Legal issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing

The conference on Legal issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing in the US and Beyond, organised by the Impact Investing Legal Working Group and the newly launched Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship, was held at the NYU School of Law between 23 and 24 May 2017. The conference was a huge success.

Five main themes were addressed:

• Growing the global community of lawyers working in the field of social entrepreneurship and impact investing
• Planning for market uncertainty when investing in social enterprises or managing social enterprises
• Aggregating capital for impact investing
• Creating and documenting new impact investment products
• Governing impact investment funds and social enterprises

A number of ESELA members attended and participated in the conference.

Alissa Pelatan, the Development Director of ESELA, spoke on the subject of ‘Growing the global community of lawyers working in the field of social entrepreneurship and impact investing’ where she shared her experience as a lawyer with a social entrepreneurship practice in France. Alissa also spoke about ‘Governing impact investment funds and social enterprises’, which explored the differences between the governance of social or mission-related enterprises and regular enterprises, as well as best practice in the governance field.

Alissa Pelatan and Roberto Randazzo, a partner at R&P Legal in Italy, co-led a workshop on ‘Growing the Legal Community of Practice Beyond the United States’.

Julie Wynne, a partner at Froriep in Switzerland, spoke about the cross-border issues in structuring transactions and the geopolitical climate for impact investing.