Help Me With Sign Missouri Trademark Assignment Agreement

Document type sign trademark assignment agreement mississippi later

um i am part of the legal services micro enterprise team i'm here today with tracy james our managing attorney for the team who will be popping in to participate some and she'll also be managing our chat today so if you have any questions as this presentation progresses feel free to type them in the chat and then stephanie strickland our staff attorney today is going to be hosting and presenting so without any further ado stephanie good afternoon thank you everyone for joining us as julie said i am stephanie strickland and both of us are new to the micro enterprise team as of september of this year so we're really excited to be here and to be able to share uh information about our program with you all as potential volunteers today my goal is to talk to you about what we do in the micro enterprise program how you can help and how helping can benefit you and you all have should have already received a copy of the agenda but just to briefly overview we're going to do a brief introduction to what the ced micro enterprise program is supporting micro enterprise with pro bono working with clients as a volunteer attorney we will talk about some common legal issues for startups as well as some of our successes and opportunities and at the end we will be happy to take any additional questions as truly stated if you have questions as we go along feel free to enter those into the chat and we will address them as we can okay so in 2011 after an extensive needs assessment that involved interviews with more than 60 area service agencies working with entrepreneurs and non-profits as well as meetings with other community stakeholders the need for free legal assistance in the st louis area for entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses became quite clear and in response to that legal services of eastern missouri one of the area's largest not-for-profit law firms decided to create the community economic development program as we will refer to ced throughout this presentation and as you see on the screen and would have received in your materials we just briefly listed some of our our mission and objectives as well as some of our goals our main goals are to eliminate poverty by increasing wealth to neighborhoods increasing income and creating jobs as well as helping startups become anchor in their community we hope that these services that we provide of transactional legal work will contribute to closing the economic gap and disparities that exist within our communities on our next slide just a brief overview of the legal support that we do provide we work with entrepreneurs and non-profit founders who often come to us with various legal needs as they are starting off or growing their company we do make sure that all of our clients meet certain financially financial eligibility excuse me and other guidelines that we'll get into later in the presentation we match our clients with competent attorneys and who are licensed with the missouri bar either one of our staff attorneys but hopefully um we'll have more volunteers that can help with that work and the whole goal of this is to help our clients avoid potentially devastating legal issues and help their businesses grow so how does micro enterprise reach those in need we provide outreach we do workshops in presentations a lot of this outreach is done with our community partners we conduct one-on-one legal clinics as well as provide one-on-one client representation to those clients who do qualify a big part of what we do is recruit is as we said recruiting volunteer attorneys to do work for the micro enterprise program our team consists of two staff attorneys a managing attorney and two paralegals however our reach would not be nearly as impactful without volunteers like you we also rely on a host of community partners to help us build our outreach this next slide just kind of gives you a brief overview of the demographics of our clients majority of them are minorities we've also worked with a number of um individuals who are members of the immigrant community as you see about 55 of our clients are for-profit businesses and about 45 of our clients are not-for-profits the next slide kind of gives you a little bit of a breakdown of the economic diversity that exists within our client base as you see the largest number 71 percent of our clients are between zero to 125 percent over the federal poverty level and just to give an example what that looks like a family of four would not to be eligible they would have to make no more than 70 000 a year um i think that this is important to kind of highlight because i think um when people look at low-income clients what that looks like to them can vary and we can serve in our program we can serve clients who are up to 300 percent above the federal poverty income level so or excuse me poverty guidelines and so um we do work with some clients who might not be what people think of as indigent per se going on to the next slide so what can volunteer attorneys do in the micro enterprise programs we are looking for volunteer attorneys to host presentations and workshops as well as staff legal information sessions and clinics as well as provide one-on-one client representation in terms of the presentations and workshops some of our volunteers come to us to specifically teach on substantive topics that they have previously covered they may be an expert in that area and already have pre-made presentations that's excellent we accept that we also have some pre-made powerpoints for individuals who can contribute some of their time to do a presentation but may not want to put a full uh presentation together um and i have some of those commonly um discussed topics that we already have presentations on listed below you can present in partnership with community groups and interested members of the public as well and the time commitment is normally between an hour and three hours so we do have monthly presentation opportunities that we are open to working with our volunteers on and as i stated these are just some of the topics that we've covered in the past so we're always welcome to new and more specialized topics if if you have any ideas for our legal information sessions or as we call them clinics these are normally 30 minute sessions where an individual has an opportunity to sign up and speak with one or more attorneys and ask questions about their startup this is a great opportunity for firms to staff um i know a lot of firms have pro bono coordinators um this is a good opportunity for younger attorneys to get involved and be able to connect with the public all of our attendees they are not considered clients we make sure that they sign waivers and know that the legal advice that they're being given is on a one-time only basis if they're not becoming a client and as you can see in this slide we've listed a number of our previous and current partners that we work with in terms of the one-on-one client representation how you can help you will receive um newsletters if you're not already receiving newsletters from us we send those out um pretty frequently we'd like for you to keep an eye out for cases where you can help and then inform us if there's a specific case that you would like to work on we will get into more of the specifics of how that process works later in the presentation but just so you know our program handles all of the paperwork and we offer malpractice insurance for our volunteers we also offer legal training if needed i know oftentimes some of the barriers that we've heard in terms of volunteers with our program they'll say well i don't really practice in all of the areas of law how do i know that i can help a client we like i said we have checklists we're happy to talk to people individually and discuss some of the case needs with our individual clients the length of representation of a client will depend on the difficulty of the work and what's needed on a case-by-case basis so that's something we're happy to work with you on and next i'm gonna have tracy james our managing attorney talk to you a little bit about the impact of pro bono work and um how it has helped our program over the last several years as i stated i am newer and she can speak to this a little more specifically so tracy yeah thank you so much stephanie i appreciate it uh i've been the managing attorney uh for the micro enterprise ed program since 2016 and uh noticed that uh the pro bono impact just for 2019 i mean this has kind of grown from the beginning that stephanie had mentioned uh back in 20 2011 and so what you see here is pre-covered and it's a lot it's it's very uh um you know very robust for what we do uh this is when we just had two attorneys and one paralegal um and so we had 165 events there was a lot of things going on on site where we had pre-screened people to come in for clinics and then we also went out and partnered with our community partners to do legal information sessions out in the st louis metro region and that included other just outreach events uh where we're just tabling or we're actually doing presentations or volunteers are doing presentations and a lot of this when you're looking at this it's not just us but it is our volunteer attorneys in general and that we also had uh seven regular ongoing uh clinics with with our partners that were you you know something periodic either it's monthly or bi-monthly and at least five of the seven were staffed for once they you know sponsored by uh law firms and law departments um we also offer a non-profit entrepreneur clinics uh both types and you right now those are 30 active community partners as of 2019 so you see that we do have some involvement but this has definitely been impacted by covet here this year but thank you thank you tracy yeah and so also just kind of let you if you see the numbers of 2011 2018 this is kind of just a snapshot that um how many we've either recruited and how many have given their time of volunteers and we have a couple of volunteer accountants as well and we're always looking forward to having other uh like paralegals and other legal support staff assist but this was this is a big uh you see a big trajectory uh going up uh you know increasing in some way from just a couple of volunteer attorneys at the very beginning in 2011 to probably reaching over 300 i think yeah 333 at the end of 2018. so you see that we have tried to uh engage our volunteer uh a lawyer community uh to do this and we've reached a lot and so this is you know our aim as stephanie had said before is to try and reach as many people as we can who can uh help build uh build wealth for themselves uh create jobs and then really rebuild the community definitely definitely and so as you see on the screen there is a document that you should have received in your materials that will give you the opportunity to sign up the volunteer but before you do that you might be wondering like what's in it for me like why should i volunteer with the micro enterprise program well outside of just your your missouri rules rule 4 6.1 the volunteer the voluntary pro bono uh public health service i'd like to always remind myself honestly not just other people but i constantly remind myself of my obligation to render service that is in the public interest um and this is a great opportunity for you to do that so not only would you be doing or doing work that would essentially further um your ethical obligations as an attorney but it's also extremely rewarding this type of work when you're working with individuals who you know really need you and who may have come basically just like with nowhere else to turn that can be a very rewarding experience in the life of a lawyer particularly young lawyers and and whether you're a younger lawyer or older lawyer we actually do have um one particular lawyer who is retired who helps in our program and um they're very instrumental in the work that we do and so you know there are several reasons that that we can give you that will help you but the past the practice experience is um another definitely plus when i came to legal services of eastern missouri i didn't have a background specifically in transactional law i used to be a public defender i've worked as a civil prosecutor for a county government before so i've kind of been different areas of the spectrum so this is a great opportunity to learn other areas of law particularly if you are a younger lawyer and looking to gain more experience and we can go to the next slide please so working with clients as a volunteer attorney you might be wondering what that looks like our next slide just kind of gives a broad overview of that process from beginning to end and the following slides are going to kind of flesh those details out just a little bit more okay and so the first step is a step in which our team manages um that's the eligibility side as i previously mentioned the client has to meet the federal poverty guidelines that can't be more than 300 percent above those guidelines we our staff manages that make sure that they don't have more than 7 500 in assets um there's some more nuances there that we don't necessarily have to get into but some of the things just so you know we do look to try to make sure that that person has a business plan sometimes it might be if it's a business that's already in operation and that's been going for a while that might be one exception but for the for the most part we just want to make sure um and determine the legal work that needs to be done um and make sure if it's a not-for-profit that they serve our client population and that they pass our conflict check okay and the next um slide discusses um our screening of the client and that's generally um that generally is a step that we have some volunteers who help us with we'll set up a meeting with that client so there can be a couple of attorneys on the line and basically do some issue spotting see what legal work the client may need and help them flesh out what issues they have they may come with one specific question and find out in a clinic that they actually do have other legal needs so we try to address all of those things on the front end and the next step is um that's the confidential interview form this is a step that we manage and again our volunteers support us with that step in determining uh the client's needs and readiness to proceed we generally will have the attorney the staff attorney that's on that call or if it's a volunteer attorney to complete that form and the next step would be drafting a summary that would go to tracy our managing attorney for her approval on what matters we can open at this time we handle this step again but again this is just so you know that only the most qualified clients are reaching you our volunteers so ultimately the last step is we send that case out after we do that case summary we will put it on what we call distribution which is generally via a newsletter um and we'll send it out that is what it will look like to you it will tell you what type of business or not for profit it is and what the specific legal needs are um you will also have an opportunity to take that case uh particularly if you were in the screening process that would essentially give you first dibs on working with that client because you're already familiarized with them so that's something to keep in mind however this is just just so you know what it looks like on and how you can select cases that you may be interested in working in i also want to point out while we're on this slide you can see for example this case has a ip trademark matter in a copyright matter so let's just pretend that there's a contract matter on there as well and you say well i am only interested in the intellectual property aspect of this case you can certainly let us know that you are interested but that you're not comfortable or you just don't have the time to handle the contract matter i want to make sure i put that out there so that people know that when you are volunteering with our program we try to meet you where you are and where you would like to help us so if you ever see a case on distribution and there's only one aspect of that case that you can handle that's certainly um an opportunity that we can provid to you the process of becoming a ced client we want our we want more volunteers just so you know so that we don't have the risk having to turn any of our clients away okay we do rely on our volunteer attorneys to supplement our three attorney staff if no one volunteers on these cases um after a few weeks generally we will one of our in-house attorneys will be assigned to the case okay but if our cd attorneys have too high of a caseload we would be in the position where we would have to decline cases and that's why we need more volunteers to help we won't we don't want to turn people away because um as i mentioned before you can split up legal needs um we do recommend attorneys that are with law firms to take an entire case if they can and act as a managing attorney to assign those matters internally that's another way in which this can be handled it's a great attorney development opportunity for associates um to get some managing attorney skills but as i said we've also found that many specialists would rather if you'd just rather take one portion of the case we can work with you on that as well the next slide essentially this is the client representation timeline okay once you email us and say you want to take a case what we will do is we will send the conflict information over to the specific attorney if you're a solo practitioner you run that conflict check if you are with the firm you would have your firm run that conflict check once the conflict clears we would notify or at least once we're notified that you all have cleared the contact on your end we would notify that volunteer lawyer and the client of the representation we have our own retainer agreement that specifies the scope of the work that needs to be done and your you as a solo practitioner or your refer may also require its own in addition and that is completely fine okay once a case is assigned to you we ask that attorneys contact clients within one week of notification um because essentially this is your case now and that's a great way to just keep the flow going with the client keeping the clients keeping in communication with the clients what we do on our end is we hope to provide additional support to you as volunteer attorneys we have forms in our office we have checklists of specific legal issues um essentially outlines uh if you were to need any of those things so as a volunteer attorney we always want our volunteer attorneys to know that feel free to reach out at us at to us at any time one of our attorneys can also consult with you on any particular matters if you have questions our job is to make you feel supported and we want to make sure that you do our apparel each case or attorney will have their own paralegal outreach coordinator that would be julie bowman or richard depending on the geographic area of your client and what they do is just essentially manage the case reach out to you every once in a while about 30 to 60 days to receive a update on the client work that's being done so the next step the next slide will show you a case update form this is the form that we asked that our volunteer attorneys use to keep us updated on any completed legal work or documents that have been finalized we ask that you log your hours on this form as well um we put that information in our system for our compliance purposes our funding purposes we have to keep track of those things and you may also want to keep track of those things if you do have a pro bono coordinator with your firm it'll help you track your hours and transmit that information to them once uh you have a particular matter if you take a full case and you that had a few matters once you get one matter done notify us please and we will make sure we get you a closing letter along with a questionnaire and that that would include either a case update or a closure form just depending on where you are so if you're closing out a case we actually just give us a closure form it's important that we just know what all work has been done on a case again for our compliance purposes in terms of managing the case our goal is for each parent to be positive for both the attorney and the client now we live in the real world so um we know that every match might not always be the best match okay so we're looking to get that on the front end if at all possible if you run into any issues um feel free to reach out to us for support and what we find most time is that if there are any communication issues most of the time they can be resolved okay just remember that we are here to support you with any of those types of matters another issue that comes up sometimes in terms of managing these cases with our volunteer attorneys is that there have been cases where an attorney might not be able to continue that representation if you are with a firm we do ask that you try to get that case reassigned within your firm just as just to meet that initial ethical obligation for your firm if there are problems with that please contact us if you are considering getting off a case and we will definitely meet you where you are and do what we need to do so next we're going to talk about some typical issues that um that we see people run into with our clients or that sometimes we have with our clients the first one is i don't know if it could be considered an issue but it's something to keep in mind a lot of our clients have never used the services of a lawyer before so it's important that we set our expectations at that first contact with our clients um those expectations are generally what what's the scope of your representation trying to figure out what's the best communication style for both you the attorney as well as for the client if you prefer communication by email uh you know let that person know but you might want to check that they have the the proper technology to be able to communicate with you on a regular basis again thinking about our client base and how some of our clients may have certain limitations it's just really important to get an idea that for example during covet um i have had some we meet with our clients virtually we're not meeting in person at this time however i found that a couple of my clients for one reason or the other um either they don't have access to a smartphone or they don't know how to navigate that technology properly and so i just had to adjust to make a phone call and it was pretty much that simple so just an example of setting those communication expectations early um and also in that same vein i'll kind of skip down to another one um because it's these it's scope excuse me expanded scope of work when we're setting expectations something to keep in mind is that sometimes clients have things that come up along the way they may have additional issues that have nothing to do with the retainer agreement so i would just encourage you to remind them of the work that you've been retained to do unless you can see that there's some immediate need that they have that needs to be addressed before you can do that work just refer back to us and we can either update that retainer agreement or change things as they need to be that may also speak to another issue that we commonly see what some people may call high maintenance clients these aren't necessarily bad clients but they may just be clients that that are may come off as needy they may have lots of questions so i think one way to address that is just communicating regularly with your client setting meetings um regularly one thing i like to do is to schedule my next check in with my clients while um i am on a call with them just so you know they don't have to wonder how long is it going to be or email me every day or what have you sometimes clients can fall out of contact and and i want to talk about this one a little bit just to kind of place some perspective so i want everyone to keep in mind that a lot of our clients are starting businesses and they are also working full-time jobs at the same time so there can there have been issues with some clients where they may need to be scheduled they might not show up you might not be able to get in touch with them again i think setting those expectations in the beginning making sure you have um the best time to reach a person all of those things are going to be very helpful um tips to making sure that you can keep up the communication with your client um another thing to think about is you know just what are those persons social supports are there are they working parents are they single parents um are they single are they married these are things that can sometimes um cause some communication issues but i i find that once you understand them and um have a plan to address them it's usually not a big deal but if you ever have any issues we want our volunteer attorneys to know feel free to reach out to us and we'll be happy to if we need to send correspondence or what have you to reach that client we certainly will um last on the list of potential issues that we see with our clients sometimes a client's business does fail to move forward um that's just a reality i'm in the entrepreneurial world um just remember there are a lot of outside factors that can affect that not necessarily the motivation or cooperation of the person the biggest thing i can think of right now is covet 19 we've had clients who have had to either shut down businesses or pivot in their business model um in in order to be able to move forward and support their families the next slide just kind of fleshes out just a little bit more i mean it's essentially some of the things that i said but communicating with your clients some of the things to keep in mind is awareness of their educational background um you may have a client who has a ged or doesn't have a gb or you might have a client who has a phd i think the biggest thing is to not make any assumptions about the client because they are a client of legal services and and just kind of it's it's fine to ask questions in that initial meeting um sometimes you can pretty much gather um you know if a person is following you but i find that it's also good to just check in with that person especially when you're talking about legal issues and make sure that they are following you and asking if they have any questions if you're making sense things like that the other thing um to be on the lookout for is reducing legalese or legal jargon try to use plain language when possible and i know sometimes as lawyers we may want to you know use certain legal terms but our clients may not always understand them so if you do just make sure you try to break down what something means or just ask the person if they understand we also included um in your materials some helpful tips for communicating with clients so you can find some more helpful tips in your materials so we're going to move on to common legal issues for startups our next slide is an illustration of common examples of the type of work that we do so as you can see it's it's very varied and it covers many different areas of law we work to identify what the person's legal needs are before they are assigned to you as a client a lot of the things that we see are formation issues it could be licensing just trademark real estate um not-for-profit governance contracts so there are many different areas in which our clients could use your assistance there are also some areas of law that we do not um provide service for one of those is patents we don't specifically we don't do litigation in our program however sometimes we'll have a case and at some point in providing the transactional legal services that client may have some litigation to arise and what we generally try to do is refer them to or try to check in with our volunteer attorneys to see if anyone can handle that matter but litigation out the gate is not something that we would take on or assign initially to our volunteer attorneys we don't represent landlords with five or more tenants that's generally because we do have a housing program and we don't really want to have to deal with those conflicts we don't do uh dissolution business dissolution services or bankruptcy work and you can also see some of the um types of businesses that we don't perform legal work for that would include things like adult entertainment businesses businesses that sell weapons we don't do liquor license work so just kind of gives you a idea of how our model is and we also don't handle client funds we perform the transactional legal work if there are fees for the specific legal things such as filing a trademark the client is responsible for that fee some of the most common legal issues that we also see arise with our clients are things that a lot of times will deal will speak to the fact that they might not have had legal counsel in the beginning we often see clients who are operating without any legal structure whatsoever we see clients that have relied solely on legalzoom or the internet to draft their legal documents um lots of things that we have to address reactively unfortunately sometimes but that's the importance of our outreach we try to reach out to the community and help people on that front end but we also correct these structural issues if we see someone operating without a legal structure then we try to help them with um properly forming their business the next slide um is a breakdown this is a a visual breakdown of the 2020 open cases that we had as of october 1st and you can see a largest portion deal with contracts so a lot of contract reviews contract drafting and entity formation formation issues speaking of formation issues we're going to flesh this out a little bit just because this this is um i almost like to think of it's like the bread and butter of what we do is making sure that people have their legal entities form properly um these things you see that some of the things that we consider is what type of liability would fall upon a client um in case they were to be sued taxation issues the ongoing requirements that excuse me ongoing requirements to maintain an entity a individual oftentimes will want to consider those things in making the decision as to whether they want to have a sole proprietorship versus a partnership corporation or a limited liability company most of our clients do come to us either with llc's already formed or the idea in their head that they want an llc so just to give you kind of a brief overview of the types of legal entities and then kind of go through that in terms of sole proprietorships the benefit of a sole or excuse me the main characteristic of a sole proprietorship is that there's unlimited liability for business debt there's no formal action that's necessary to form a sole proprietorship and that sole proprietor has complete control over their business so they don't need to consult with anyone to make their business decisions we oftentimes see a lot of people who are operating in this capacity if they have not yet um formed an llc in terms of a partnership if you remember from law school there are two types of partnerships general unlimited partners are personally liable for all business debts and obligations and generally each partner can bind the business to a contract or business deal so try to pretty much let our clients know why it's really important to make sure if you're going to enter into a partnership with someone you want to make sure it's someone that you have a good relationship with and that you can trust in terms of partnerships a partnership has to follow certain corporate formalities has to hold annual shareholders and directors meetings keep minutes of those meetings and major decisions as well as issue stock certificates to shareholders the owner's personal assets are protected from creditors of the corporation and liability insurance is generally something that is important for the client to be advised on as it relates to this type of business then we move on to the c chord in a c core uh the business records and transactions are separate from the owners okay and um they have to adequately invest in the corporation there's an exception to the protection if you personally injure someone if you sign personal guarantees if you fail to deposit taxes withheld from the employ es wages fraudulent or illegal activities these are all things that are going to be exceptions to the protection that folks are often seeking in this type of business entity the business records are also kept separate from those of the owners in terms of insurance if if you personally injure someone while driving a car for business purposes they usually won't be protected against personal or corporate unpaid debts okay now to contrast the escort that's um used to be the it used to be the only choice for businesses wanting to be taxed on their individual tax returns a s corp cannot have more than 100 shareholders each shareholder must be a u.s citizen it enjoys the limited liability of a corporate shareholder but pays income tax as a sole proprietor and you first must create a regular c-core okay to obtain s-core status all shareholders must sign and file ir the irs form 2553 and then last the most common when we deal with the llc's they are formed by filing articles of organization with the secretary of state's office i believe it's currently 50 online to file that and there are a few ongoing formalities there's no stock certificates you don't have to worry about a board of directors officers are optional so people often find this type of structure a lot easier to deal with there's also no personal liability if done correctly a llc is owned by its members there's flex flexible ownership and management structure an llc is managed by members or a manager that's chosen by the members that's something important that i always make sure to point out to people and make sure that they have that file properly on their form there's pass through taxation if it's a single member and so that's just kind of some of the the brief overview of the formation matters we do have a number of outlines as well as checklists that can help people make these types of assessments and advise our startups you can move to the next slide please another thing that we often work with are businesses that have two or llc's they have two or more members it must have an operating agreement that's something that we can draft for our clients we have lots of examples of those and it's a pretty standard document um that we can get done for the person but we would like to make sure that they have everything in place they're ein there are often a lot of questions about fictitious business name the dba requirements um or doing business as should they have more than one llc or just have a dba that's a pretty common um issue that we see that we come across and for a dba though that's something that's registered with the secretary of state as well they're good for five years and it's actually a crime in the state of missouri to operate a dba without properly filing it so if you have a business and you're operating under some name some other name and you don't actually have a dba that that's an issue that a lot of times we have to advise our clients on oftentimes um in the course of either meeting with a new client or while we're already working with them will find that they may need review of existing contracts that they have we may need to draft new contracts or assist them with obtaining a business license or at least in advising them that they need a business license to operate the next slide addresses the common intellectual property needs of our clients now i know that this may this may sound scary to those of us who may not have practiced in this area before and it can be a nuanced area but um we have lots of a ton of resources we'd be happy to consult with any uh new attorneys in this area and we'd be even happier if you are an experienced intellectual property attorney who would like to take on these types of matters as i said we don't do patents but we do refer our clients to the uspto patent pro bono program we often encounter clients who may need copyrights that's often an issue when hiring contractors to design websites or graphics an issue that we often have to discuss with our client is a need to have that if they're looking to gain intellectual property rights in in material that has been not designed by an outside contractor we can help them get that or at least seek to have ownership assigned and that's called an assignment agreement something that's very standard and that we have plenty of examples of um another common thing is social media and websites a lot of our clients need guidance on fair use and trademark use of graphics online a lot of these issues will overlap with corporate issues like web designer contracts and data privacy so um in terms of trademarks that is something we conduct the searches we can follow that from beginning to end and that can be a very lengthy process for those of you who don't practice in that area but we're having fun myself i'm speaking for myself having fun learning that area the next slide addresses some growing business needs that we're seeing amongst our client population so we're seeing more and more labor and employment issues so we have a great need for attorneys who may have some experience in this area a common issue that we all are able to address and we do with our clients is the issue of having employees versus hiring independent contractors that is a very big thing for a business that's something that they need to consider in their business structure we try to uh provide all of the um or we don't try to we have to make sure that we um inform our clients of all of their obligations in the hiring and firing process if they're going to have employees we can assist with drafting employee handbooks as well as administering anti-discrimination advice in terms of real estate we have many of our clients need new commercial leases so they'll need that lease reviewed we've also assisted clients with negotiating or renegotiating leases we can go ahead and go to the next slide there's also a number of niche legal concerns um that we come across such as the municipal requirements for business licensing so sometimes i can i can tell our clients they feel like they're kind of going down a rabbit hole with the different licensing but it's it's just important that they're aware of all the licensing that they need to be able to operate um they need sales tax guidance um and we are able to provide that we're not tax attorneys so sometimes they may need more specialized uh advice so it's good to have tax attorneys to volunteer they often need regulatory guidance as well um as as it relates to products we do have quite a few clients who create their own products and so it's important that we provide them with the proper guidance as it relates to that product labeling and any liability that can arise from that non-profit legal issues so as some of you may or may not know there's a lot of governance that's involved corporate governance that's involved with a not-for-profit not-for-profits do have to incorporate with the secretary of state they have to have articles of incorporation have to have bylaws they have to identify at least a minimum of three directors for their board and it also requires annual or biannual corporate registration we often assist clients if they are not already tax exempt a lot of nonprofits come to us seeking to apply for the tax-exempt status the purpose of the organization must not be to make money you'd be surprised but um sometimes we have to really flesh that out to some clients people have very creative ideas but we have to make sure that their not-for-profit is meeting all of the standard requirements of a not-for-profit corporation profits must remain with the corporation and cannot be distributed to board members that's something really big that we have to um talk to our clients about um sometimes especially when you're dealing with a smaller not-for-profit or a sole person who's starting one a lot of times the people that they have for ideas of board members are family members and that's an issue that's a problem that we we have to to talk to them about you don't want to have conflicts a not-for-profit corporation it's important that they know that the members are not personally liable they can receive public donations and that donors may receive tax deductions um and so there's a little less flexibility in some of the requirements for a not-for-profit but there's a lot of formalities there but again we have lots of resources um good to know just it's just good to know that to file for a not-for-profit um the fee can be anywhere from 275 dollars to 800 and you know that it just depends on which form you use but um the biggest thing is just that we make sure that our clients have all of their required documents which again is articles of incorporation bylaws identify directors identify the charitable purpose and that they have a conflict of interest policy next i'm going to hand things back over to tracy james to talk about some of our successes and opportunities thank you so much stephanie i appreciate it uh as we're winding down this hour i just wanted to kind of talk about uh some of the successes that the micro enterprise program has has uh seen or has been a part of since its inception in 2011. if we can go to the next slide that would be great thank you uh given a case study for example uh when this program was first created one of the first pro bono attorneys was an attorney from emerson and emerson electric and they just kind of dipped their toe in the water to do some uh like you know being part of a clinic you know when we had an on-site clinic and you know what they just started kind of doing this like okay this is good this i can handle this you know it's they they understood what the format was they understood that it wasn't necessarily i mean there's a lot of issues spotting they were very excited about this and so they thought well we can go ahead and do some presentations as well and then we had them uh going out to doing uh at least two different community partners that we were involved with uh justine peterson is one and then the other one was grace hill uh but i wanted to kind of highlight the partnership with grace hill i mean with justine peterson where you know they we had this ongoing relationship they understood what justine peterson was doing so they would do like a presentation on general legal issues i mean where this volunteer attorney maybe uh recruited some of his other um attorneys in his law department to do some of these things uh labor and employment and uh also a trademark and so as they kind of got along then they said you know this isn't so bad um you know they're feeling comfortable because they're a little bit more familiar these ongoing uh clinics and ongoing presentations so they would we would have these uh scheduled these bi-monthly clinics with justine peterson where they would do screening and then sometimes or that some of the attorneys at emerson said you know this is really kind of exciting and i like some of the people their business ideas and legal issues are intriguing you know maybe i could go ahead and take on a case so they started taking on cases so as you can see uh over the years they've really kind of uh participated and i think i lost my screen there um participated in our uh program as the program grew and they got more involved and then even to this day i think that uh the whole uh organization uh emerson was committed to some of our partners our community partners and and you know maybe doing other things that were for good for the community and they really were invested in it and then also uh you know they would get rewarded rewarded for their um participation in doing like a pro bono challenge which bamsel has or that they would um you know really get involved with where one of the members or one of the lawyers said you know i'd like to be on legal services board so once they have a taste they kind of drink the kool-aid they start getting involved i mean but it was really kind of getting that that toe dipped and getting it started you know and that and that proverbial well um to get that involvement so that's where kind of this partnership is and even to this day it's 2020 uh we have a a clinic with emerson and justine peterson next week where they kind of go through these different issues all the time in the screening and it's just a great a great time and we always encourage not just solos but emeritus attorneys uh retired attorneys uh um you know others that and you know also firms especially to either sponsor or be part of something and just see how it goes um but it can be pretty invigorating so next slide giving you some ideas of some representative client success stories and we're going to try and highlight those in our in our attorney newsletter uh the distribution newsletter of some of our successes because this is how we gauge success for our program and for funding but and also to just show you know that there's a longer uh runway for our kind of clients versus the typical legal aid clients where you can kind of you have the litigation they're done either won the case or they lost the case um but with us it's kind of a lot harder you know it's a lot longer of a runway to see how they're successful so finally when we see these things and we always like our volunteer attorneys to let us know some of the successes that then they've been a part of um and then they can buy into you know just that all of this but so you see some of these right here where there was certain types of stuff and then where they did certain legal things and this is where um you know we did this and you find that they have more issues but you know they're also you see the success where they might get those grants or that they are recognized as an outstanding entrepreneur in the st louis community or that they have some really interesting ideas but you know success might be for them as they're providing wealth for their families or jobs or they're just really you know really meeting the need that the community is looking for next slide thank you stephanie thank you tracy i think this is the part where um julia's going to talk about some of our upcoming pro bono opportunities yeah so um one of the things that i have included in your packet with you is a whole listing of pro bono opportunities so some of them are cases um you might be seeing that case summary that we usually send in our newsletter email for ms r who needs some litigation assistance right now as one example there's also a list of daytime issues spotting clinics every week we are hosting clinics so we can do some of those initial intakes for clients so if you have daytime availability or actually if you have evening availability too we have evening clinics most weeks so there's a full listing of opportunities depending on your schedule and how you can help out but in general too we have three community partners who are seeking long-term legal partnerships like that emerson and justine peterson won so if you are looking to you know reach minority business owners the urban league save our sisters program could really use some focus from a law firm or from a corporation we also have two library programs now that are expanding and looking for people who can present they are looking for people to staff clinics and to help grow the clients there so there's several presentation opportunities the second week in february is national entrepreneur week and so we are hoping to have a grouping of presentations and programs but we need volunteers now so we can start planning for that so again look at your course materials see if there's an opportunity to help out and let us know where you can and then our email address is ced lsem.org and you can reach all of us that way in our full team and if there's any additional questions i'm going to open it back up please if you do have questions uh you could go ahead and put it in the chat or if you want to somehow unmute yourself that's fine too and ask a question of us one of the ones before we leave is how do you deal with clients where english is not their primary language um do we usually give those out to pro bono attorneys or do we keep that in-house when they need some translation assistance so is that a question is that for me it could be for anybody in our team but that's just ind of giving you an example when we do have those if you don't know it i can answer it so no certainly if someone does not primarily speak english we have to make sure we have an ethical obligation to make sure that we get the appropriate translation services for that individual however the question spoke to a very great point we have a need for attorneys who do speak more than one language that would be excellent if we have uh dedicated attorneys that uh speak spanish or other languages please let us know if you have those skills and so that we can utilize you when we do get cases like that yeah and then uh the other question another question is how do we receive the newsletter that has been spoken about thank you for oh go ahead julie i was just gonna [Laughter] so i'm actually one of the people who helps draft the newsletter so if you are wanting to sign up message me i can make sure everybody signed up today for this session receives the newsletter but if you also want to message me too rather than forward it on to a new person that way we can get the new sign-ups and recognize new volunteers so that way we can expand our reach there and know who exactly is interested in our program and one last question is um how has your program pivoted during covid from i mean do you still see people uh face to face that's an excellent question and the funny thing about that is that i started working for legal services post covet so tracy might be able to speak a little bit more but i mean obviously right now we are unable to meet with clients in person we have had to transition to a remote system where we have a remote desktop to make sure that we are able to keep all of our clients information confidential and that everything is being saved on a secure server but we have been pretty successful at least in my experience with being able to meet with clients pretty regularly and communicate with our clients by phone um as well as email but when we have our client meetings i try to have that somewhat face-to-face aspect by meeting with them via teens or via zoom just depending on their preference and we did that with our clinics too so any of these things that we're talking about presentations clinics all of those are virtual right now and our offices are actually remaining closed into 2021 um date to be determined so we foresee this happening for quite a while going forward right and and then the other thing is is that our clients can usually reach us if not by microsoft teams or here on zoom but we also have a telephone number 1 800 number that we can always provide and that has always been uh you know something that we try and meet the client where they're at and then i had one other client one other question where are your clients located generally do you have a geographic distribution of where they're at yes we serve both st louis city and county as well as some of the surrounding areas as you can see on the screen we have a couple of other offices in both union and hannibal so we also reach those service areas as well our me and julie we mostly work with the north county clients or any kind any county clients i should say and then the other half of our staff works with the city and other clients i don't know if you want to add anything to that tracy yeah basically um from what uh what we found is that uh maybe a little bit more of our clients come from the county but if they do they come from maybe north county and then uh we have a large percentage that come from the city of st louis and then we have others like franklin county uh st charles um we really can be able to kind of pivot that way um i mean we've had some even farther out in the more rural communities and that's where the the virtual uh platforms really seem to help but yeah it's just usually it's it's really interesting as as one of the other um statistics showed that i'd say a large portion of our client base are black entrepreneurs uh a lot of women and so and and there tend to be uh trending younger so i mean it's just kind of a really fascinating thing that we really like to be at the forefront of all this and i always say that um what micro enterprise does is kind of like special forces for legal aid it's it's not out there everywhere but we're really privileged to uh to be able to working with our client community and we hope that that you can see how that works too thank you tracy so any uh i think we have any other questions so uh stephanie do you want to close it out if we don't have any other questions i just want to thank everyone for joining us today i look forward to uh meeting each and every one of you if you have an opportunity to volunteer please feel free to reach out if you're not sure what you want to do still reach out and we can we can get get some ideas and get something going but i look forward to connecting with all of you and i hope you have a wonderful holiday season thank you thank you thank you all