, not,
not, not -- singling out Southwest Virginia
for faulty thinking. As noted in my last column,
I’m dismayed by community boosters across the state
who support projects reflecting no
discernible strategic thought whatsoever, the latest
excrescence being the competition between Richmond
and Virginia
Beach
for the biggest, baddest convention center. The difference is that the
Richmond
and Hampton Roads economies have greater depth than Southwest Virginia's; they can survive a bout of extravagant foolishness. My friends in Virginia’s
coalfields have no such luxury. If
they don't get it right the first time, they may not get a second
chance.
--
October 20, 2003
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