Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic
Overview
The Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic allows students to represent small businesses and nonprofit organizations in a range of transactional matters, including entity formation, governance, tax, contracts, employment, intellectual property, and risk management. Projects may include creating a new business, drafting a lease or other agreement, or applying for tax-exempt status. Under faculty supervision, students conduct client interviews, perform fact investigations and legal research, draft client-ready transactional documents and advisory memoranda, and counsel clients on their recommendations. Students also organize a community education project to facilitate entrepreneurship and inclusive economic development in the region.
2022-2023 Annual Review
The Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic launched in 2018 as an experiential course at Vanderbilt Law School. Students enrolled in the Clinic gain transactional lawyering skills and experience through the representation of entrepreneurs and community organizations in Middle Tennessee. The Clinic’s goals are to teach substantive law and practice strategies, give students the opportunity to apply their skills in the public interest, and facilitate inclusive economic and community development.
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Community Enterprise Clinic Transforms Businesses into Cooperatives
In the spring 2023 semester, the Clinic provided legal services to 3 cooperative enterprises.
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Transactional Lawyering for Black Lives
During the fall 2020 semester, the Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic collaborated with Law for Black Lives to explore ways of increasing Black land ownership and community wealth.
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Representatives of clemency child trafficking advocate Cyntoia Brown-Long
During spring and summer 2020, the Clinic represented human trafficking survivor and criminal justice reform advocate Cyntoia Brown-Long.
Clinic Director
Lauren Rogal
Associate Clinical Professor
Lauren Rogal developed and teaches Vanderbilt’s Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic. Rogal began her legal career as an associate with Klamp & Associates, a D.C.-based law firm that represents nonprofits and social enterprises, where she focused on developing sustainable financing structures for community development and facilitated complex international transactions. She continued to practice of counsel with the firm from 2015 to 2017 while pursuing an LL.M. in advocacy and teaching the Social Enterprise and Nonprofit Law Clinic at Georgetown.
Have Questions?
Connect with the Legal Clinic coordinator.