{"id":844,"date":"2018-07-24T20:05:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T20:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/?p=844"},"modified":"2018-07-24T20:05:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T20:05:06","slug":"empowering-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/empowering-small-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Experiential and Essential Clinical Education at HLS: Four experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Orignally published on June 26th, 2018 by Harvard Law Today]<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0ELAINE MCARDLE<\/span>, June 26, 2018<\/p>\n

Empowering Small Businesses to Stay in the Neighborhood<\/h2>\n

\"\"As Boston real estate prices soar and gentrification in lower-income places like Dorchester and Jamaica Plain continues apace, residential tenants aren\u2019t the only ones losing their homes. Small businesses that serve neighborhoods and give them their distinct character have far fewer legal protections and are being evicted or forced out by rising costs.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Glancy<\/p>\n

Credit: Dana Smith<\/span>Alexandra Glancy \u201919 and Michael Trujillo \u201918 teamed up through the Community Enterprise Project at the Transactional Law Clinics to help small-business owners facing gentrification. They produced the \u201cCommercial Leases 101\u201d legal toolkit, which offers a wealth of resources for better legal protection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Community Enterprise Project at HLS\u2019s Transactional Law Clinics helps these communities fight back with a new \u201cCommercial Leases 101\u201d legal toolkit, created by two students to help business owners understand the importance of having a lease and how to negotiate better terms.<\/p>\n

[su_pullquote]I was able to get experience with movement lawyering and bigger-picture legal advocacy.[\/su_pullquote]<\/p>\n

Last fall, Michael Trujillo \u201918 and Alexandra Glancy \u201919, with the guidance of Clinical Instructor Carlos Teuscher, teamed up to assist small businesses facing gentrification. First, the duo reached out to neighborhood and community organizations that are fighting to preserve their communities, including Bowdoin Geneva Main Streets, Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, and the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation. They canvassed small businesses to determine what would be most helpful before putting together the annotated toolkit, which offers a wealth of resources for better legal protections. Trujillo, who plans a career in social movement lawyering, says, \u201cWe are hoping this toolkit empowers small-business owners to have the legal knowledge to understand what a good lease looks like and ask for better arrangements with their landlords.\u201d They presented the toolkit to local business and community groups and held office hours to help small-business owners negotiate more favorable leases.<\/p>\n

CEP also shared the toolkit with the city of Boston, and Teuscher plans to have other clinical students continue to work with community partners to push for more statutory protections for commercial tenants. But the toolkit could have a greater reach than just Boston, he says. Toolkits produced in the past by CEP students have had a national impact, including an immigrant entrepreneur toolkit that clinics across the U.S. are using as a model. While landlord-tenant law is state-specific, Teuscher hopes the commercial lease toolkit\u2019s widely applicable resources will allow it to have a similar impact.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the educational experience for students is exceptional, Trujillo and Glancy say. \u201cI learned so much, from interacting with and interviewing clients to thinking about innovative ways to use legal tools\u2014for example, things you can put in a lease that aren\u2019t in typical leases but can increase the tenant\u2019s power,\u201d says Glancy, who knew about TLC before coming to HLS and was drawn to the school in part because of it.<\/p>\n

Clinical Professor Brian Price is director of the Transactional Law Clinics, which offer students work in a wide range of areas from business formation to taxation, real estate and employment matters. \u201cOur approach from day one is that students will be taking ownership of the cases, and that they not see themselves as assisting their supervising attorney but rather as the person who is leading the case with the guidance of the supervising attorney,\u201d Price says.<\/p>\n

With CEP projects like the toolkit, he adds, there are leadership lessons. \u201cStudents learn to work in a team \u2026 and they see how lawyers\u2014particularly transactional lawyers\u2014can help lead not by dominating an issue but working alongside and collaboratively with community people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Orignally published on June 26th, 2018 by Harvard Law Today] By\u00a0ELAINE MCARDLE, June 26, 2018 Empowering Small Businesses to Stay in the Neighborhood As Boston real estate prices soar and […]<\/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":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","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":[6,32,7,27,9,12],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cep","tag-cep-toolkits","tag-community-enterprise-project","tag-jamaica-plain-neighborhood-development-corporation","tag-small-business","tag-transactional-law-clinic"],"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\/844","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=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/tlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}