The Mahoning County Bar Association recently announced its plans to start a Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts committee, which will provide pro bono legal services to local artists.
The committee will replace the Legal Creative, a nonprofit organization that provided business and legal guidance for designers, actors, directors and other artists.
Denise Glinatsis Bayer, a business lawyer at Harrington, Hoppe & Mitchell and Legal Creative founder, will serve as chairwoman of the newly formed committee.
“The Legal Creative was formed in 2013 as an immediate response to both the growing creative community and the lack of business and legal resources readily and affordably available to artists,” Bayer said.
“In addition to our pro bono legal clinics, we brought many national community arts projects to the Mahoning Valley, including The Neighborhood Postcard Project and CSArt-Community Supported Art.
“Since incorporation, however, other organizations have stepped in and have begun to offer the type of community art programming and educational resources the Legal Creative originally set out to provide. As a result, the board of directors decided the focus should return to providing pro bono legal referral services. To that end, it made more sense both from an operational and a service standpoint to dissolve the separate nonprofit corporation and create a committee within the local bar association to provide such services,” Bayer said.
The new committee will operate with funding support from the Mahoning County Bar Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, and operational support from the Mahoning County Bar Association, a not-for-profit organization which has more than 300 lawyer members and an office staff in downtown Youngstown.
“With our renewed focus on the intersection of law and the arts, the committee is planning seminars that will give attorneys continuing legal education credit and inform artists about the legal aspects of their work through a pro bono legal referral service and pop-up legal clinics,” Bayer said.
For more information about the committee, Bayer can be reached at
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