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Welcome Message from the President
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One Last Try
At 7:00 AM on Monday, November 5, 1979, Potomac School of Law Dean Maurice Kirk and I met with James P. White, Consultant to the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association, and Mr. Richard Nahstoll, Chairman of the Accreditation Committee, at the Williamsburg Lodge in Williamsburg, Virginia.
We spent approximately an hour and forty-five minutes over breakfast in conversation about Potomac.
I must say that, on the surface at least, our discussion if not entirely cooperative and agreeable, was amicable and civil. A far cry from my last face to face meeting with Dick Nahstoll in Chicago.
We began the discussion by Dean Kirk recounting the historical antecedents of Potomac and particularly his own involvement from 1977. Then I described my connection with the law school beginning in the spring of 1979. We then began to detail the current situation of the school. I spelled out the financial circumstances of Potomac in specific terms; the $400,000 in debts; the uncollected tuition; pending lawsuits by Hurley and others.
We talked about enrollment and tuition levels, the size and qualifications of the faculty and the success of Potomac graduates on the Georgia bar examinations.
Dean White then asked how, in light of the financial picture of the school, it was possible for us to certify that the school was ready for accreditation. I replied that I had submitted a composition proposal to the creditors of the school, and I expected that by the time an ABA inspection would occur, the debt would be restructured as a manageable long term obligation.
We then asked whether there was any possibility of a temporary approval or a temporary candidate status, such as the regional accrediting agencies provide.
Nahstoll responded by saying that the accreditation committee already had a number of problem schools on its agenda, and he was reluctant to get involved with another one.
I told him that we sensitive to those concerns, and that we would be willing to have the American Bar Association appoint a committee, a receiver or a conservator to take charge of the school so that at least the students who had already invested so much time, money and effort might be able to complete their education.
White and Nahstoll agreed that such a procedure would not be possible. They said there was no shortcut to provisional approval, and the financial condition of the law school, standing alone, would be sufficient reason to deny provisional approval.
We then tried to explore other avenues, including the possibility of a merger with an existing accredited law school; specifically, Cooley Law School. White said that even if a merger were to be approved, the credits earned at Potomac would not be transferable.
We talked about the possibility of a Cooley branch in Washington. White insisted that a branch would be measured by the ABA exactly the same way as a free standing school and that no procedural shortcuts would be available.
We gave White and Nahstoll copies of the Peat Marwick audit. White took exception to a footnoted comment to the effect that the school had applied for ABA approval. He insisted that, there being no feasibility study and no faculty self study, he did not regard the application as technically complete.
From my perspective we did all we could do. I figuratively took my hat in my hand and begged the gentlemen for merciful consideration of the several hundred hopeful young men and women who had invested so much money, time and hard work in learning the law.
Nahstoll responded by telling the story of the Greek contractor in the movie, "Mr. Blanding’s Dream House." He stands off in a corner of the property, holds up an old picture frame, and viewing the house through the frame, says, "If the beams were straight and the sills were crooked, I’d say, ‘Fix it up.’ If the sills were straight and the beams were crooked, I’d say, ‘Fix it up.’ But I say, ‘Tear it down.’"
White was less allegorical. When I asked him what options he thought might be open to the Potomac upperclassmen, he said they could always sue the founders of the school for fraud in the inducement. I made it clear to him that the current, board, faculty and administration of the school were all acting in complete good faith.
Returning to Washington, I mused again over the complicity of the organized bar in the injury being done to Potomac students. Sure, Hurley was a dreamer; maybe a self serving one; sure DiPietro, Winstead and company were overly sanguine about getting the school approved. But didn’t the whole fiasco really develop because the ABA refused to consider a new school until after it had been launched without their blessing?
My conviction that the American Bar Association was simply opposed to expanding opportunities for legal education was stronger than ever.
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This Page was last updated on:
07/21/2006