Food Law and the Transactional Clinic Jonathan Brown Director, Food and Beverage Law Clinic Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Pace’s Food and Beverage Law Clinic All clients are small farms, food and beverage businesses, or related nonprofit organizations Transactional legal representation including More traditional transactional clinic fare (business formation, tax exemption, contract drafting, etc.) Farm/food/beverage specific work (food safety, labeling, agricultural land use, institutional procurement, alcohol distribution, etc.)

Theory Behind the Clinic Partnership with Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) regional food policy team: “PACE-NRDC Food Law Initiative” Conceived to provide legal infrastructure to complement broader policy initiatives supporting more just and sustainable food systems Laurie Ristino,, Back to the New: Millennial and the Sustainable Food Movement, 15 Vt. J. Envtl. L. 1, 22 (2013): “[t]o date, the focus of local government, nonprofits, and others has occurred around policy infrastructure for the sustainable food movement. . . . The policy work done to date is a fine start, but without the legal infrastructure to undergird policy, it will have limited traction in our rule of law society.”

Mixing Food and Transactional Clinics: Experience for Students “The [food] system’s diversity of activities, actors, and legal issues, and its commercial nature, means experiential programs of diverse design and purpose can find relevant transactional, policy, and other non-litigation projects. . . The sector provides rich soil for the growth of new lawyers.” Jay A. Mitchell, Getting into the Field, 7 J. Food L. & Pol'y 69, 84–85 (2011).

Mixing Food and Transactional Clinics: Client Need Dearth of pro bono resources in rural areas and for farm/food/beverage-specific matters Typical small business needs combined with complex regulatory space Added opportunities and challenges that come with the new “food movement” For example, direct-to-consumer farmers: CSA arrangements, value-added products, agri-tourism, IP, volunteer labor, farm-to-institution, etc.

Unique Issues for “Local” Food For example, small farms marketing directly to consumers face traditional “agricultural law” issues, but also potentially: CSA arrangements Value-added products Agri-tourism Volunteer labor Intellectual property Farm-to-school Traditional ag issues: land access, financing, employment, estate planning, farmland preservation, farming cooperatives, etc.

Practicing “Food Law”: Like Practicing “The Law of the Horse”? “Lots of cases deal with sales of horses; others deal with people kicked by horses; still more deal with the licensing and racing of horses, or with the care veterinarians give to horses, or with prizes at horse shows. Any effort to collect these strands into a course on the ‘Law of the Horse’ is doomed to be shallow and miss unifying principles.” Frank H. Easterbrook, Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse, 1996 U. Chi. Legal F. 207 (1996)

Food as Organizing Principle for Transactional Clinic Interconnected Legal Issues Farmland tenure-related matter can touch upon real estate, tax, business entity choice, estate planning, agricultural land use, conservation law Relationships and Networks Connection to Policy

Food and Social Enterprise Clinic clients have included: Urban food hub Shared use community kitchen Nonprofit farms Farmland access impact investment fund Craft brewery w/ re-entry program Small, direct-to-consumer farms Community land trust for farms? Urban farming cooperative? Examples of Clinic clients. “Social enterprise” used in broad sense. In my experience, biggest advantage of mixing the public interest clinic model with this area.

Range of Clinic Projects More typical transactional work: Small juice company bringing in partners on sweat-equity basis (employment, corporate) Tax exempt orgs with a twist: Farm creating non-profit (food pantry donations and education) split off from remaining for-profit business Very food-specific: Farm with unique CSA arrangement and food safety law issues First: interesting/challenging project, nothing food-specific about issues. Second: could also be done by most transactional clinics, but some interesting farm-related stuff: working with a number of nonprofits in farming area creates some institutional knowledge on particular issues, and involved some fun stuff like subleasing between two entities, documenting sale of seeds/seedlings and leasing of farm equipment Third: very food/farm specific. Understanding CSA arrangements and how this one is different, researching food safety laws, etc.