LEGALCORPS

LegalCORPS unites business law and social justice. It expands access to the legal system for grassroots entrepreneurs – both native-born and immigrant – striving to achieve a real stake in the American dream, and to nonprofits laboring to build and enhance communities in Minnesota.

The legal assistance serves as "preventive medicine" to avoid potentially disastrous problems.

Clients served are like:

• the woman who retires from the U.S. Air Force to spend more time with her growing family and – so she can help her family make ends meet – starts building a service to assist senior citizens and others with limited mobility with errands;
• the East African immigrant opening a dollar store in northeast Minneapolis, putting his experience to work here to be “self-dependent for my income;”
• the young nonprofit working for social and racial justice, economic development and employment opportunities, housing and education – which needs an employee handbook before it makes its first hire;
• the worker dislocated from a longtime job who must transform his woodworking and carving skills into an enterprise that can sustain himself and his household;
• the small nonprofit child care organization in Minnesota’s Arrowhead region that needed assistance in procuring a property tax exemption for its day care center;
• the young self-employed tree-trimmer from southern Minnesota who needed guidance in coping with the consequences of not collecting sales tax -- a legal requirement he had not known about.

In 2010, LegalCORPS volunteers assisted in 618 client matters. In 2009, they helped 503; in 2008, 418; in 2007, 177.

In 2011, LegalCORPS launched the nation's first patent law pro bono program.

It now is working to develop regularly scheduled brief-advice business law clinics conducted by video conference -- to reach more low-income entrepreneurs in parts of Minnesota where lawyers available for pro bono work are not plentiful.

Connecting volunteer lawyers with pro bono clients requires administration, which needs financial support.