Entrepreneurial Law Clinic - Pro Bono Attorney Information
The
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 20 to 30 clients a year from
four main entrepreneurship categories:
- Technology start-ups
- Small business owners
- Social ventures and non-profits
- UW or Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS) faculty researchers
seeking to create spin-off companies for their technology.
The ELC recruits local attorneys
to supervise, teach, and mentor the ELC students in conjunction with the ELC staff.
Generally, supervising attorneys spend 10-15 hours on a project each quarter and
need only commit to one academic quarter at a time. Ideally, however, we would
like supervising attorneys to participate in the ELC all three quarters.
If you are interested in participating, please complete an
application.
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 the ELC and the client, the ELC will provide further specific legal
services, such as business formation, contract review/negotiation/drafting, or
intellectual property (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 take on the additional supervision once the ELC and the client have agreed to expand
the scope of representation.
The ELC recruits supervising attorneys who have one or more of the core expertise areas
of corporate/securities/commercial law, IP, and tax that the ELC offers to clients.
Supervising attorneys will supervise
students only in their areas of expertise. For some clients, the ELC will
also need attorneys with FDA, employment, or privacy law expertise.
The
ELC students have 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 the 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 and communications to clients,
supervise client meetings, and help students uphold a high standard of professionalism
and ethical behavior.