Our Work
The Grunin Center carries out a range of activities and initiatives within NYU Law and beyond under three main pillars:
Educating law students and lawyers
The Grunin Center is leading the way worldwide in preparing a new generation of talented, committed, and globally oriented lawyers to apply their skills to advance social entrepreneurial solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
The Grunin Center is advancing learning and fostering a robust legal community of practice in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing in a number of ways. We support innovative course offerings at NYU Law and create teaching tools that are available to legal educators interested in embedding themes of social entrepreneurship or impact investing into their courses. We also host continuing legal education opportunities for lawyers interested in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing, and offer through NYU Law’s business law clinics legal support for social enterprises and impact investors.
Developing and disseminating knowledge
The Grunin Center supports legal research and scholarship that is helping to build the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing. The Grunin Center tracks legal and regulatory developments in the field of social entrepreneurship through its Social Enterprise Law Tracker. The Grunin Center also is developing a virtual resource library to include legal toolkits and technical guides aimed at helping social entrepreneurs, impact investors, and their counsel navigate challenging legal issues and conduct negotiations.
The Center is working to advance the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing through legal scholarship. To this end, the Center is engaging in the following activities:
o Developing, in partnership with Prof. Anne Tucker (Georgia State), a legal literature review of the legal scholarship that has taken place over the last decade (2007-2017) in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing.
o Hosting a Legal Scholars convening (in tandem with our Annual Conference on Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing – in the US and Beyond) to help build a community of legal scholars who support and collaborate with each other as they engage in future research initiatives in the fields of social impact investing and social entrepreneurship. The next Legal Scholars convening will take place on June 6, 2019, immediately following the IILWG/Grunin Center Annual Conference. For more information, please visit our Events page.
Lastly, by overseeing the annual award of the Grunin Prize, the Grunin Center puts a spotlight on legal innovations taking place in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Collaborating to advance the field
The Grunin Center partners with other field-building organizations, universities and research centers, in the US and beyond, to advance the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing. In collaboration with the Impact Investing Legal Working Group, the Grunin Center hosts an annual conference that brings together attorneys from around the world to share knowledge, resources and experiences.
For more information about our work, check out our Student Opportunities, our Resources, our Events and the Grunin Prize.