Summary: With the collaboration of several legal clinics at Yale Law School, a new program aimed at helping small farmers, food entrepreneurs and others has been created.

Interest in food law has been growing, especially at Yale Law School. With the help of two Yale Law School clinics, the Connecticut Legal Food Hub was launched to serve as a free legal services clearinghouse that connects income-eligible farmers, related nonprofits, and food entrepreneurs with pro bono legal aid.

The service relies on a network of volunteer attorneys, some of which are Yale law students, to provide support to industry businesses striving towards healthy, sustainable and innovative solutions, according to a Yale Law School announcement. With support from the Conservation Law Foundation, The Ludwig Center for Community and Economic Development at Yale Law School, and the Environmental Protection Clinic at Yale Law School, the program launched March 1. There are only three other programs like this one in the country.

The leader of the Environmental Protection Clinic Joshua Galperin said the idea for the program came several years ago when their clinic was taking on more and more food projects in response to student interest. Student-led research on the food and farming environment in the state started the drive toward more food law projects. He said, “We sat down with Conservation Law Foundation and decided that as a continuing relationship, we could not only help lay the groundwork for the Legal Food Hub, but could actually help launch the project and carry it through its early days.”

The Community & Economic Development Clinic, directed by Professor Anika Singh Lemar, soon approached them to help launch the concept. Lemar said, “This work is important because food entrepreneurship is a key entry point to small business ownership for low-wage workers. Local food production is key to a sustainable local economy. Because food is both a highly regulated and, typically, low-margin business, access to capable legal counsel is highly valuable to both farms and food businesses.”

With the initial research done, Yale Law School fellow Brian Fink was asked to oversee the program. He explained, “Bringing the Legal Food Hub to Connecticut has involved collaborating with other organizers, sharing information about the program with attorneys, meeting with agriculture- and food-related folks throughout Connecticut, participating in agricultural conferences, and organizing the launch celebration.”

Fink is now working to connect potential clients with the correct services. “Sometimes, a person calls me who is not yet ready to see a lawyer but if that person could benefit from working with a lawyer, I search our volunteer network to see who would be best suited for the case,” Fink explained. “When a match is successful, I introduce the participant to the lawyer, and they form the pro bono relationship together. I then check on the progress of the matter until it commences.”

He added, “The costs associated with starting and maintaining a small farm or food business are just incredible. While consumer demand for local foods keeps climbing, the average size of the farm is shrinking and getting harder to obtain. On top of these and other costs, too many of food and farm businesses and organizations cannot afford legal help. The result is that they often go without legal help, which can be disastrous.”

The students that participate in the program gain knowledge of the industry and what farmers and food entrepreneurs need. Galperin said, “These students have helped – and will continue to help – with strategic planning, policy advocacy, and communications to bolster these important industries.”

He added, “Food, agriculture, health, environment; these are all areas that courts, Congress, and state legislatures have grappled with for more than a century. It is only today that a synthetic field of law is emerging to focus on these, and other issues, as critically interrelated. What we are doing at Yale Law School is training some of the brightest students to tackle these old problems with a fresh new perspective.”

Student Lauren Hobby said, “I have learned so much substantively from working in the area of food law. For food businesses to grow, they need smart and creative lawyering, especially because this is a highly regulated and price-sensitive sector.”

Do the clinics that law schools offer affect your opinion of them? Would the clinics make you more interested in attending that law school? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

To learn more about Yale Law School, read these articles:

• Mental Health Alliance Formed by Yale Law Students
• Yale Law School Has Their First Female Dean
• Women Empowering Women Conference Held at Yale Law School

Photo: flickr.com

The post Yale Law School Launches Legal Food Program in Connecticut first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: There were significant changes to which law firms sought help from legal recruiters and the types of attorneys BCG Attorney Search worked with throughout 2017.

In the BCG Attorney Search 2018 State of the American Lateral Law Firm Legal Market Report, CEO of BCG Attorney Search Harrison Barnes discusses the things he discovered about the legal market throughout the year.

Even though 2017 was a successful year for the legal market, filled with strong markets and a number of lateral hires, the market was significantly different from other years that experienced booms like in 1999 and 2005-2006. This legal boom was the type that restores faith in the industry, prompting more to pursue a legal career by attending law school. This may translate into better numbers for law schools in 2018 and on.

Activity was so frequent for BCG Attorney Search’s legal recruiters that they were often making multiple placements a week. These placements continued throughout the normally slow holiday season, right up until the end of the year with a couple placements made during the week before the New Year. The legal recruiters at BCG averaged 30 percent more placements over the previous year.

With all of these placements, there were changes to the types of placements made. Barnes noted that he made several placements with attorneys that he normally wouldn’t have worked with or made such strong placements for. He called their placements “unusual” because they normally would not have happened, but this legal market has changed to support such placements. In one placement, a candidate from a third tier law school with no law firm experience and only average law school performance was able to land a job with a major New York City law firm.

Barnes was also able to place numerous senior patent prosecutors who had little to no business supporting them. This is something law firms usually stay away from because more senior attorneys mean higher salaries, but without a book business to support a higher salary they were seen as undesirable. He also placed several patent prosecution attorneys that came from third-tier law schools and small law firms into large law firms. Most of these placements required relocating, but considering most of them had never worked for a law firm with over ten attorneys, this was a big promotion.

A number of the placements he made that would not have normally happened were because the attorneys were practicing in the right areas. They were in the “niche” markets, which saw a widely successful year. A lot of the placements Barnes and his legal recruiters made involved smaller law firms as well. This was a change because normally they focus on large law firms, but changes in the market allowed for greater work across all levels.

Law firms of all sizes are turning to legal recruiters to get the job done and find them the right candidate for their firm. This makes it so that a wider array of candidates are able to take advantage of the resource and find law firms willing to accept their experience or lack thereof. This also means that attorneys have to be more open to other markets and more relocations.

The largest law firms have become even more competitive, requiring lateral lawyers to be open to other options. The lower level of the legal market, the small to mid-sized law firms, have increased their demands. The amount of work they have has jumped, resulting in them having more opportunities than large law firms. Except for candidates in niche practice areas, the chances of landing a job with the largest, most competitive law firms is very difficult. With such stiff competition, more and more Millennials are turning to the smaller law firms as a first choice.

The U.S. economy is very strong, allowing entrepreneurs to do well right off the bat. Generally, when a law firm just forms, it takes a few years to get rolling, but Barnes is seeing brand new law firms be “successful right out of the gate.” They are already bringing in millions of dollars, so their ability to grow sooner than anticipated has improved. Our society encourages the development of entrepreneurs, so it’s no surprise this translates to lawyers and law firms as well.

To learn more about entrepreneur skills in lawyers, read these articles:

• 10 Reasons to Start Your Own Law Firm
• Confidence Is the Number One Trait to Be Successful
• Is Now the Right Time for You to Leave Your Law Firm?

Photo: flickr.com

The post BCG Attorney Search Annual Report Shows More Mid-Sized and Smaller Law Firms Are Using Legal Recruiters first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: Learn why entrepreneurs and attorneys are generally not the same people because of a large difference in personality traits.

While there are many characteristics that are similar between attorneys and entrepreneurs, there are plenty of traits that are different and make any transition from attorney to a more business-minded career difficult. In “Why Attorneys Often Fail as Businesspeople and Entrepreneurs,” Harrison Barnes explains why attorneys struggle when they give up law for a business or entrepreneurial type career.

The biggest mistake attorneys make is to leave the law to pursue other opportunities that often don’t work out. Careful consideration must go into the decision of leaving the law because once it is done, coming back to work as an attorney is next to impossible. The responsibility of being an attorney are heavy but many often give up before exhausting all their options to stay in the legal world.

The characteristics that go into being a successful entrepreneur that differ from being a successful attorney include an optimistic outlook. Entrepreneurs take risks, coming up with an idea for their business and then sell others on the idea. They rely on the uncertainty of the business whereas attorneys rely on the certainty. Attorneys find support and comfort in knowing that there are set rules. They don’t like that there are risks associated with a business. They give up quickly and easily when things go wrong but entrepreneurs know that failure is a given and so they just keep trying until they find success.

If you take a look at the legal industry, not much has changed over the past twenty plus years. Technology has made a few adjustments to how attorneys conduct their work but most law firms are behind the times in their use of technology. Compare this to businesses that are always having to change to keep up with demands. They are creating new products, new services, and new ways of doing business.

Attorneys are stuck in a mindset that intelligence and credentials entitle them to success. Attorneys work hard to get into a top law school where they can graduate with top grades because they know doing such will greatly increase their chance of landing positions with the best law firms. Entrepreneurs understand that business does not care about those things. While intelligence and credentials may play a role, they do not guarantee anything and entrepreneurs do not expect them to.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. There are some attorneys that can become very successful entrepreneurs. There are a number of attorneys that have experience in the business world before entering law school and the legal industry. Also, attorneys that turn into entrepreneurs usually don’t spend much time as attorneys before making the switch. These attorneys immediately start out in the legal industry learning how to and developing their own law firm. They know how to market and advertise where most attorneys don’t. Even if the attorney stays with the law firm and becomes a partner, to get the level of partner and maintain it, they have to be able to support the business side of the law firm.

Attorneys that find themselves hating everything about the work they do and the legal industry are better off finding something else. As Barnes explains, “Quitting the practice of law is like ending a bad relationship.”

Do you think attorneys would make good entrepreneurs? Tell us in the comments below.

To learn more about what makes attorneys successful, read these articles:

• Successful Actors and Attorneys Are Very Alike
• Being a Successful Attorney Takes More Than Just Hard Work
• The Seven Burdens Attorneys Face That Drag Them Down

Photo: flickr.com

The post Attorneys Do Not Make Good Entrepreneurs first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: The dream of being an entrepreneur is one we all share, so WalletHub ran a study to determine the best places where new businesses are most successful.

A recent study conducted by WalletHub, a Washington D.C.-based personal finance company, found the best cities to start new businesses. They looked at 150 of the largest cities in the United States and ranked them based on business environment and access to resource factors.

The system of ranking done by WalletHub and 13 business professors was through a 13 category scale where they examined the cost of office space, annual income, taxes, cost of living, education levels, employee availability, the number of already existing small businesses, length of average workday, industry variety, financing availability, and more. Education levels are based on the percentage of the population with a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree. Employee availability was determined by subtracting the number of unemployed residents from the total number of job openings. Financing availability took the total annual value of small business loans and divided it by the total number of businesses.

The list showed that California cities are the worst place for entrepreneurs to start a business and cities in the Midwest and South are the best. The number one city to start a business was Shreveport, LA, followed by Tulsa, OK and Springfield, MO. The five California cities of Bakersfield, Stockton, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Fontana make up the list for the fewest small businesses per capita. Arizona cities have the least accessible financing. Irvine, CA and Seattle, WA have the most educated workforce, whereas Santa Ana, CA and San Bernardino, CA are the least educated.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245538

Photo: calypsoaccounting.co.za

The post Worst Place to Start a Business: Newark, New Jersey first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

The University of San Francisco School of Law has launched a new project called the Entrepreneurial Ventures Legal Services Project that aims to provide new entrepreneurs with free legal services. In the project, law students will be working under clinical faculty to provide startups with the range of legal expertise they need, but often fail to access due to shortage of funds.

The Entrepreneurial Ventures project is a collaboration between several clinics of the law school including Investor Justice, Employment Law, Internet and Intellectual Property, and Mediation clinics.

Speaking on the initiation of the project, USF Professor and Project Director Robert Talbot said, “Start-up companies are always unique. From the business plan and management team to the capital resources, the product, and the marketing …..”

The collaborating clinics work on different verticals. The Investor Justice Clinic works on business and securities legal issues; the Employment Law Clinic covers issues ranging from worker rights to employment discrimination; the Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Clinic works with trademarks, copyrights, patents and online business issues; and the Mediation Clinic works to resolve conflicts  through alternative dispute resolution.

Talbot said “This experience helps students become practice-ready … to hit the ground running as transactional lawyers.”

Currently the new project for entrepreneurs is helping its first clients including a fitness venture and a group of filmmakers. Acceptance of clients is limited and based on several criteria including potential of becoming a sizable employer, potential of providing needed services to the community, financial needs, and the level of complexity of the project and its suitability for students. Nonprofit status is also one of the criteria used to weigh between clients.

Emphasizing the need of legal help to entrepreneurs, Talbot said, “Although San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs often have the next great idea, they often need legal expertise to put their business together effectively and within the law’s requirements.”

The post USF Law School Launches Free Legal Services for Young Entrepreneurs first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Having some distance from the law, not sure when she would come back, she had the freedom to “just fall in love with these pots” during a vacation in Italy. Seibert & Rice became the lasting result, a business that imports terracotta planters into the States, Canada, and the Caribbean. As her website says: “Our long standing relationship with the oldest workshops in Impruneta insure that we will always have the best products that come out of this famous Tuscan town.”

Perhaps to make such a dynamic career move only takes a little distance from the overbearing demands of the legal profession: perhaps some time as a stay-at-home mother, or some necessary vacation with an unexpected illness, can show you the light. You could deal in pots, after all, follow your passion, follow your bliss, and get out of the quibbling business. Or at least you can daydream a little about such possibilities – fantasies are free.

The post VIDEO: Lenore Rice Leaves Law to Sell Pots first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

There are difficulties, however. Star Simpson, one of the three co-founders of TacoCopter, has struggled with the U.S. government’s regulations.

“It’s really the legal obstacles in the U.S. that seem insurmountable at this time,” said Simpson. “Current U.S. FAA regulations prevent…using UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] for commercial purposes. Honestly, I think it’s not totally unreasonable to regulate something as potentially dangerous as having flying robots slinging tacos over people’s heads. … On the other hand, it’s a little bit ironic that that’s the case in a country where you can be killed by a drone with no judicial review.”

The U.S. government isn’t the only barrier. The logistics of a machine flying through urban areas, negotiating airways with birds, on limited battery strength could spell disaster for the otherwise clever idea.

Tacocopter may have a ways to go before its ready for lift-off; but if it became a success, what might the skies look like around major cities someday?

The post Tacocopter Delivers What you Want first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

“With all the unknowns associated with launching a start-up company, we wanted to provide a no-nonsense way for entrepreneurs to get a new company launched,” said Alan Bickerstaff, partner in the firm’s technology & emerging companies practice group. “The package we have designed includes everything needed to form a start-up, including a stock option plan, along with additional counseling on venture capital term sheets, employment matters, employee benefits and IP.”

Further details can be found at www.akstartup.com.

Andrew Kurth employs 400 lawyers and has offices in Austin, Beijing, Dallas, Houston, London, New York, The Woodlands and Washington D.C.

The post Andrews Kurth Launches Fixed-Fee Startup Package first appeared on JDJournal Blog.