Supporting Urban Entrepreneurs: Law, Policy, and the Role of Lawyers in Small Business Development
![handle is hein.journals/wnelr30 and id is 79 raw text is: SUPPORTING URBAN ENTREPRENEURS:
LAW, POLICY, AND THE ROLE OF
LAWYERS IN SMALL
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
SUSAN R. JONES*
INTRODUCTION
This Essay explores the challenges of urban entrepreneurship
and how lawyers, academics, businesspeople, policymakers, and
community leaders can help small businesses succeed.1 In the
United States, small businesses represent ninety-nine percent of all
inner-city businesses,2 generate sixty to eighty percent of net new
jobs annually, and account for almost fifty percent of private pay-
roll.3 Indeed, domestic structural economic shifts have moved
the nation from a goods-producing to a service-producing econ-
omy.4 The economic shift to a service-producing economy and the
national focus on economic self-sufficiency have fueled interest in
small businesses as part of job creation and self-employment
strategies.
* Susan R. Jones is a professor of clinical law at the George Washington Univer-
sity Law School and the Director of the Small Business Clinic/Community Economic
Development Project. She is grateful to the George Washington University Law School
for its support through the summer writing stipend program and to her research assist-
ants Lauren Phillips and Michael Dobson.
1. The panel on Challenges Facing Urban Entrepreneurs, at the Current Issues
in Community Economic Development Conference held at the Western New England
College School of Law on March 30, 2007, examined how lawyers, academics, business-
people, policymakers, and community leaders can help small businesses succeed.
2. INITIATIVE FOR A COMPETITIVE INNER CITY, SMALL Bus. Ass'N, STATE OF
THE INNER CITY ECONOMIES: SMALL BUSINESSES IN THE INNER CITY 1 (2005) [herein-
after ICIC, STATE OF THE INNER CITY], available at http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/
rs260tot.pdf; Roger A. Clay, Jr., Chair's Message, Small Business in Community Devel-
opment and the Role of Lawyers, 16 J. AFFORDABLE HOUSING & COMMUNITY DEV. L.
89 (2007).
3. OFFICE OF ADVOCACY, SMALL Bus. Ass'N, SMALL BUSINESS RESOURCES FOR
FACULTY, STUDENTS, AND RESEARCHERS: ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUES-
TIONS (2004), available at http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/arsbfaq.pdf.
4. Willie Brown, The Forgotten Type of Capital: Addressing the Social Capital De-
ficiency in the Inner City, 11 GEO. J. ON POVERTY L. & POL'Y 527, 539 (2004).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/wnelr30&div=11&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Supporting Urban Entrepreneurs: Law, Policy, and the Role of Lawyers in Small Business Development
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