Community & Economic Development Clinic

The Community & Economic Development Clinic (CEDC) focuses on preparing students for transactional lawyering on behalf of not-for-profit community organizations and start-up small businesses. The CED Lawyering seminar or Not-for-Profit lawyering seminar are pre-requisites for this course. The clinic builds on these courses to develop lawyering skills that are needed to do transactional work for organizations that are trying to make a difference in building vibrant, sustainable communities. Students represent start-up organizations in obtaining incorporation and tax-exempt status. Students also work on CED projects with established CED lawyers in the community to learn from working on more complex and diverse projects. This work involves contracts, leases, employment issues, construction and regulation issues on behalf of clients. Classroom work will focus on Community Economic Development theory,skills for organizational development and more complex lawyering tasks, role of lawyer in transactional work as well as substantive law related to not-for-profits.