Contact: Janet Harvey Clark, MSU College of Law, (517)432-6959; or Russ White, University Relations, (517) 432-0923, whiterus@msu.edu

9/07/2004

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State University College of Law has been awarded a $100,000 grant to help create and support the college’s new Small Business/Nonprofit/ Entrepreneurial Law Clinic.

“The goals of the new clinic,” said Tax Clinic Director and Clinical Professor Michele Halloran, “are to assist would-be and existing small business owners in developing their entrepreneurial prowess, to counsel Michigan’s many nonprofit entities in their business endeavors, and to provide a rare opportunity for MSU law students to develop special expertise in transactional business law practice.”

The grant is funded by the Coleman Foundation, a nonprofit, private, independent foundation established through the endowment of the Dorothy W. and J.D. Stetson Coleman estates. The foundation’s Awareness and Education program, which awarded the grant, supports new programs that promote and educate the principles of self-determination, self-reliance and individual initiative.

Half of the total ($50,000) will be disbursed during each of the next two years on a challenge grant basis. MSU College of Law currently is working to match funds from law firms and alumni. Elliot Spoon, a business law professor in the college, already has received commitments to match a large portion of the funds that will be disbursed in 2005.

With the addition of the Small Business/Nonprofit/Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, MSU College of Law will have seven clinical programs that provide community service in the Greater Lansing area. Second- and third-year law students, under the supervision of Halloran, Clinical Programs Director and Clinical Professor MaryAnn Pierce and other attorneys, offer legal services to a wide array of clients.

MSU College of Law was founded as the Detroit College of Law in 1891 and was the first law school in Detroit. The college affiliated with MSU in 1995 and moved to MSU’s East Lansing campus in 1997. The move enabled the law college to build state-of-the-art facilities and to provide the benefits of a Big Ten campus while maintaining the culture of a small, private school. Today, the college remains the nation’s oldest continually operating independent law school.