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Steven Salcedo ’16 honored with ethics award

[Originally posted by Harvard Law Today, April 6, 2016]

Salcedo_Photo-200x300Harvard Law School 3L Steven Salcedo is among 12 law students recognized by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)-Northeast for “exemplary commitment to ethics in the course of their clinical studies.”

Salcedo was nominated for the award by Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law Amanda Kool, who supervised Salcedo during his more than three semesters of clinical work with the Transactional Law Clinic’s Community Enterprise Project. In her nomination letter, Kool praised Salcedo for his work drafting a guide for immigrant entrepreneurs and helping immigrant clients on issues related to their business ownership, tasks which raised complex ethical issues.

“Put simply, I’ve never met a student more committed to the ethical rules than Steven Salcedo,” wrote Kool in her nomination. “He is far from reckless, but neither is he afraid of blazing (calculated, well-researched) trails to the effective delivery of legal services to the most vulnerable of clients, using the ethical rules as his roadmap each step of the way.”

Salcedo jumped into clinical work through his participation in the Community Enterprise Project of the Transactional Law Clinics (CEP), which allows HLS students to help small business owners, entrepreneurs, and community groups create businesses, obtain permits and licenses, and negotiate contracts and other transactional (non-litigation) services. During his first semester with CEP, he and a fellow student proposed creating a legal resource for immigrant entrepreneurs and those who work with immigrant entrepreneurs. The project was accepted and Salcedo continued with the clinic for an additional semester to see the project to fruition as the project team leader. The first-of-its-kind guide, A Legal Overview of Business Ownership for Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts, was published last fall.

As a result of his work on the publication, Salcedo built a reputation for expertise and decided to stay on for a third semester of clinical work with CEP to continue representing immigrant entrepreneur clients.

In a recent Harvard Gazette article on the CEP, Salcedo said, “Lawyers can’t make economic development happen by themselves, but we can contribute to help solve poverty by enabling people to do what they want to do. We’re like a bridge; we take them from where they are to where they want to be.”

Salcedo is also a recipient of a 2016 Skadden Fellowship. After graduation, he will work at Western New York Law Center in Buffalo, New York, providing transactional legal services to low-income entrepreneurs with the goal of generating jobs, goods and services in under-resourced neighborhoods.

Salcedo will receive the award at a gala reception for the honorees on Monday, April 25, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Boston. Each recipient of a Law Students Ethics Award will also receive a $1,000 check from the ACC-Northeast Chapter.

The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is a global bar association that promotes the common professional and business interests of in-house counsel who work for corporations, associations and other private-sector organizations through information, education, networking opportunities and advocacy initiatives. ACC-Northeast, sponsor of the annual Law Student Ethics Awards, serves the states of Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Taking people ‘to where they want to be’

[Published in the Harvard Gazette, Jan. 22, 2016, and in Harvard Law Today, Jan. 27th 2016]

Law School students help struggling small-time entrepreneurs flourish

By LIZ MINEO/HARVARD STAFF WRITER

Amanda Kool, (red jacket) clinical instructor at Harvard Law School teaches a clinic to teach students how to provide legal services to people who want to start their own small businesses inside 6 Everett Street in the Wasserstein Hall in the Harvard Law School at Harvard University. She is seen with here HLS students, Matthew Diaz, (from far left) Carolyn Ruiz, and Steven Salcedo. Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Amanda Kool, (red jacket) clinical instructor at Harvard Law School teaches a clinic to teach students how to provide legal services to people who want to start their own small businesses inside 6 Everett Street in the Wasserstein Hall in the Harvard Law School at Harvard University. She is seen with here HLS students, Matthew Diaz, (from far left) Carolyn Ruiz, and Steven Salcedo. Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Hailing from Buffalo, a once-prosperous city in upstate New York, Steven Salcedo knew how a lack of continued economic development can hinder families and mire people in poverty and hopelessness.

But it was only after he took a course at Harvard Law School that Salcedo realized that lawyers could help foster better times for communities.

“Lawyers can’t make economic development happen by themselves,” said Salcedo. “But we can contribute to help solve poverty by enabling people to do what they want to do. We’re like a bridge; we take them from where they are to where they want to be.”

The class Salcedo took, “Community Enterprise Project of the Transactional Law Clinics,” allows HLS students to help small business owners, entrepreneurs, and community groups create businesses, obtain permits and licenses, and negotiate contracts and other transactional (non-litigation) services.

Other transactional law clinics offered at HLS deal with business and nonprofits, entertainment law, and real estate.

Amanda Kool, an HLS lecturer on law and clinical instructor, directs the Community Enterprise Project. Under her supervision, students work out of HLS’s Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, dividing their time between assisting clients and partnering with community organizations on projects that address broader legal barriers to economic development in the community.

The course benefits both students who are interested in pursuing social-justice work and community members who need their services, said Kool. Since 2013, students have produced legal toolkits compiling laws and regulations that govern worker cooperatives, condominium associations, and food trucks, and staged legal workshops for military veterans who are starting small businesses and for entrepreneurs in the creative economy. Last October, they published a first-of-its-kind legal guidebook for immigrant entrepreneurs.

“A lot of the social ills that result in crimes tied to poverty could be cured through economic development,” said Kool. “Our work has a strong public purpose.”

By helping people who want to start small enterprises but lack the moneys to hire an attorney, students promote business development and job growth, said Kool. For many students, the fact that lawyers can help people overcome barriers to economic development comes as a something of a surprise.

That was the case for Matt Diaz, who registered in the course with a desire to do transactional law but without knowing what to expect. He worked with clients who wanted to start a landscape worker cooperative and as a result, helped write a worker coop guide and the guidebook for immigrant entrepreneurs.

“I’m a nerd for tackling new and unresolved legal issues,” said Diaz. “The course was like a rabbit hole for legal research. I had tons of fun.”

For Carolyn Ruiz, the course offered an opportunity to plunge into a neighborhood far from campus and interact with community organizations.

“In law school, everything is hypothetical,” she said. “This gave me the chance to work with real people in the real world.”

The course also helped her practice her Spanish skills with Salvador Esteban, a client who comes from Mexico.

“We wouldn’t have been able to help him” otherwise, said Ruiz, a Texan of Mexican descent. “He only spoke Spanish.”

A father of two, Esteban, 45, runs a hot-dog cart near the Boston Common, and needed help with licensing and permitting.

“I didn’t know how to pay taxes or how to apply for permits with City Hall or the health department,” he said.

Students relish the opportunity to be immersed in a workaday community. Because their clients work during the week, students sometimes spend weekends and evenings meeting with them at their homes or businesses near Jamaica Plain.

Salcedo took the course three times because he found his calling. It changed more than his career path, he said.

“It did change the course of my life,” he said. “I entered law school because I wanted to help underrepresented people. I was unsure of how I wanted to do so, though. I learned that law can empower low-income entrepreneurs who are working to revitalize their neighborhoods and provide for their families.”

Salcedo was awarded a prestigious Skadden Foundation Fellowship to create a program like the Community Enterprise Project to help small entrepreneurs in his hometown. After graduation, he plans to go back to Buffalo to work at the Western New York Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal services in civil matters to low-income residents.

“I can’t imagine a more fulfilling way to use my legal education,” he said.

Harvard Law’s Community Enterprise Project Heads to Oakland, Forges Partnership with Sustainable Economies Law Center

[Originally Posted on the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs blog September 30. 2015.
Also covered by Harvard Law Today October 9th 2015]

By Matt Diaz, J.D. ’16 

In early August, Amanda L. Kool, Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor of Harvard Law School’s Community Enterprise Project of the Transactional Law Clinics (“CEP”), and CEP clinical student Matt Diaz, J.D. ’16, met with staff members of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (“SELC”) in Oakland, California to cement a partnership between the two organizations. With a shared ambition to foster community economic development through innovative approaches to transactional law, the partnership between the relatively-new law school clinic and the influential legal services organization carries tremendous potential for the organizations themselves, the clients they represent, and lawyers interested in how transactional law can play an important role in the modern economy.

Co-founded by Janelle Orsi and Jenny Kassan, SELC engages a broad set of legal approaches to facilitate “community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment.” Through its various interconnected programs—including its program focused on promoting cooperative businesses—the organization offers legal expertise to empower communities to transition to fairer and more robust local economies. SELC’s multifaceted strategy involves legislative advocacy, workshops, and educational materials for lawyers and community members, and the delivery of legal services through channels such as its “Resilient Communities Legal Cafe,” where SELC staff and volunteer attorneys provide legal consultations to community businesses and organizations.

CEP is similarly invested in community economic development, though CEP’s targeted communities are those that surround the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. In addition to representing clients with a wide range of transactional legal needs, CEP students work in small groups to connect with community organizations, identify transactional legal needs common to their community, and develop tailor-made, comprehensive strategies to address those needs.

Cooperative Connection

During the fall semester, a group of CEP students will work closely with SELC staff to create a comprehensive guide that demystifies the myriad laws related to forming and operating a cooperative business in Massachusetts. The collaboration between CEP and SELC will afford the students access to some of the nation’s foremost experts on cooperatives, while CEP’s local community ties and outreach efforts ensure that the guide will benefit from a strong network of cooperative lawyers and technical assistance providers in Greater Boston, as well. Once finished, the guide will be published, translated, and distributed through the Transactional Law Clinics’ website and through the project’s community partners, as well as hosted by SELC on the state-by-state resources page of their popular website, www.co-oplaw.org.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship

CEPIn addition to the cooperative guide, CEP tapped SELC’s expertise to finalize a document produced last semester by CEP students Susan Nalunkuma, LL.M. ’15, Steven Salcedo, J.D. ’16, and Diaz. This document, A Legal Overview of Business Ownership for Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts, was created in partnership with the Immigrant Worker Center Collaborative and is intended for use by immigrant entrepreneurs in Massachusetts, as well as by technical assistance providers and community organizers who work with immigrant entrepreneurs across the state.

Because of the document’s comprehensive foray into diverse areas of law, preparation of the materials entailed cutting-edge research at the intersection of business law, employment law, tax law, and immigration law, bringing together dozens of lawyers, academics, and professionals in the community and across the country. Due to the profile of the project, CEP students and staff were able to connect with people such as Sergio Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who became a lawyer in 2014 after a five-year legal battle that ended with a new state law permitting undocumented immigrants to be admitted to the California bar.

“CEP has a successful track record of creating well-researched, useful publications amid the community workshops, client representation, and other great work CEP students complete each semester. However, this project proved to be our most challenging one yet, due to the many areas of law involved and the fact that no one, to our knowledge, has ever compiled such a thorough analysis of the many legal implications of immigrant entrepreneurship. We could not have completed this project without our lead project partner (the Immigrant Worker Center Collaborative) and their meaningful connections to the population at the heart of this document, and we are indebted to countless lawyers and other experts across the country who advised and supported us along the way.” ­–Amanda L. Kool, Lecturer on Law  

Though the document was only recently published, A Legal Overview of Business Ownership for Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts promises to have national significance, as other organizations already plan to build upon CEP’s work by creating new iterations of the document for other states across the U.S. This fall, Professor Eliza Platts-Mills and her students in the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic of the University of Texas Law School will be modeling CEP’s project on behalf of immigrant entrepreneurs in Texas, and similar collaborations have been proposed by lawyers in other states. CEP and SELC are currently exploring ways in which SELC can host these state-specific resources for immigrant entrepreneurs on their popular website.

“Working on the immigrant entrepreneurs document has served as an invaluable source of development for me,” Diaz said. “The project presented an opportunity to make a significant impact in uncharted legal territory, uncovering a rabbit hole of legal research possibilities. The effect we have been able to spark on a sizable underrepresented population is a testament to CEP, which allows students to tap into their entrepreneurial spirits and target relevant issues afflicting local community members. I cannot wait to see that effect expand, as organizations around the country build upon the foundation we have built.” –Matt