Paul, Weiss Hosts Legal Clinic With Echoing Green’s Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund Fellows

Paul, Weiss partnered with Echoing Green to host a transactional legal advice clinic and provide legal consultations to Echoing Green’s new class of Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund fellows. Echoing Green is the leading incubator for social impact startups, and its fellows are founders of nonprofits or social enterprises that aim to tackle racial justice and racial equity issues. The organizations created by the fellows range from a nonprofit empowering law students of color to become the next generation of attorneys and judges to an organization creating a sustainable and replicable recycling infrastructure at New York City Housing Authority. This is a first-of-its-kind partnership that highlights the firm’s transactional efforts focusing on racial justice and economic empowerment. The hope is to make this an annual partnership with the Fund’s future fellows.

Supervised by corporate partner Sarah Stasny, 13 Paul, Weiss attorneys participated in legal consultations with five U.S.-based fellows with organizations formed in California, New York and Delaware, answering some of their transactional questions as they get their organizations up and running.

“The Pro Bono Clinic is a great opportunity to partner with Echoing Green and its Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund, and help their inspiring community of social entrepreneurs with the legal challenges they face every day as a way to further the growth of their organizations,” said corporate associate Anastasia Peterson, who participated in the clinic and assisted in a training session.

In addition to Sarah and Anastasia, the team also included corporate partner Austin Pollet, counsel Femi Austin and associates Allison Flor, Jeremy Pushkin, Danilo Santoboni, Michael Xia and Lanlie Zheng; intellectual property partner Claudine Meredith-Goujon; tax associates Valentine Carey and Noah Marks; litigation associate Shimeng Simona Xu; and pro bono attorney Pradine Saint-Fort. Pro bono attorney Emily Donohoe coordinated the clinic.

A training session ahead of the clinic was led by Emily Donohoe, Femi Austin, Anastasia Peterson, Allison Flor and executive compensation associate Richard Kennedy.