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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

By Sustainable Economies Law Center Staff Attorney, Cameron Rhudy

It’s Here, it’s Here, it’s Finally Here! Our Guide to Starting a Legal Cafe

Over the years we have received many inquiries from attorneys who want to start legal clinics  in their community that resemble our Resilient Communities Legal Cafe. In response, we have created our Practical Guide to Starting a Legal Cafe, a comprehensive guide for how to do just that. In the guide you will learn how to get the basics of your Legal Cafe in place and how to create that unique Legal Cafe experience. The guide also includes sample intake documents and a breakdown of tasks for scheduling and planning your Legal Cafe. 

Thank you for your interest in starting a Legal Cafe in your community. Below you will find a working draft of our "Practical Guide to Starting a Legal Cafe."

View and Download the Practical Guide to Starting a Legal Cafe here

NOTE: This guide is a work-in-progress and will be updated as we continue to improve upon our Legal Cafe and receive feedback from those interested in starting a Legal Cafe in their community. So please help us continue to improve this guide by sending your questions, feedback, or comments about the guide to cameron@theselc.org. 

DISCLAIMER

THE CONTENTS OF THIS GUIDE SHOULD NOT BE RELIED ON AS LEGAL ADVICE.

ALSO, SOME OF THIS INFORMATION COULD BECOME OUTDATED, AND LAWS AND REGULATION OF THE PRACTICE OF LAW VARIES FROM PLACE-TO-PLACE. FURTHERMORE, ALTHOUGH WE TRIED TO COLLECT ACCURATE INFORMATION, SOME INFORMATION IN THIS GUIDE COULD EVEN TURN OUT TO BE INCORRECT OR SUBJECT TO OTHER INTERPRETATIONS BY COURTS OR REGULATORS! WE SURE HOPE THAT’S NOT THE CASE, BUT, WHAT CAN WE SAY? LAW AND REGULATION OF THE PRACTICE OF LAW IS COMPLICATED STUFF! THAT IS WHY WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU REFER TO ANY APPLICABLE LAWS, RULES, AND REGULATIONS THAT APPLY TO THE LOCATION OF YOUR LEGAL CAFE.

About the Guide

In February of 2013, the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) created an unusual “legal clinic” that we call the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe (Legal Cafe). Three years later, after providing legal support to more than 500 enterprises and organizations, and offering workshops for more than 2000 attendees, we have come to believe that the Legal Cafe is one of the most important and impactful projects our organization has ever created. The Legal Cafe has been instrumental in the launch of countless new micro-enterprises and organizations because of its community-oriented approach and unique strategy for providing accessible grassroots legal advice to community-focused entrepreneurs and change-makers. Part of that strategy was transforming the experience of receiving legal advice into a welcoming, lively, and empowering one for clients. In 2014, we received meritorious recognition from the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services for our innovations in legal service delivery.

We have heard from groups around the world who are interested in replicating the model. This Guide represents our best attempt to document lessons learned and share resources we have created. Our Legal Cafe has evolved in many ways and we are constantly improving it. We hope to update this Guide regularly by incorporating new ideas not only from SELC’s Legal Cafe, but also from groups that start their own Legal Cafes based on this model.

Find out what others say about their experience at the Legal Cafe!

We want to live in a society where reliable and affordable legal support is available to all those creating the transition to localized, resilient economies.

The primary way that the Sustainable Economies Law Center provides legal advice is through our Resilient Communities Legal Cafe.

The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides direct legal advice, workshops, teach-ins, discussions, and legal services to businesses and organizations that are trying to make their communities a better place to live. Legal advice is provided on a first-come, first-serve basis, so no appointment is necessary. Find our where the next Legal Cafe is and sign up here!

At the Legal Cafes, our staff and volunteers specialize in serving cooperatives, nonprofits, cottage food businesses, social enterprises, urban farms, complimentary currencies, time banks, and small businesses. We provide advice and legal consultations around the following legal areas: 

• Legal formation for small businesses 

• Legal entity choice 

• Employment law 

• Securities law 

• Tax law 

• Contracts 

• Liability issues 

• IP agreements and licensing  

• Environmental Law 

• Food Safety Laws 

Seeking ongoing legal representation?

Due to limited staff capacity, the Sustainable Economies Law Center very rarely provides ongoing legal representation. Nearly all of our past clients have come through the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe first, so why not start there?!  

We are only able to provide low- or no-cost legal advice because of the generous support of people like you! Support our capacity to provide legal services for a people powered economy here and see why others support our work here!

On Sunday, September 21st, over 300,000 people from across the globe gathered in the streets of New York to demand action on climate change. Here in the Bay Area, we're co-creating a solutions-based movement to transform our economies - read on for all the ways to get involved in the coming months!