Northeastern Law's Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration Names Janelle Orsi 2025-2026 Givelber Distinguished Public Interest Lecturer

09.15.25 —Northeastern Law's Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration is pleased to announce that Janelle Orsi, a writer, cartoonist and attorney focused on cooperatives, worker-directed nonprofits, land justice and reimagining finance, has been selected as the 2025-2026 Givelber Distinguished Public Interest Lecturer. Orsi is co-founder of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a cooperatively-structured nonprofit that facilitates the growth of more sustainable and localized economies through legal services, education, research, and advocacy.

The Givelber Distinguished Lecturer Program honors the late Professor Emeritus Daniel Givelber's outstanding contributions to the School of Law by bringing distinguished public service practitioners to the school as visiting faculty, where they share with students and faculty the challenges and rewards of public interest practice.

This fall and again in the spring, Orsi will teach Practicing Law for a Loving World, a Givelber Lecture course that explores how legal practice can support a transition to a more cooperative and just society. The class considers the legal tools and skills needed to build systems rooted in love and collaboration—such as worker cooperatives, ecovillages, mutual aid collectives and community-based food networks—and invites students to reimagine how law can nurture care rather than control in contracts, governance and beyond.

Much of Orsi's practice is devoted to providing legal support to organizations working to restore relationships between people and land, with particular emphasis on land return to Indigenous people. She is the author of Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies (ABA Books, 2012) and is currently writing a new book titled Law for a Loving World.