The VOLS Microenterprise Project is thrilled to feature Marina Richter as our September Volunteer Attorney of the Month. Marina is counsel for the Asset Management, Corporate and Transactional Groups at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. She provides legal assistance to a wide range of domestic and cross-border transactions, M&A, private equity, alternative assets, and venture capital transactions while maintaining an active pro bono practice. Before joining O’Melveny, Marina was an associate at two notable law firms and founded a retail start-up in New York City.
Throughout 2021, Marina and her O’Melveny team of volunteer lawyers collaborated with our community partner Business Outreach Center Network (BOC) to create a training series for aspiring and existing small business owners covering the basics of transactional law matters. The presentations emphasized the support that VOLS and BOC can provide with support from pro bono volunteers for the benefit of individual community members in need of guidance to navigate the legal systems and concepts involved in starting or operating a business. Marina and her team presented the following topics at BOC Net: Small Business Contract Basics, Sales Tax for Small Business Owners, Labor and Employment for Small Business, and Basics of Intellectual Property. Marina’s passion for providing pro bono assistance is infectious, and her tireless dedication to VOLS and our partners made the BOC presentation series a huge success reaching over 55 members of the small business community.
In conversation with VOLS Microenterprise Project VISTA Sofia Rinvil, Marina shared her pro bono experience throughout her career, including volunteering on transactional law matters with VOLS. She shared some great advice to law students, graduates, professionals, and anyone interested in pro bono work.
We are immensely grateful to Marina and the O’Melveny team for their leadership, dedication to VOLS’s clients, and to pro bono work as a whole. Congratulations to Marina Richter, our Volunteer Attorney of the Month!
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“VOLS is a phenomenal organization putting us in front of clients to gain first-hand real-life experience training to think quickly, provide a solution, and phenomenal issue spotting in a fleeting time. VOLS gives us an opportunity to be better lawyers, personal satisfaction, and a different perspective to real people with business problems. [The training VOLS offers makes volunteers] feel confident asking questions and take on more cases because they know that VOLS is available to assist.” – Marina
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Sofia Rinvil: What inspired you as a transactional attorney to get involved with pro bono matters for small business owners with Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS)?
Marina Richter: I have always had lots of respect for business owners. As a corporate lawyer, taking on sophisticated, complex issues for huge clients, huge funds, on broader transactional and involved on a bigger scale, and felt that I could provide tremendous value to small business owners to realize their dream, and this made it an easy decision to get involved with VOLS on pro bono matters for the thrill of helping with the business.
SR: How was your experience at the workshop series?
MR: VOLS is a phenomenal organization putting us in front of clients to gain first-hand real-life experience training to think quickly, provide a solution, and phenomenal issue spotting in a fleeting time.
SR: Why does pro bono matter to you?
MR: As attorneys, we should give back in sharing the knowledge in helping the dreams of business owners with limited resources come true. It is a fantastic feeling, knowing I work for a firm “truly committed to giving back, O’Melveny counts and gives absolutely credit for pro bono hours as billable hours they don’t just say it they are fully committed to giving back,” the firm allows me the opportunity to volunteer with VOLS to help others dream come true.
SR: What skills does a law firm attorney need to provide pro bono assistance? What do they learn by providing pro bono assistance?
MR: The skills a law firm attorney needs to provide pro bono assistance are an analytical mind, business sense, issue spotting, good judgment, passion, and willingness to learn. Lawyers overcomplicate things through providing pro bono assistance, help attorneys with learning how to explain things in the simplest ways for clients to understand.
SR: Tell me about your decision to involve newer associates and summers in this training series.
MR: Every Junior should aspire to do this at a law firm for it exposed them to real-life experience on how to ask very specific questions. It’s a phenomenal firsthand real-life experience, it is similar to residency for junior associates.
SR: How does VOLS contribute to professional growth for pro bono volunteers?
MR: VOLS gives an opportunity to be better lawyers, personal satisfaction, and a different perspective to real people with business problems.