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HOW DO WE PROACT, TRANSACT, AND ENACT? For our 2024 Spring/Summer Investor Update, we interview our legal partners at Morgan Lewis and Lawyers for Civil Rights.
In light of 2023’s record disbursement of loans and investment capital from the Ujima Fund ($1.6 million out of the door and invested in our local businesses, by community demand), we want to pull the curtain back on how these investment transactions happen. Key to Ujima’s processes are our technical assistance partners. ‘Technical assistance,’ a wonky and sterile phrase, refers to support to help nonprofits acquire any specialized service or skill that is not currently resident within the organization. In this update, we highlight our legal technical assistance partners at Lawyers for Civil Rights.
Priya Lane is the Director of LCR | BizGrow, which provides minority, immigrant, and women entrepreneurs with free legal assistance, technical support, and education. Daily, Priya works with aspiring or current business owners with big dreams but limited resources. Priya helps close this opportunity gap. She provides them with the legal tools they need to succeed, helping them develop sustainable businesses and achieve economic self-sufficiency. An award-winning attorney, Priya recently received the prestigious Beacon Award from the Boston Bar Association for her groundbreaking work providing free legal support to struggling small businesses at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Priya is a 2013 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law. She serves on the board of the Working Moms Social Club; and has taught entrepreneurship in collaboration with the Mel King Institute for Community Building and Cambridge College. Her work is regularly featured in publications such as the Worcester Business Journal and Boston Business Journal.
UJIMA: How long have you been at Lawyers for Civil Rights; and what kind of legal work do you do?
PRIYA LANE: I’ve been at LCR for 11 years now; I used to be a litigator, focusing on police misconduct, employment law, and education mostly. But I started working with small businesses seven years ago–we have really grown our small business-oriented projects, which we call BizGrow, in that time. We work with close to 2000 small businesses across the Commonwealth every year.
What is the relationship between LCR, its BizGrow program, and Ujima? What is the technical assistance that is offered to our Good Business Alliance members?
We work with small businesses on any legal need they have from inception to closing–and Ujima will often direct businesses in its Good Business Alliance to us for said needs. Entity formation, contracts, intellectual property, employment law needs: we help through various interventions. Say a business needs a contract drafted or an LLC formed. We’ll chat with them to determine how we can help, and we’ll then place them with pro bono law firms like Morgan Lewis for free. We also hold clinics every other week for small business owners to drop in and ask specific questions to experts, and a small business office hours every Friday where one of my colleagues and I are available to answer legal questions and strategize with small businesses–all of this is open to businesses affiliated with Ujima.
To see someone who wants to take themselves out of a traditional workplace that was oppressive or restrictive in some way to them: for them to create a business and to then provide sustainable employment for their community and the people around them–it’s incredibly fulfilling.
What else does BizGrow do to foster economic development in communities of color?
In addition to the legal interventions that I mentioned, we also hold multiple classes a week on small business development. We have a BizGrow conference every summer at Suffolk Law School, as well–the date for this summer is on July 23rd, and it’s a free, all-day event that hosts some of the same conversations, classes and workshops that we offer regularly. We also do policy work: we have done a lot of advocacy around procurement with the Cities of Boston, Cambridge, and Worcester–big cities that are failing to meet their local procurement goals for securing city needs via contracts with Black and Brown businesses. We actually sued the City of Boston under the Walsh administration to make sure that their minority procurement numbers are aligned to what they promised.
A lot of this is also led by the small businesses we work with. A key part of what we do at BizGrow is making connections for small business owners. It's not a huge lift for an attorney at a law firm to form an LLC or write a contract, but it can provide a real sticking point for a small business. We see ourselves as a bridge that's making sure that legal resources are deployed in communities that really need them.
How does your work at Lawyers for Civil Rights, in partnership with Ujima, align with your goals or your vision for yourself as a lawyer?
I've always wanted to work with underserved communities, which is why I joined LCR, and I've been here my whole career; working with Ujima as a partner falls exactly in line with that. And I love working with small businesses. It’s amazing to me when I go to a store and see a business that we helped create, stocked in the shelves at Whole Foods.
What excites you about this work?
Everything. There's a lot of room to innovate and to think of new ways to help small businesses and their broader communities, and we're constantly coming up with new strategies to meet needs as they pop up. For example, we did a lot of PPP work during the pandemic, and some business reopening support afterward–the landscape is constantly changing.
There are some amazing businesses Ujima works with that we have been able to support through BizGrow. And to see someone who wants to take themselves out of a traditional workplace that was oppressive or restrictive in some way to them: for them to create a business and to then provide sustainable employment for their community and the people around them–it’s incredibly fulfilling. We say that we help businesses make their dreams come true. ✦
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