Local Firms, Global Impact

Intro

“America needs both its big cities and small towns.” ~ Cory Sprunger.  Sprunger Alliance, founded by the Spunger family of Berne, Indiana, has proven transformative in changing legal deserts in small town America into fertile ground for small firms and solo practitioners.  Likewise, Sprunger Global, the nonprofit pro bono service arm of Sprunger Alliance, invests in opportunities to transform legal and actual deserts abroad by transplanting “main street U.S. lawyers” into countries around the world to serve with and alongside local attorneys and judges, encouraging access to justice and the rule of law.  Global engagement, once reserved for the “international lawyer” (global law firm), is in desperate need of attorneys who are also neighbors, friends, little league coaches, potluck attendees, and whose strengths are rooted in faith, and in hope, and in love.  Sprunger Global engages communally and relationally abroad through attorneys who are by their very nature community builders and relationally oriented!  America needs its main streets; the world needs main street attorneys.

Sprunger Global encourages mutual engagement by U.S. and foreign attorneys to create a global community of “best practice”, immersing attorneys both personally and professionally into cultures of immeasurable depth and breadth, the resulting impact of which is felt both “at home” and “away”.

The Challenge

Effective lawyering requires a robust and evolving consideration of the people we serve.  As such, establishing community in and through the practice of law necessitates an ever broadening understanding of changing clientele, whether in large cities or small towns.  The interconnectedness of today’s world invariably assures that events abroad impact our home communities.  The effective lawyer and law practice prepares for this by stepping out of our offices and into the world around us.  Crossing cultural barriers has never been more likely, or important, but the difficulty encountered when attempting to overcome culturally-contrived obstacles to effective practice often proves insurmountable; firm offices are foreign spaces even to Americans, even more so to immigrant communities.  How can “main street lawyers” in America meet the diversifying legal needs of our towns and communities?  What’s more, how can values-driven legal professionals impact the world for good?  It’s not wrong to say that those in need of legal services due to calamity or strife are also in need of a neighbor, a friend, a smile, a hug . . . kindness on all accounts and fronts is a force multiplier. “Main street lawyers” are equipped with this much needed capital, but the question remains, “How can we export relational capital to international communities in need?”  

Disparate Similarities

Strikingly true is that communities abroad prize many of the same “small town values” as main street America; however, it is also true that these values are expressed in disparate ways, leading to the incorrect assumption that values are not shared across borders.  Lawyers are uniquely suited to identify these values, and often work within a fiduciary capacity to advise and guide clients, reducing diverse expressions of values to unifying prose on paper.  Within this relationship can be found a unique opportunity to share cross-culturally.  Lawyers give a unifying voice to deep-seated cultural practices, and can integratively frame dialogue surrounding these practices to increase inclusion.

Sprunger Global’s Approach:  A Week-Long Commute Improves the Day-to-Day

Sprunger Global offers “main street lawyers” an opportunity to engage internationally with foreign legal professionals, pursuing together the rule of law and increased access to justice, while concomitantly steeping our personal lives and professional practice in cultures wholly distinct from but not wholly disparate than our own.  This effort abroad serves to inform our professional practice at home, making intelligible the newer members of our home communities and emboldening us to pursue relationships outside of our culture.  Embracing this global effort abroad strengthens our local practice and positively impacts communities of practice abroad.  Our belief at Sprunger Global is that personal and professional lives are irrevocably changed for the better when we step out of our cultural comfort zones and into positions of dependence on other, cultivating in ourselves the capacity to receive the “foreigner” because we ourselves have been “the foreigner”.  A trip with Sprunger Global as a legal professional opens doors to culture, creating relationships of personal trust and professional appreciation in and through the establishment of a “glocal” (global + local) community of practice.

Conclusion:  Measurable and Discernable Impact Locally and Globally

Sprunger Global provides “main street lawyers” with life changing, transformative experiences in which they engage through their strengths the broader global legal community for lasting and sustainable change.  Through advocacy and service, Sprunger Global aims to identify common ground between people groups, and sow deeply into legal deserts and crises of law, bringing to light and life that which unites all nations, tribes, and tongues–faith, hope and love.