{"id":293,"date":"2015-11-06T17:49:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/?p=293"},"modified":"2015-11-06T17:49:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:49:12","slug":"hlep-startups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/hlep-startups\/","title":{"rendered":"Startups: How I Channel My Entrepreneurial Interests at HLS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/clinicalprobono\/2015\/10\/29\/startups-how-i-channel-my-entrepreneurial-interests-at-hls\/\">Published Oct. 29th, 2015 on the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs Blog<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>By Eli A. Shalam J.D. \u201916<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By the time my first semester at HLS began, I was chomping at the bit to work with the Harvard Law Entrepreneurship Project (aka \u201cHLEP\u201d\u2014pronounced aitch-lep). By early October, I was placed on a team with three other law students researching the impact of independent contractor and employee classifications on a company\u2019s business model. Our client was a company that facilitated the booking of housekeepers to clean customers\u2019 homes<strong>*<\/strong>. The main issue was that the company wanted strict standards to ensure the quality and consistency of the customer experience, but did not want to risk any sort of liability if, for example, a housekeeper started a major fire in a customer\u2019s home, a customer\u2019s pet severely injured a housekeeper, or a housekeeper accidentally spilled cleaning supplies on priceless curios. Our job was to advise the company on whether, and how, to classify the housekeepers as employees or independent contractors.<\/p>\n<p>The project began to get very real for me when one of the attorneys assigned to our team suddenly perked up during the client intake meeting and realized that her husband had just used the client\u2019s service to hire a housekeeper during the prior week! This company was already operating in the Boston area and my team and I were in a position to directly influence their business!<\/p>\n<p>That January, I applied for a seat on the Executive Board and became the organization\u2019s Vice President of Operations\u2014managing the team assignment and administration process, from collecting client, attorney, and law student applications, to assigning everyone to a team within their top few preferences, and ensuring that projects were completed without a hitch and to the clients\u2019 satisfaction. One year later, I became President of HLEP during a period of huge growth. In my first semester with the organization, we had 54 students working with 12 attorneys on 14 client-projects. This past semester we had 133 students working with 39 attorneys on 30 client-projects. And every semester, as I review the wide array of client applications that we receive \u2014an entrepreneur wildly passionate about selling his favorite beverage, two separate companies trying to build power generation plants, an alternative ice-cream store, numerous pharmaceutical companies, and investment funds \u2014 I remember the project that got me started in HELP, where I was able to work with two great entrepreneurs to revolutionize home cleaning services and the 90 other companies that we have helped since then.<\/p>\n<p><strong>*The nature of the client\u2019s business has been altered to protect the client\u2019s privacy.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Published Oct. 29th, 2015 on the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs Blog] &nbsp; By Eli A. Shalam J.D. \u201916 By the time my first semester at HLS began, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24,23,22,8,19],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-harvard-law-entrepreneurship-project","tag-hlep","tag-start-up","tag-student-practice-organization-spo"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"ahorn","author_link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/author\/ahorn\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}