Enterpreneurial Law Clinic - Projects

Clinic Projects

During spring 2008, ELC began planning a general entrepreneurship law research component that commenced in summer 2008 with the hiring of Research Assistant Sheri Wardwell '10.  ELC’s first major research project is to assist the ABA Biotechnology Committee develop model material transfer agreement (MTA) forms.  O’Connor sits on the Committee and helped develop the first model MTA form that was presented at the ABA 2008 Annual Meeting in New York in August 2008.  Further ELC projects may include business formation and governance forms, IP transactional forms, and empirical research on law and entrepreneurship.

ELC served 18 clients in its first full year of operations ('06-'07), with a combination of technology start-ups, small businesses, and a global health non-profit.  Twenty-six students and 28 supervising attorneys were involved, with an in-kind donation of $120,250 through the pro bono services of the attorneys.

For its second year ('07-'08) ELC formally expanded its mission to include social entrepreneurship and non-profits.  It also began working with UW faculty researchers through the LaunchPad initiative at   UW TechTransfer. Additionally, O’Connor and ELC were part of a multi-disciplinary team involving UW and local life sciences research institutions that was awarded an NIH Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) in 2007.  Following that, the Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS) was formed with O’Connor appointed to its Drug & Device Development Advisory Committee and ELC providing legal and business counseling to ITHS supported translational researchers.  Finally, Professor Dick Kummert generously served as Interim Faculty Director in fall 2007 while O’Connor was on leave as Visiting Professor and Kauffman Fellow in Law & Entrepreneurship at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.