Need a lawyer? UMass School of Law is seeking a 'select few' businesses and non-profits.

DARTMOUTH — Business owners get assistance from law students eager to help and law students get to demonstrate their abilities.

It’s not just any attorney and client relationship, it’s a symbiotic partnership over the course of a semester at the University of Massachusetts School of Law’s Community Development Clinic in Dartmouth.

The students, working under the supervision of law professor and new Community Development Clinic Director Lisa Lucile Owens, provide legal services to new business owners, business owners looking to make changes and people looking into organizing nonprofits in the SouthCoast.

“There’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of opportunity, and I think that’s really where the clinic stands as far as making legal services accessible and being a productive member of this greater entrepreneurial community here on the SouthCoast,” Owens said.

She said the clinic is very selective with a few new clients each semester. The clients who are evaluated through a specific application process are offered pro-bono legal assistance.

The student attorneys may advise clients on legal matters they may be facing whether they are thinking about creating a business entity right away and just getting started, if they have been in business for a long time and their business is growing, or if they’re thinking it’s time to organize their business in a different way.

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“What I think is really special about the clinic is that you will work with student attorneys here at UMass who are brilliant and bring a lot of energy,” she said. “They are going to be super focused on their clients and for that reason, I think it can be a great experience not only for students, but also for clients to have that kind of attention, care and diligence.”

The eight students who participate in the clinic each semester pair up to work with clients and give them their full attention. If a student has a strong inclination towards working with a specific client, she will take that into consideration.

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It’s all part of the learning process for the students working with clients and their varied reasons for needing their services.

“The students get this really unique experience,” she said. “Unlike in their other classes where they’re mostly reading and dealing with cases that may be hundreds of years old, they really get to dive in and test their legal mettle.”

Owens, who has experience in financial and regulatory law and has worked at a startup and has experience creating business entities, has been recruiting clients for the fall and spring semesters since she started her new job in July, both teaching and practicing law. Last year she taught at Columbia in the sociology department.

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She said she is looking forward to hitting the ground running and continuing to build the clinic and its relationships in the community after taking over from former director Dustin Marlan with a similar focus on social equity and making legal services available to people having difficulty accessing them.

She has also translated the application materials into Portuguese to better serve Portuguese-speaking clients. In the future, she plans to add materials in additional languages and to continue to expand access to legal services.

Owens receives applications on a rolling basis and evaluates prospective clients to determine whether or not to take them on as clients followed by an initial telephone discussion.

“Students are really going to take the lead at that point,” she said. “They’re going to conduct an intake for the client and they’re going to do all the initial interviewing,” she said.

She said she will supervise student meetings with clients and oversee the work they produce because it is about the learning experience for the students and everyone benefits.

The Community Development Clinic is online at www.umasslawcdc.com and features a list of services. Owens can be reached by email at lowens@umassd.edu or by calling 508-985-1131.

Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@wickedlocal.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: UMass School of Law in students work with businesses, nonprofits