Appalachian School of Law (ASL)

During the fiscal year of 2022-2023, 61 new full-time j.d. Students matriculated at asl, for a total enrollment of 152 full-time students as of october 5, 2022. of those new students, 83% (51 students) listed their home state as one of the 13 states defined as making up "appalachia" by the Appalachian regional commission, while 51% (32 students) were from Virginia or a bordering state. That same year, asl awarded the j.d. Degree to 54 students. of those graduates, half (27 students) have passed a bar exam and begun to practice Law in one of the 13 Appalachian states. A survey of the class of 2022 taken nine months after graduation showed 22.5% of the respondents practicing in the counties constituting the Appalachian region. Asl is actively contributing to the elimination of "legal deserts" in rural appalachia, a problem identified by the american bar association in 2020 as counties having fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. of the three states with more than 60 "legal desert" counties, two-virginia and georgia-are part of the Appalachian region. The aba estimated that Virginia and Georgia each would need more than 700 additional lawyers to eliminate the "legal desert" designation. In the years between asl's first graduating class and 2020, 62% of the new lawyers resident in the seven counties surrounding asl received their j.d. From asl; the next highest contributing Law School only accounted for 6% of the new lawyers in those seven counties.