LAWYERS SUPPORTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, COOPERATION AND THE SHARING ECONOMY

These are energizing times! Socially and environmentally conscious entrepreneurs and community leaders are placing more value on sharing and cooperation, and our economy is changing as compassion for others plays a bigger role in business. Even so, many laws currently on the books present barriers to the sustainable models we need, and conventional legal practice can discourage cooperation and sharing when people emphasize scarcity and power. The legal profession has much room to grow to support a more loving world, and I am committed to practicing law in a way that encourages social enterprise, cooperative culture, and a sharing-based economy.
I’ve been studying Janelle Orsi’s book, Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy, and am grateful for the recent invitation to become a Legal Fellowat the Sustainable Economies Law Center! These connections are inspiring me with new knowledge to bring to the many exciting opportunities ahead of us in Idaho. The types of legal counseling I look forward to providing include:

• Designing and drafting agreements. Social entrepreneurs in the cooperative and sharing economy need creative and highly collaborative agreements to serve as the roadmaps to complex and long-term relationships. When people choose not to document agreements because they think informality will reduce conflict, they usually see the opposite result. Instead, we can create agreements that nurture healthy relationships.
• Managing risk. Fear of liability and loss can be a barrier to sharing and collaboration. This can be resolved with agreements that clarify responsibilities, allocate risk, waive liability for certain activities, indemnify members of a group from others’ liability, and create other ways to ensure that communities can remedy a loss, resolve disputes outside litigation, and reduce risks of harms. Reducing fear is a major step in creating a more loving economy.
• Choosing, forming, and structuring entities. There are so many options to provide structure to how people work together, manage assets, engage in cooperative activities, and operate in social enterprises. These involve an overlapping network of state and federal laws and require an understanding of concerns relating to fundraising and management. Many possible entity forms are underutilized and can help the sharing economy grow.
• Managing relationships with and use of land. Real estate, subdivision, and land use regulations govern what we do with land and must be navigated – and changed – as we develop creative new agreements and entities that structure ownership, development, financing and management of land with the goal of increasing the resilience of our economy and ecosystems.
• Navigating regulations on production and commerce. The legality of small-scale and collaborative arrangements engaged in regulated industries like food, energy, healthcare, childcare, housing and transportation is complex and evolving. Regulations on these activities were developed to manage transactions between producers and consumers that tend to have little to no personal relationship and can inhibit smaller scale community projects.
• Understanding the legalities and taxation of exchange. In the sharing economy, people provide valuables, goods, and services to each other through a variety of relationships that are gray areas under current tax and employment laws. These include barter transactions, barter networks, community currencies, time banks and other modes of non-conventional exchange.
• Navigating labor and employment regulations. As communities adopt diverse and collaborative ways of creating meaningful work experiences, relationships involving work and compensation must be structured to comply with – or avoid application of – complex employment laws. Many of these laws were designed to protect abuse of vulnerable populations, but can often make voluntary sharing and cooperation difficult.
• Navigating securities regulations. To support a world where social enterprise and housing will be financed and owned by members of our local communities, state and federal securities laws must be understood and navigated. This is a complex area of the law that is often violated unknowingly because people assume these laws only apply to “big money”. Raising money is highly regulated but it does not have to be scary or reserved for faceless institutions.
• Managing intellectual property issues. Music, photos, illustrations, poetry, essays, performances . . . there are many options when dealing with the shareability of creative works. As technology and values change, the laws will adjust, but understanding how to share without stepping on legal toes is important in the sharing economy.

Thank you for reading this! My professional mission is to help awesome people do awesome things, and I’m looking forward to meeting more people and exploring this vision together. Learn more about me and please contact me with ideas!