Entrepreneurial Law Clinic - Pro Bono Attorney Information
ELC provides legal and business advice to Pacific Northwest entrepreneurs who face economic barriers to success. Our focus is on transactions and counseling; we do not represent clients in any active disputes. We serve 15-30 clients a year from four main entrepreneurship categories: 1) technology start-ups; 2) small business owners; 3) social ventures and non-profits; and 4) UW or Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS) faculty researchers seeking to create spin-off companies for their technology. ELC recruits local attorneys to supervise, teach, and mentor ELC students in conjunction with ELC staff.
The core service ELC provides to entrepreneurs is a confidential legal and business audit that results in an analysis memo for the client (see General Overview of Services). Virtually all clients will go through the audit process as the primary service in their first academic quarter with the Clinic. Further, initial representation is almost always restricted to only this audit and the report. We ask your help in keeping students on point and helping train them in this important counseling task. Our goal is to give students the opportunity to participate in the kind of comprehensive analysis and big picture legal strategizing that they will likely not be involved in for their first few years as practicing attorneys.
Upon mutual agreement of ELC and the client, ELC will provide further specific legal services, such as business formation, contract review/negotiation/drafting, or IP procurement. Supervising attorneys are not required to commit to such further services at the time of the initial audit process, but are certainly welcome to volunteer to take on the additional supervision once ELC and the client have agreed to expand the scope of representation.
Supervising attorneys are recruited who have one or more of the core expertise areas of corporate/securities law, IP, and tax that we offer to clients. You will supervise students only in expertise areas that you volunteer for. For some clients we will also need attorneys with FDA, employment, or privacy law expertise.
ELC students come to the Clinic with prerequisite courses in the expertise areas they will serve in, but may still need help understanding specific areas of substantive law. Supervising attorneys help train ELC students in interviewing and counseling clients, as well as in research and writing for the professional law environment. Supervising attorneys review all student work product and communications to clients, supervise client meetings, and help students uphold a high standard of professionalism and ethical behavior.
Generally, supervising attorneys spend 10-15 hours on a project each quarter and need only commit to one academic quarter at a time.