What do you do if you are a transactional lawyer with small
amounts of time, but a big desire to make a difference in
your local community? Teach! Thanks to the Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar
Association and the Lawyers' Clearinghouse on Affordable
Housing and Homelessness, transactional lawyers in Boston
are reaching out to under-served neighborhoods by helping
develop workshop curricula and teaching two-hour workshops
on business legal issues to entrepreneurs and nonprofit
community groups.
The Lawyers' Committee started its Economic Justice Project
in September 2001 to provide economic development assistance
to its client communities. The project addresses the
economic impact of racial and ethnic origin discrimination
by providing business legal assistance and education to low-
income entrepreneurs in under-served neighborhoods who are
starting or operating community businesses. This helps the
entrepreneurs achieve economic self-sufficiency and develop
sustainable businesses.
The Clearinghouse administers two pro bono projects for
nonprofit organizations:
The Lawyers' Committee and the Clearinghouse are convinced
that legal education is important to small business owners
and community groups because of the value that a corporate
lawyer can add to a new venture, getting an operation
started and preventing costly problems down the line.
Experienced business lawyers can help alleviate problems by
presenting complex transactional law in a straightforward
manner and responding to practical questions.
The Lawyers' Committee has used transactional lawyers to
develop and continually update a series of legal workshops
on a variety of business law topics, including choice of
entity, borrowing and lending, contracts, commercial real
estate, intellectual property and employment. These
workshops are taught at community-based organizations,
giving the volunteer lawyers the opportunity to meet the
business owners where they work.
The Clearinghouse invites community groups interested in
forming a nonprofit or applying for tax-exempt status to a
Boston firm to attend seminars about the legal process
involved. Since January 2003, the Clearinghouse has
collaborated with the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of
Massachusetts to offer this seminar every six weeks.
Experienced nonprofit lawyers teach these seminars. The
Clearinghouse emphasizes the importance of legal education
by making their seminars mandatory for potential
clients.
Neither the Lawyers' Committee nor the Clearinghouse expects
that their workshop/seminar attendees will become legal
experts. Instead, they believe that the workshops help
entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders know when they need to
reach out for legal assistance, rather than putting off
critical issues until a more significant problem arises.
Additionally, volunteer lawyers are more eager to take on
individuals for pro bono representation when they know that
the individual has had some education and understands the
challenges ahead.
In the end, both the lawyer teachers and their students walk
away with something of value.
Feldman is with the Lawyers' Committee's Economic Justice
Project, in Boston. Her e-mail is jfeldman@lawyerscom.org.
Schneider is with the Lawyers Committee on Affordable
Housing, also in Boston. Her e-mail is
lschneider@lawyersclearinghouse.org.
