Mission
The Social Enterprise & Startup Law Group strives to accomplish the following:
- Expose law students to the growing fields of social entrepreneurship and startup law
- Inspire ideas for innovating the legal sector
- Work with lawyers and law students to identify how they can use their legal skills to impact, broaden and innovate the social entrepreneurship and startup law fields
- Create a support network of law students invested in pattern-breaking, sustainable and scalable ideas for change
History
SE-SL was born of a sense among law students that many intractable social and justice problems call for novel approaches that do not fit neatly into the traditional legal field and for which there is no explicit training offered at law schools. At the same time, law students possess many of the talents and skills that make them fertile ground for cultivating new leadership for such initiatives. SE-SL aims to arm the legal field with the wherewithal to embark on these crucial new lines of work by being first to formally explore the application of social and general entrepreneurship principles to the field of law.
SE-SL began as the Law & Social Entrepreneurship Association (LSEA), which convened its first board meeting in January 2009 after more than a year spent in conversation with students, scholars and practitioners to measure the demand for an organization that would explore the uncharted intersection of law and social entrepreneurship. LSEA was re-named the Social Enterprise & Startup Law Group in 2015 in order to expand the reach and breadth of the organization. Though SE-SL remains firmly devoted to exploring and advancing social entrepreneurship, the group also welcomes those interested squarely in the startup law space.