Legal Services Of Eastern Missouri Receives $160,000 Pro Bono Innovation Fund Grant

ST. LOUIS - Oct. 6, 2015 - PRLog -- Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) has received a 24-month $160,000 grant from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) Pro Bono Innovation Fund - a competitive grant program designed to increase pro bono support for civil legal aid organizations. LSEM was one of 15 recipients of LSC’s $4 million Pro Bono Innovation Fund.

Through its Community Economic Development (CED) Program, LSEM will use the grant to focus on minority and women entrepreneurs who cannot afford civil legal service, increase pro bono opportunities for transactional attorneys, recruit new volunteers, meet the legal needs of a larger number of disadvantaged entrepreneurs, and produce online pro bono training materials.

“We want to extend a big thank you to Legal Services Corporation for this generous and important grant,” said Dan Glazier, LSEM Executive Director and General Counsel. “Over the past four years, our CED Program has helped many low-income, low-opportunity entrepreneurs as well as grass-roots nonprofits realize their dreams. This grant will help us further expand our reach and resources.”

Under the grant, LSEM’s CED Program will also conduct a national survey of existing transactional pro bono projects for micro-entrepreneurs and will develop a manual of best practices that can be shared with other legal aid programs interested in launching similar efforts.

Launched in 2011 and led by  Laurie Hauber (LSEM Staff Attorney and Program Director), the CED Program provides clients with a full range of business legal services such as one-on-one legal representation, legal workshops, business legal clinics, legal training and legal audits and checkups.

In 2014, the program was expanded with an added focus on providing business-oriented legal counsel to local minority and women-owned businesses (M/MBEs) in the construction trades.

In May, the CED Program garnered a 2015 “What’s Right with the Region!” award from FOCUS St. Louis under the category Responding to Community Needs & Entrepreneurs. The honorees were nominated by the public and selected by a panel of community judges for their impact and service to the community

About Legal Services of Eastern Missouri

Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) has provided high quality legal assistance in civil cases to the low-income community for more than 50 years.  In 2014, LSEM helped more than 16,000 people (including clients and their household members) in 21 counties of eastern Missouri. LSEM is a registered 501(c)(3) organization, and as a private, charitable non-profit, receives and appreciates financial support from members of the public. If you would like to support our mission, please visit www.lsem.org and click on "donate now."