We're always cooking up pay-it-forward legal advice, action-oriented workshops, and happy hours with engaging conversations on how to build just and resilient local economies. And we don't only provide in-person events for you to connect with us, we provide online trainings and travel across the country to support grassroots economic empowerment. Don't miss out!
Please, help us get the word out about our upcoming events. Share with your friends or networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn! If you're interested in an event, someone you know will probably be interested too. Share the love!
Find Sustainable Economies Law Center's events below!
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Monday, January 25, 2021 at 03:00 PM PST · 56 rsvps
ZoomCA Entity Formation Options
In this teach-in our Director of Economic Democracy, Ricardo Nuñez, will provide an introduction to what legal entities are and the pros and cons of choosing one legal entity over another for California based worker cooperatives.
This teach-in will cover:
✅ What are business entities?
✅ What factors should you consider when choosing an entity for a worker-owned enterprise including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and Corporations?
✅ What are the steps to forming a legal entity?
✅ Where can you find more resources?We’ll also be joined by a Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer at the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development, to share how Berkeley businesses can access the Berkeley Revolving Loan Fund, particularly in light of the coop-friendly amendments that went into effect in 2020 and the influx of CARES-funded no/low-interest loans (so exciting!).
We’d like to thank the City of Berkeley for sponsoring this event and making more resources available to grow the cooperative economy in Berkeley!
If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner thinking about succession planning or transitioning to an employee owned company, or a worker coop with worker-members or candidates looking to skill up (Principle 5!), this training is for you!
ASL interpretation will be provided.
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MCLE: Nurturance Lawyering: How to bring connection and healing to our work in challenging times
Whether you need some inspiration, love, or just that one last MCLE specialty credit on “competence issues,” please join Janelle Orsi on January 29th at 1:00PM PST for this cartoony presentation and some meaningful conversation. In a society and legal system founded on separation and dominance, how can we foster connection and nurturance for ourselves and for the communities and clients we care about? We are offering this on a gift basis. Please give what you can to the Law Center or gift it forward to others, however you feel inspired.
This activity has been approved by the the California Bar for 1.0 hour of MCLE specialty credit for competence issues (what used to be called substance abuse prevention).
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Thursday, February 04, 2021 at 03:30 PM PST · 21 rsvps
ZoomTeach-in: Worker Coops Topic TBD
Hello amazing cooperators! We wanted to let you know that we’ll be hosting a teach-in based on feedback from the worker cooperative community in the Bay Area. We’ve sent a request for ideas to our friend in the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives community and will update this event page as soon as we hear what legal challenges they’d like to learn more about!
We’ll also be joined by a Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer at the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development, to share how Berkeley businesses can access the Berkeley Revolving Loan Fund, particularly in light of the coop-friendly amendments that went into effect in 2020 and the influx of CARES-funded no/low-interest loans (so exciting!).
We’d like to thank the City of Berkeley for sponsoring this event and making more resources available to grow the cooperative economy in Berkeley!
If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner thinking about succession planning or transitioning to an employee owned company, or a worker coop with worker-members or candidates looking to skill up (Principle 5!), this training is for you!
ASL interpretation will be provided.
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Thursday, February 04, 2021 at 04:00 PM PST · 17 rsvps
ZoomMeet the Fellows
In 2013, we created a Legal Fellowship Program and provided fellowships to 5 new attorneys. The goal of the program was to meet the legal needs of the growing sustainable economy movement. As of 2020, the program has grown to 27 attorneys! Our fellowship provides training, mentorship, and other resources to attorneys beginning new law practices, legal organizations, and other projects serving the legal needs of local sustainable economies.
And now, we're accepting applications!
People of color, transgender and gender nonconforming people, people from poor and working class backgrounds, people with disabilities, and women are encouraged to apply.
So if you're thinking about applying to be one of our legal fellows and you have some last-minute questions that you want to ask, then join our 30 minute Q&A session! This is an opportunity to meet SELC staff and some of our current Legal Fellows so you can get a sense of what we have to offer!
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Thursday, February 04, 2021 at 05:00 PM PST
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline Legal Cafe for BERKELEY Residents and Businesses Only
The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment.
If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:
✅ Radical Real Estate Law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing?
✅ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
✅ Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
✅ Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
✅ Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
✅ Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
✅ Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
✅ Environmental Law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?Note: This Legal Cafe is for Berkeley Residents and Berkeley Businesses Only, and was made possible by Project Equity and The City of Berkeley Economic Development Department. We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups.We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups.
If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Tia (tia@theselc.org) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.
Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you to fill out.
Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since this is a Berkeley event, our event time is listed as Pacific Standard Time.
Got any questions? E-mail tia@theselc.org!
Not a Berkeley resident or business? Find other legal cafe dates here. We host legal cafes three times a month!
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Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 12:00 PM PST
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline Legal Cafe
The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment.
If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:
✅ Radical Real Estate Law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing?
✅ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
✅ Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
✅ Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
✅ Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
✅ Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
✅ Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
✅ Environmental Law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Tia (tia@theselc.org) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.
Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you to fill out.
Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.
Got any questions? E-mail tia@theselc.org!
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Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 02:00 PM PST · 15 rsvps
ZoomTeach-In: Property Law
Our vision is to decommodify land and housing so that all people can exercise their right to live, work, and gather together. The problem is that the law legitimizes the practice of treating land and housing as commodities. The dominant model of real estate ownership and speculation drives inequality, the racial wealth gap, and ecosystem destruction. The solution is to challenge the deeply entrenched legal doctrines and cultural norms that make us believe that land justice and universal housing is impossible.
In this webinar, Hope Williams - the Law Center's Director of Resident Empowerment - will share how our Radical Real Estate Law School teaches Property Law and how our syllabus empowers our legal apprentices (and hopefully others) to think more creatively and compassionately than if they were learning in a traditional law school format.
This teach-in will be recorded and posted on our blog.
About the Presenter
Hope is a legal apprentice at the Sustainable Economies Law Center! She is excited to finally begin her path to becoming an attorney advocate that helps black and brown marginalized communities. Devoted to housing rights and organizing people power to fight the oppressive white supermacist regime, Hope spends most of her time making sure that the law is accessible to the people. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a bachelors in Political Science. As the Assistant Director of their legal center, she organized events that revolved around housing, immigration, and mass incarceration. During and after school, Hope worked for one of the most powerful unions in the world: Local 2 UniteHere!. They trained her on how to boycott, organize, and agitate. She has been arrested twice with them.
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Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:00 PM PST · 27 rsvps
ZoomTeach-in: Subchapter T & How Money Flows Through a Cooperative
Are you getting ready to do your taxes? In this teach-in our Director of Economic Democracy, Ricardo Nuñez, will provide an introduction to the powerful way that worker cooperatives equitably distribute wealth and why it matters for your cooperative’s taxes! He’ll cover:
✅ How does money flow through a cooperative business?
✅ What are some of the tax and accounting issues in a cooperative?
✅ What cooperative specific tax benefits exist and how can your cooperative take advantage of them?We’ll also be joined by a Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer at the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development, to share how Berkeley businesses can access the Berkeley Revolving Loan Fund, particularly in light of the coop-friendly amendments that went into effect in 2020 and the influx of CARES-funded no/low-interest loans (so exciting!).
We’d like to thank the City of Berkeley for sponsoring this event and making more resources available to grow the cooperative economy in Berkeley!
If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner thinking about succession planning or transitioning to an employee owned company, or a worker coop with worker-members or candidates looking to skill up (Principle 5!), this training is for you!
ASL interpretation will be provided.