This Columbus law firm providing Black-owned businesses with pro bono services - Columbus Business First - Columbus Business First

The Columbus office of McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC has launched a program that will award a year’s worth of free legal services to Black-owned businesses.

The program came out of work that the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee completed “in response to everything that was going on last year,” said Jennifer Cygan, a business development strategist for the law firm.

The law firm says the program, which it is calling the Legal Equity Advancement Program, is based in the acknowledgement that most Black-owned businesses “lack the resources necessary to access the sophisticated legal services needed to successfully launch, position and grow a business in today’s interconnected world.”

“The firm saw this as an opportunity to play a meaningful role in helping the Black business community overcome certain barriers to entry caused, in party, by institutional racism,” according to a press release from McKnees.

The law firm, which has six full-time attorneys in its Columbus office, launched the program in Pennsylvania last year, serving five Black-owned businesses.

Cygan said they hope to award the services to two Black-owned or Black-controlled businesses in Ohio during the first year of the program, and then expand it into an annual initiative.

“I think any business that’s got some stability and growth possibility is the best” fit for the program, Cygan said.

Black-owned businesses can receive help with taxes, employment and labor issues, real estate, intellectual property and contract reviews, among other services.

There will also be networking and educational opportunities as part of the program, Cygan said, and the firm hopes to make inroads with potential new clients beyond the term of the pro bono services.

“It’s really to establish an ongoing relationship,” she said.

source: https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2021/10/14/columbus-law-firm-pro-bono-services.html

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