During this painful and challenging time in which so many of us are grappling with the realities of racial injustice, Wiggin and Dana LLP is launching the Wiggin Opportunity Initiative. The firm pledges to provide $10 million in free legal services to minority-owned businesses over the next decade. Our goal is to fuel the success of these businesses, encourage the creation of more, and increase diversity among business leaders.
Wiggin and Dana will donate our legal expertise across multiple practice areas to help these businesses thrive and be able to provide greater economic opportunities for all stakeholders. We hope that by committing to support minority-owned businesses, we can lead the community in efforts to achieve systemic and lasting change.
Managing Partner, Paul Hughes, said, “While born of current events and frustrations, the firm wants to do something that will outlast the spotlight of this particular moment and support long-term improvement in opportunity and equality in our communities. By leveraging the particular skillset of our sophisticated lawyers in a sizeable, sustained and focused effort over time, we hope to make real change in a way that we could not achieve by more modest, incremental efforts.”
In the coming months, the firm will collaborate with strategic partners throughout the communities in which we operate to identify minority-owned businesses that could benefit from our initiative. With this ongoing ten-year commitment, Wiggin and Dana wishes to focus on our overall mission of working towards a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable world.
Wiggin and Dana is a full-service law firm serving clients domestically and abroad from offices in Connecticut, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Palm Beach. For more information on the firm, visit www.wiggin.com.
STRATEGIC PARTNERS
The Firm is looking to collaborate with strategic partners, like your organization, to help identify minority-owned businesses throughout the communities in which we operate that could benefit from our initiative. We will offer a variety of legal services to selected clients to address typical business issues in the areas of employment, real estate, intellectual property, privacy, commercial arrangements, corporate governance, financing, and disputes.
ELIGIBILITY
Our support of “minority-owned businesses” will be guided by applicable statutes in the
various jurisdictions where the Firm maintains physical offices or otherwise conducts business. For example, under Connecticut law:
- Black Americans, including all persons having origins in any of the Black African racial groups not of Hispanic origin;
- Hispanic Americans, including all persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race;
- all persons having origins in the Iberian Peninsula, including Portugal, regardless of race;
- women;
- Asian Pacific Americans and Pacific islanders; or
- American Indians and persons having origins in any of the original peoples of North America and maintaining identifiable tribal affiliations through membership and participation or community
The Firm will also consider individuals who identify as part of the LGBTQ community, veterans, and members of other groups who have been historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged in the United States or other relevant jurisdictions as eligible individuals under its definition of “Minority Owned.”