Entrepreneurship platform and startup coworking space OneValley will begin a free and monthly legal series for startup founders beginning next month at its Roundhouse location in Hazelwood Green.
A themed presentation lasting between 15 and 20 minutes will start each event and serve as an overall topic to center discussions and questions around. Then the discussion will be turned over to the entrepreneurs themselves for the remainder of the hour-long event to ask questions about the topic or pose their own general inquiries as they might relate to legal advice and guidance for startups.
The events — dubbed the StartSmart Legal Clinic — will be hosted by Derrick Maultsby Jr. and Curtis Wadsworth, attorneys with the local office of Cincinnati, Ohio-based Frost Brown Todd LLC. The first one is set to begin at noon on May 19 and it will aim to offer insights into intellectual property law.
All of the events will be open to founders of tech and nontech startups, and these founders do not have to be members of OneValley to attend.
"Everybody from the community can come in," Maultsby said. "We really wanted to make this something in which it is like that idea that there's no barrier to this resource. You can come in, you can ask your questions, you can get the help that you're looking for…We just want to know what we can do to be helpful to you."
Maultsby said the series will also aim to serve as a primer to gauge community interest in other possible legal topics. He's hoping that it will eventually lead to the opening of office hours for Frost Brown Todd at the Roundhouse so that founders can drop in and receive legal advice on a more expected and consistent schedule.
"At the end of the day, legal expenses are expensive," Maultsby said. "So the more education and the more resources that we can provide founders, even if they never hire me down the road. The (hope at least is) that one more person is better equipped to become successful, to tackle the issues that their company will face. The high tide raises all ships."
He said the need for such a series came after he started serving as a mentor for Alpha Lab, the local tech accelerator program from Pittsburgh-based seed investor Innovation Works. He noted that these types of mentorships exist in parts of the city like East Liberty and the North Shore, but for those who lack access to those regions, getting the help they offer proves difficult. Expanding to Hazelwood will hopefully better address an area of the city that's often left out of these opportunities, Maultsby said.
A registration form to attend the May StartSmart Legal Clinic can be filled out here.
