The FAMU College of Law has opened an Economic Justice Clinic to provide free legal services to small and minority-owned businesses and nonprofits in Orlando, FL. The idea behind the center is that the economy will be more successful if it is fairer. Clinic Director Mark Dorosin said what the clinic hopes to accomplish is to "reestablish the law school's role in Central Florida as a resource for the community by providing direct legal services to clients in order to develop, start or grow their businesses.”
"We don't intend to sort of replicate opportunities that are out there,” he said. “We will connect potential business owners to those existing resources like the African American Chamber of Commerce, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Development Center, and the National Entrepreneur Center, and supplement those services with the legal services they need.”
“We will do the community based transactional legal work, and (by then end of year one) will have helped between 30 and 40 local businesses,” he added. We will have 18-24 trained student lawyers to help them.
Central Florida is similar to the rest of the country, especially when it relates to black Americans. "We have a long history of institutional discrimination in this country. And that has manifested itself in numerous ways, which have led to as one of the most significant impacts, but significant wealth gap between black Americans and white Americans."
He said those national trends are reflected here in Central Florida, and in order for the economy to become fairer, certain steps need to be taken.
"We need to ensure that black business owners, black entrepreneurs, have folks that want to start businesses, nonprofit organizations that serve those communities have the same access to resources that other businesses too."