William H. Clark, Jr.
President, Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers
"The establishment of GAIL represents an important step in the mobilization of lawyers from around the world who seek to have a positive impact"
Greetings on behalf of the Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers to everyone reading this message. I’m looking forward to welcoming you to the community of GAIL at the virtual Launch Week. And I’m also looking forward to seeing many of you soon at an in-person meeting of GAIL in the not too distant future!
The establishment of GAIL represents an important step in the mobilization of lawyers from around the world who seek to have a positive impact on society and the environment. The goal of GAIL is to bring lawyers together into a community where we can share knowledge and best practices, support our common efforts, and work for change – all in service of the vision of a sustainable and responsible world
economy. Some of our members will support impact businesses, others will develop new financing structures, others will lobby for change in corporation, securities, environmental, and other laws. All will share a vision that lawyers can work together in the goal of creating a better world. To be truly effective, of course, we will need to recognize cultural and legal differences in the societies and legal systems represented by our members. I believe those differences will be a particularly exciting aspect of what we will be sharing and learning from each other.
GAIL represents the combination of esela – the legal network for social impact, which began in Europe, and the Benefit Company Bar Association in the United States. Those two organizations are combining with lawyers from the Asia Pacific region, UK and Latin America to create GAIL. Soon, we hope to welcome lawyers from Africa and the Middle East as well. Each of those regions will be represented on the global board of GAIL.
Regional boards are also being organized to coordinate the activities of GAIL at the regional level. In future messages, we will
be introducing you to the officers and board members of GAIL and its various regions.
For now, I want to close by thanking Roberto Randazzo, the immediate past president of esela, and John Montgomery, the immediate past president of the BCBA for their leadership and embrace of the vision of GAIL.
I look forward to working with all of you in pursuit of our common goal of a thriving, sustainable, responsible, and fairer world economy.
Bill Clark
President of GAIL
