Using Cross-practice Collaboration to Meet the Evolving Legal Needs of Local Food Entrepreneurs

Abstract

This article begins by highlighting several of the legal barriers commonly faced by local food businesses. The article then demonstrates that policy lawyers and transactional lawyers can effectively collaborate to improve the food system by providing synergistic feedback that informs each other’s practices, thereby improving service for food-related clients and enhancing the legal environment for future local food entrepreneurs. The article describes the methods that two clinics at Harvard Law School—the Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Community Enterprise Project of the Transactional Law Clinics—have used to provide comprehensive assistance to food truck entrepreneurs in support of a more robust local food system in Boston. The article concludes with examples of additional ways in which a cross-practice, cyclical model of client service can be applied by different legal teams to better serve food entrepreneurs and improve the success of local and alternative food systems. Although this article details a particular model of cross-practice work, it aims to encourage proliferation of this model through tailored, cross-practice collaboration among lawyers operating in a variety of settings to address a range of local food industry issues, or those issues inherent in other emerging industries.