A Bigger Place Than You Might Think
The Appalachian Region, as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, stretches from southern New York to northern Mississippi along the Appalachian Mountains. It encompasses 423 counties across 13 states and is home to approximately 26 million people. It includes deeply rural communities, mid-size cities, and metropolitan areas, with West Virginia as the only state located entirely within the region. Appalachia also defies easy economic categorization. The region includes university medical centers and advanced manufacturing operations, agricultural valleys and energy corridors, financial institutions and technology companies, tourist destinations and industrial communities. In many places, traditional industries now exist alongside substantial new investment and economic development.
That variety produces interesting legal work, and a career spent practicing here has convinced me that Appalachia is an underappreciated place to practice law. The work is sophisticated, the professional community is close-knit, and the region is changing. Lawyers practicing here have the opportunity to work on matters that reach well beyond the region while developing the kind of knowledge and relationships that come only from spending time in a place. There is something particularly rewarding about doing consequential work in a community and region you actually know.
Sophisticated Work Does Not Require a Big City
One of the persistent misconceptions about rural and regional practice is that the work must somehow be less sophisticated than the work performed in a major legal market. My experience has been the opposite. Appalachian practice can involve complex commercial litigation, banking and financial services, real estate and development, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, arbitration, and disputes involving parties and lawyers from across the country. The industries operating here face complicated legal problems just as they do anywhere else, and a matter pending in a relatively small Appalachian community may involve a national company, significant financial stakes, and lawyers located hundreds of miles away.
What can be different is the breadth of experience available to the lawyer handling those problems. In markets that are not divided into narrow professional silos, lawyers often develop versatility. Younger lawyers may receive direct client contact, take depositions, argue motions, appear in court, and manage meaningful portions of matters relatively early in their careers. With appropriate support and supervision, that responsibility develops something difficult to learn from a book or CLE program: judgment. You begin to understand not simply how to complete an assignment, but how the pieces of a matter fit together, what matters to the client, and what the client should do next. That kind of responsibility can also allow a lawyer to develop a professional identity relatively early in a career.
A National Platform and a Regional Practice
The evolution of national and multi-office law firms has made regional practice even more interesting. A lawyer no longer necessarily has to choose between practicing in a smaller community and having access to the resources associated with a national platform. From an Appalachian office, lawyers can work with colleagues across the country, draw upon specialists in different industries and areas of law, and represent clients whose operations extend far beyond the region. Technology has made collaboration across offices ordinary, but it has not eliminated the value of having lawyers who are actually present in the markets where clients operate and disputes arise.
The benefit runs in both directions. A lawyer practicing regularly in a region develops knowledge that is difficult to replicate from afar, including familiarity with courts and institutions as well as an understanding of the industries, geography, professional community, and economic circumstances surrounding a matter. The national platform provides reach and specialized resources, while the regional practice provides context. The combination allows a lawyer to build a practice extending well beyond the place where the lawyer happens to sit without giving up the advantages that come from being deeply connected to that place.
The Value of Knowing the Place
That connection becomes particularly important when litigation brings a company or its primary counsel into an unfamiliar jurisdiction. Good local counsel should offer much more than assistance with admission to a particular court or knowledge of the local rules. The written rules matter, of course, but understanding a jurisdiction involves more than reading them. Every court has its own practices and expectations, and every community has economic and institutional context that may matter to a dispute. A lawyer who regularly practices in a place can help a litigation team understand which local considerations are important and, just as importantly, which ones are not.
The best litigation teams I have worked with recognize this and treat lawyers on the ground as members of the strategic team rather than as a procedural requirement. Likewise, good local counsel learn the case, understand the client's objectives, identify issues that may not be apparent from a distance, and contribute substantively to the representation. There is no mysticism to local knowledge. It is context, and context helps lawyers exercise better judgment. That principle is hardly unique to Appalachia. It matters whenever lawyers are asked to advocate effectively in a place they do not regularly practice. Appalachia simply provides a particularly good illustration of it because a dispute involving a national company and lawyers from several states may still find its way to a courthouse in a relatively small community. The issues can be national in scope while knowledge of the place remains valuable.
Reputation Travels Quickly
Smaller legal communities also teach an important professional lesson about reputation. You are likely to encounter the same lawyers again, and today’s opposing counsel may later become co-counsel, a referral source, or a colleague in a bar or community organization. Judges see many of the same practitioners over time, and clients and business leaders operate within overlapping professional networks. Preparation, candor, civility, and follow-through therefore become part of the reputation a lawyer carries from one matter to the next. There is a healthy accountability in knowing that a scorched-earth approach to today's dispute does not erase itself when the case ends.
For me, the relationships that grow from that environment have been among the most rewarding aspects of Appalachian practice. The bar can be competitive without becoming anonymous, and professional familiarity does not require sacrificing vigorous advocacy. If anything, repeated interaction creates an incentive to be both a strong advocate and the kind of lawyer others are willing to work with again. Over time, those relationships make the practice feel less like a collection of unrelated matters and more like participation in a professional community.
The Law Feels Connected to Something
There are also rewards that are harder to capture in a description of a practice area. There is something satisfying about spending the morning working through a difficult commercial issue, talking that afternoon with colleagues or clients several states away, and then driving home through the mountains. The surrounding landscape is part of ordinary life rather than something reserved for vacation. A demanding practice remains demanding, of course, but it can exist alongside a connection to the outdoors, to a community, and to a place that is difficult to separate from the work itself.
The work also tends to feel tangible. You may drive past the property involved in a dispute, watch a development move from documents on your desk to construction along a road you regularly travel, or understand why a particular employer or investment matters because you know the community where it is located. None of that changes a lawyer’s professional obligations, but it does provide perspective. Cases and transactions do not exist only in pleadings, contracts, conference rooms, and courtrooms. They involve businesses, employees, investments, and communities. Practicing close to those things is a regular reminder that legal advice has consequences beyond the four corners of a document, and that perspective can make us better counselors.
A Place With Room to Build
There is another reason lawyers should take rural practice seriously: many of these communities need them. A 2026 report from the West Virginia Commission on the Future of the Practice of Law noted that 46 of West Virginia's 55 counties qualify as "legal deserts," using the American Bar Association's measure of fewer than one lawyer for every 1,000 residents. The Commission also reported a decline in the number of active, in-state attorneys over the preceding decade and substantial expected retirements among private practitioners. Those numbers present serious access-to-justice concerns, but they also illustrate the extent to which there are communities where capable lawyers can become genuinely useful.
That does not mean every lawyer should leave a city for a small town, nor does it mean rural practice is right for everyone. It does mean that geography should not be treated as a proxy for professional opportunity. A place with fewer lawyers may offer greater responsibility, stronger professional relationships, and room to develop a practice that matters to the community around it. For young lawyers in particular, the question should not simply be where the largest legal market is. Better questions might be where they will receive responsibility, where they can develop lasting relationships, where their knowledge can become valuable, and where they can build both a practice and a life.
There Is Good Work Here
Appalachia is only one example. Lawyers practicing in smaller communities throughout the country can tell similar stories about sophisticated matters, early responsibility, close client relationships, and the professional value of knowing a place well. For lawyers who practice primarily in major metropolitan markets, regions like Appalachia are worth understanding. Companies invest here, businesses operate here, and disputes arise here. As the region's economy continues to evolve, its legal needs will evolve with it, and lawyers who understand both the legal issues and the places where those issues arise will continue to have an important role.
I have found in Appalachia the things I hoped to find in a legal career: challenging work, meaningful responsibility, good lawyers to work with and against, and a sense that the work is connected to something beyond itself. The reward of practicing here is not discovering that an interesting legal career is possible despite being in Appalachia. It is discovering how much more interesting a legal career can be because you are here.
Jonah Samples is a senior associate and commercial litigator in the West Virginia office of Nelson Mullins, where he represents companies in business disputes across the Appalachian region. He has litigated cases from pleadings through appeal in both trial and appellate courts, with a focus on clients in the energy, financial services, and real estate industries. Jonah's courtroom work draws on his parallel practice as an economic development lawyer, in which he counsels businesses and organizations on the legal issues that shape investment and growth in Appalachia. That background gives him a practical command of the region's industries, institutions, and business relationships, which is often what decides a commercial dispute. He applies that knowledge at every stage of a case, from assessing early risk to framing arguments for trial and appellate courts.
DRI Foundation President Catherine C. Dugan of Peterson White LLP is a litigation attorney who has practiced in the insurance defense industry since 2004. She has handled claims from workers’ compensation to general liability to coverage and has worked in private practice and in-house. For most of her career, Cate’s focus has been on defending employers and insurance carriers in workers’ compensation claims, assisting her clients as they navigate necessary administrative procedures, and defending claims through litigation, as necessary..jpg?sfvrsn=a3fa56cf_1 "2026-ProfessionalLiabilitySeminar-TheVoice-NewsletterAd-300x250 (1)")
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