In my MLK Day Internet meanderings, I came across an article published eight years ago that caught my eye: Lynnise E. Phillips Pantin’s “The Legacy of Civil Rights and the Opportunity for Transactional Law Clinics,” published in our own Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice (7 Tenn. J. Race, Gender & Soc. Just. 189 (2018)). In the article, after offering background on and a description of what she refers to as “the modern-day wealth gap,” Professor Pantin makes observations on the possibility that entrepreneurship and transactional law clinics may provide support for economic justice. Her introduction refers and cites to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in relevant part.

While Professor Pantin’s prognosis for the economic justice healing power of entrepreneurship and transactional law clinics is not entirely rosy, she does see both playing important roles in the quest for a more fair economic landscape. In that regard, the article ends, in part, with the following

[S]upporting under-resourced entrepreneurs, and low-income entrepreneurs is still vital, but it cannot be the only solution to promoting economic justice. The fact that entrepreneurship will not resolve the disparities in opportunity leftover from Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery should not detract from the value of such clinics. These clinics support an important ecosystem in the neighborhoods the clinics serve, create impact in such neighborhoods and develop skills for the student attorneys participating in the clinic. But if we are truly aiming for an end to racial wealth disparity, then massive systematic reforms must occur. There is an opportunity for transactional clinics to play an important role in systematic change by continuing to support low-income entrepreneurs, teaching economic justice and advocating for structural reform to the current economic system.

I suspect that Professor Pantin, then a clinical associate professor and now the Pritzker Pucker Family Clinical Professor of Transactional Law and Vice Dean for Experiential Education at Columbia Law School, would not alter these words in her conclusion today, althoigh other aspects of her analysis would undoubtedly change. Importantly, a significant wealth gap continues persists in the United States and may be widening. Opportunities continue to exist for transactional law clinics to make positive impacts in economic justice consistent with Dr. King’s dream.