Business Law Clinic
The Business Law Clinic gives students substantial responsibility for representing real small businesses, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, and community-based organizations in transactional legal matters. Working under close faculty supervision, students help clients understand legal issues, evaluate options, make informed decisions, and develop practical legal documents and strategies for operating and growing their organizations.
The Clinic is both an academic course and a functioning law office. Students are expected to assume the professional responsibilities of developing lawyers while receiving structured supervision, feedback, and opportunities for reflection.
What Students Do
Students work directly with clients on a range of transactional and business law matters. Depending on client needs and available projects, student work may include:
- interviewing and counseling clients;
- identifying client goals, legal issues, risks, and possible courses of action;
- conducting legal and factual research;
- advising on business and nonprofit entity formation;
- drafting and reviewing bylaws, operating agreements, resolutions, policies, and other governance documents;
- reviewing, drafting, and supporting the negotiation of contracts;
- addressing nonprofit governance and compliance issues;
- analyzing employment, independent contractor, and organizational policy questions;
- identifying intellectual property and brand-protection issues;
- preparing trademark applications and related submissions when appropriate;
- communicating with clients, counterparties, agencies, and other professionals;
- developing project plans, managing deadlines, maintaining client files, and recording time; and
- providing general counsel-style transactional support to selected organizational clients.
Students may work independently or in teams, depending on the needs of the client and the nature of the matter.
Skills and Professional Development
The Clinic is designed to help students develop the judgment, skills, and professional habits required for legal practice. Students gain experience in:
- client interviewing and counseling;
- legal research and analysis;
- transactional drafting;
- strategic planning and problem solving;
- professional communication;
- project and time management;
- collaboration and teamwork;
- navigating uncertainty and incomplete information;
- identifying and addressing ethical and professional responsibility issues; and
- receiving, applying, and reflecting on feedback.
Students are expected to take primary day-to-day responsibility for moving their assigned matters forward. All legal advice, substantive communications, and final work product are reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney before being provided to a client or third party.
Seminar and Supervision
The Clinic combines client representation with seminar instruction, case rounds, individual supervision, simulations, assigned readings, and reflective exercises. Seminar topics may include client-centered lawyering, interviewing, counseling, transactional drafting, entity formation, nonprofit law, contracts, intellectual property, professional responsibility, strategic planning, negotiation, and law-office management.
Students meet regularly with the Clinic Director to review client matters, prepare for meetings, discuss legal and strategic questions, receive feedback, and plan next steps.
Who Should Enroll
The Clinic is appropriate for students interested in business law, nonprofit law, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, community economic development, in-house practice, or transactional legal work more generally.
Students do not need prior business-law practice experience. They should, however, be prepared to manage substantial client responsibility, meet professional deadlines, work collaboratively, respond to feedback, and devote significant time to client representation outside scheduled seminar hours.
The revised version preserves the current page’s focus on direct client work, lawyering skills, organizational representation, and USPTO participation, while presenting the Clinic as the broader Business Law Clinic rather than limiting it to startup formation. It also aligns the student description with the scope and terminology used in the revised client-facing webpage.
Types of Clients and Matters
The Clinic serves eligible small businesses, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, and community-based organizations. Client matters may involve a one-time transactional legal need or broader general counsel-style support involving recurring contracts, governance, compliance, policies, and related business law questions.
Because the Clinic represents organizational clients, students also learn to distinguish the interests of the client entity from those of its founders, owners, officers, directors, employees, or other individual constituents.
USPTO Trademark Law Clinic
The Business Law Clinic participates in the United States Patent and Trademark Office Law School Clinic Certification Program. Through this program, eligible students may be authorized to represent clients before the USPTO in trademark matters under the close supervision of an approved faculty clinic supervisor.
Trademark work may include evaluating proposed marks, conducting preliminary clearance research, preparing applications, responding to USPTO correspondence, and counseling clients about registration strategy and ongoing responsibilities. Participation in a trademark matter depends on client need, student eligibility, available supervision, and the requirements of the USPTO program.
