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Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship—Significant Achievements for 2021-22

The Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship (IJ Clinic) continued to be a lifeline for small businesses in Chicago in 2021-22 through our in-depth representation of low-income entrepreneurs, advocacy for economic liberty, and outreach for small businesses throughout the city. Particularly during the COVID19 pandemic, entrepreneurs and small business owners struggled to navigate a changing economic and regulatory landscape. The IJ Clinic’s students and attorneys were able to provide invaluable guidance to both clients and lawmakers so that the small businesses that are key to our economic future can survive and even flourish.

The IJ Clinic’s clients included a variety of businesses founded by low-income entrepreneurs in Chicago. For example, we represented

  • a worker cooperative owned by street vendors to operate a shared kitchen
  • a designer sneaker and handbag company founded by a man who learned his craft in a prison workshop and determined to build a company around his talents when he came home
  • a coffee shop and roastery founded by friends in their neighborhood of Back of the Yards after they tried and failed to convince big-name coffee shops to open in the neighborhood
  • a worker-owned bicycle messenger service that delivers orders for restaurants
  • a healing business that coordinates yoga, meditation, acupuncture, counseling, and other healing practices for customers on site and online
  • a detergent company that has developed a formula for a plant-based, gentle laundry detergent, which is now sold all over the country
  • a barber college designed to help under-resourced students start careers as barbers, inspired by the founder’s experience becoming a barber after 20 years of wrongful imprisonment
  • an urban agriculture business that grows produce, designs vegetable gardens, and educates the public about growing food in the city
  • a popular brunch restaurant with plans to expand and distribute products wholesale.

The IJ Clinic’s clients mean everything to their founders and to their communities. In the past year, as businesses struggled to stay open or to pivot in ways that allowed them to survive regulatory restrictions, our students counseled them through decisions big and small. Students’ significant achievements in this kind of counseling are hard to list here. But their creativity, their insight, their dedication, their wisdom, their knowledge of complex bodies of law, and their care for delivering actionable advice made it possible for our clients to survive and in fact to reach new milestones in their businesses.

Details of our clients’ decisions and dealings are confidential, of course. But here is a sampling of some of the major projects students worked on for clients in the past year:

  • Closed a commercial loan for a renovation project in a building the client purchased last year.
  • Guided a manufacturing company client in negotiations with a minority investor.
  • Negotiated the contract with an international agency to represent our client in arrangements with manufacturers in Europe.
  • Drafted a trademark licensing agreement between our client and a product distributor.
  • Advised clients on the intellectual property protections available for designs, video tutorials, and more.
  • Strategized how to advocate for changes to zoning rules that make a business activity nearly impossible for a client to conduct anywhere in the city.
  • Led a retail business through different options for raising funds through a private placement, including preparation of a pitch deck and a convertible note financing document.
  • Drafted a significant joint venture agreement in a heavily regulated industry.
  • Researched licensing requirements for a business’s expansion into a new category.
  • Counseled a worker cooperative on the terms of entry and exit for cooperative members.
  • Negotiated multiple commercial leases for clients including one for a prominent downtown location. Counseled a client on lease termination options and arranged for early termination on favorable terms.
  • Prepared an LOI for a proposed O’Hare concession joint venture.
  • Negotiated an MOU for the joint development of a significant INVEST South/West project.
  • Applied for and successfully obtained key trademarks for clients, overcoming questions raised by the USPTO about potentially conflicting marks.
  • Created master forms of contracts for clients including a catering agreement, garden services agreement and independent contractor agreement.
  • For multiple start-up clients, reviewed organizational documents and prepared Bylaws and Consents for entity governance compliance.
  • Counseled a client on the dissolution process for a business that was overcome by obstacles that were compounded by the pandemic.
  • Recommended best practices on employment arrangements.
  • Researched various regulations including product labeling, wholesale foods production, Cause Marketing and Charitable Co-Ventures.

Alongside its work as general outside counsel for businesses founded by low-income entrepreneurs, the IJ Clinic is a watchdog and advocate for legislative reform. In the academic year 2021-22, the IJ Clinic had its most successful year yet in spearheading legislation in Springfield. Teams of students researched, analyzed, and strategized several policy projects at both the state and city levels.

  • The IJ Clinic drafted and lobbied for two bills that passed in the Illinois General Assembly this year. Under the moniker CLIMB, standing for Comprehensive Licensing Information to Minimize Barriers, the new laws will make it possible for the General Assembly to identify unintentional or excessive burdens that the State of Illinois places on people starting jobs. Occupational licenses impose strict requirements for individuals who want to enter an occupation, like barbering or make-up artistry, or social work. By their very definition, they exclude people who cannot afford to meet the requirements (and put some people into debt to meet them). And that makes it very difficult for the low-income entrepreneurs we serve to start innovative or traditional businesses and to hire eligible employees. In one CLIMB bill, we designed a task force that will analyze occupational licensing for low- to moderate-income occupations, with a focus on equity In the second CLIMB bill, we amended the process for sunset review in Illinois, so the General Assembly will receive regular substantive reports about the burdens and benefits of occupational licensing. The strategy was built on the foundation of student research and analysis Our goal is to have a General Assembly that is well informed of the facts about individual people’s challenges, not just the goals of the trade associations and schools that benefit from exclusionary, restrictive licensing. Our work will continue to make sure that the task force’s report and sunset reviews get the attention they deserve.
  • At the city level, we engaged with City of Chicago officials repeatedly to advocate for businesses with small budgets and to educate them about the ramifications of policy proposals on businesses like our clients. For example, we advised the Mayor’s Office on the effects of the proof of vaccine requirements for health-related businesses on the South Side. We counseled an alderman on alternative solutions after he introduced an ordinance that would limit the locations of shared kitchens and require all shared kitchens to go through a complex zoning review. We also persuaded the city to remove some onerous requirements that were proposed for businesses within a half-mile of CTA train stations.

Lastly, the IJ Clinic continues to shine a spotlight on entrepreneurship on the South Side of Chicago. While many news stories about the South Side focus on crime or poverty, the IJ Clinic lifts up the models of innovation and inspiration among the South Side’s entrepreneurs. The South Side Pitch is a competition for those innovators that culminates in a wonderful evening for the finalists to face off before a panel of expert judges and the standing room only audience, a la Shark Tank. In 2021, we presented a professional live video stream of our finalists and the panel of prominent judges. The winner was a mental health services provider focused on women of color on the South Side, while the community favorite who received the most votes online was the only running store on the South Side, which is housed in a reused shipping container in Boxville In a time when customers were feeling disconnected from small businesses, and small businesses were wondering if they could survive the pandemic, we used our virtual competition to expose hundreds of Chicagoans to the semi-finalists and finalists whose businesses contribute so much to their South Side neighborhoods.