Janelle Orsi, an Oakland-based solo practitioner, runs the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a nonprofit that advises cooperatives and other community-based projects in the region’s flourishing sharing economy. Orsi and her team have taken on legal apprentices, a practice she says could help address the gap in legal services.
When and why did you start the Sustainable Economies Law Center? I cofounded the Sustainable Economies Law Center around November of 2009 along with Jenny Kassan. [Our clients] were starting worker co-ops, they were starting farms … they were doing really creative things, building community, and building community well. But a lot of what they were doing was illegal, and we kept seeing that our clients were running up against legal barriers and we thought, well, it seems like there’s some work to be done.
