On March 28, 2019, 30 students from my Dickinson Law Entrepreneurship Law: Company Creation class, Dean Gary Gildin, and I visited Legacy Athletic, in Hanover, PA. Following our tour of the manufacturing/warehouse facilities, we had a Q&A with co-founder/CEO Paige Wingert ’92 and Legacy’s counsel, Jeremy Frey, partner at Barley Snyder. This was a fun and tremendously valuable experience for all of us!
There were several educational goals of the trip. What I realized as a practicing attorney was that there are great benefits to seeing the operations of the business one represents. In class, I emphasize the importance of knowing a business client from the inside. It’s not enough to simply chat 
with an executive in a conference room. Get out of the office and go visit the client! When Jeremy spoke, he concurred with this philosophy. He stated that in addition to his visits to Legacy’s facility, he also attended one of their trade shows this year. The more you know, the better you can understand and represent your client.
Visiting a business client can give you a sense of the company culture, which can also be important to the attorney. When you walk through Legacy’s front door, you find yourself in a vintage-inspired, rustic, well appointed lobby. Walking throughout the building you notice that this decor is all around the company – even in the conference room and meeting area! The presence of the American flag in numerous rooms reminds all who enter that this is a business operating with American pride.
During the tour, we saw many neat items being made – hats, frames, 
t-shirts, etc! It was truly fantastic to see the employees creating products right before our eyes. Everything in the facility was high tech and impressive. Here you can see that they were making wooden Penn State frames when I passed through! It was such an interesting process to watch! Be sure to look for these frames next time you are in State College shopping!
Another goal of the trip was to afford the students an opportunity to learn from Paige and Jeremy. Paige kicked our day off by talking about being an entrepreneur and starting Legacy with his roommate, Mark Landgren ’92, while they were second year law students at Dickinson Law. He talked about early year hardships, what worked and what didn’t, and his leadership style. Jeremy, as Legacy counsel for the last 10 years or so, provided outstanding legal insights. He spoke to the recent merger with collegiate apparel company League, and provided advice to the law students when it comes to representing small businesses. We were fortunate that these gentlemen had the time to share their experiences with all of us!
As I said above, this was a tremendously valuable trip and a hit with the students. Additionally, from reading the comments below, I would say that my goals were achieved and even exceeded!
Sarah Phillips ’20, “I am very grateful to Dickinson Law and Professor Prince for organizing the trip to Legacy. It was inspiring to connect with an entrepreneur, who was able to take his legal education from Dickinson Law, and use it to create a successful company. By learning about both the legal and business considerations from Paige, I feel prepared and excited to hopefully practice business law after graduation. I know that the practical skills we learned on our trip – from touring the facility, to learning about management and operations – will better prepare me for practice, and maybe even to run my own company one day.”
Ben Forbes, ’19, “Our tour of Legacy’s facility gave us an up-close and personal look at what a business client might look like. We learned that to understand a business, you need to see the business. Paige and Jeremy provided our class with valuable insight into the relationship of a lawyer and their entrepreneur clients. To be a lawyer you need to do competent work for your client’s business. To be a great lawyer you need to understand your client’s business. We are here to be great lawyers, and the insight we gained from visiting Legacy is a valuable step in that direction.”
Dilawar Ali Fazal, LLM Student from Pakistan, “Being an entrepreneur who has faced struggles, I specifically liked the entrepreneurial struggle which Paige, the CEO of Legacy, talked about in the question answer session. His struggles and business problems resonated with my entrepreneurial struggles and made me realize that the struggles which entrepreneurs face are similar no matter which part of the world they are in. We are separated by distances, differences in culture, language and values, yet our problems are the same. So is the case with business organizations; no matter where they operate they face similar issues and problems.”
Alana Goycochea, ’20, “As a law student, it is often hard to envision the big picture of how a business works, however, during our tour of Legacy, Paige Wingert allowed us to gain a different perspective by visiting Legacy’s manufacturing facility in person. This experience allowed me to have a much better understanding of what legal issues may arise for businesses. Further, Paige welcomed student’s questions and provided insight into the problems that CEOs encounter on a routine basis.”
Zach Gihorski, ’20, “Hearing Paige’s story really touched me. You often read about the “American Dream” – but Paige really did it. He built a company in the heart of rural America, provided quality good paying blue-collar jobs that support his community every day. Legacy’s impact on the community is something you could tell meant a lot to him. When asked about the next steps for him – his answer was almost entirely focused on making sure the next generation of Legacy’s leadership team was in a place to succeed. It is rare to find leadership like that.”
Zach continued, “From a student perspective, it is such a great opportunity to be able to get out of the classroom and participate in hands-on learning. Walking through the warehouse at Legacy seeing the workers – really brought a lot of the course material from class to life. Plus, having a chance to sit down with the CEO – Paige – who has been with the company since Legacy’s humble beginning and ask him questions was a student experience of a life time. Dickinson Law prides itself on ‘practicing greatness’ so it did not surprise me to find out that Paige was a Dickinson Alumn. However, I was surprised with how open, honest, and transparent he was with my class. It speaks volumes about his character and how much he values being an alumn.”
Our thanks go out to Paige, Jeremy and the entire Legacy family for allowing us to disrupt their day.
To stay up to date on the very latest happenings at Legacy, follow them on Facebook at: facebook.com/LegacyAthletic or on Instagram at: instagram.com/Legacy92
