In his nearly three years as a law student at Wake Forest University, Andrew Miller has learned to decipher business documents and read statutes.
This semester, he started learning how to work with people.
Miller was one of the first students to begin working for the university's Community Law and Business Clinic, which held its grand opening last night at its offices on the first floor of Winston Towers at 8 W. Third St. in downtown Winston-Salem.
The clinic will provide free legal help to nonprofit groups that improve or develop housing around Winston-Salem. Eventually, said Steven Virgil, a Wake Forest law professor and the clinic's director, the students will be able to work with for-profit entrepreneurs and small businesses.
In the beginning, the clinic will be staffed by eight law students and four business students.
Virgil said that the clinic will probably add more staff members by the end of the summer. By then, he said, he hopes that the students will be working with about 70 to 80 clients.
"Wake Forest has a calling to find ways to use its resources to make our community a better place," Virgil said. And, he said, the clinic will help Wake Forest students become better lawyers and businesspeople and will help them become better citizens.
"They can be professionals, but they are also community members," he said.
Blake Morant, the dean of the university's law school, said that the university will offer fellowships to the law and business students who work in the clinic. He said that undergraduate students can also earn fellowships to work in the clinic.
Murray Greason, a Winston-Salem lawyer and a member of Wake Forest's board of trustees, said that the clinic will benefit both the students and city.
"The community will gain access to legal and business advice for small businesses and not-for-profits who can't afford to pay the rates of regular lawyers," Greason said. "And the law students will gain experience in learning how to deal with real problems, and solve them, and deal with clients."
Greason said that students who work at the clinic will deal with everything from setting up nonprofit organizations to coming up with marketing strategies for small businesses -- skills that, he said, could help them find better jobs after graduation.
Miller, who plans to graduate this spring, said he already has a job lined up at a firm in Charlotte. But, he said, he plans to hunt out nonprofit work in his new city based on his experience at the clinic.
"I know now which people I need to find," he said.
■ For more information, call the clinic at 631-1953 or visit www.law.wfu.edu/clinics.
■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.
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