Categories: Law Practice Skills Business, Corporate, Commercial Law Intellectual Property

Instructor(s)

Smith, Anne

Course Data

Course Description

The Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic is a two or three semester transactional course which provides students the opportunity to work with start-up businesses and entrepreneurial clients. Legal issues involve the full diversity of matters confronting nascent entrepreneurs including entity selection, intellectual property issues, contracts, and other legal issues confronting emerging businesses. L&E student attorneys are encouraged to understand the diversity of legal and business issues confronting their clients and assist in finding resources both legal and non-legal to speak to those needs. The program is housed in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.  Experienced business law and corporate attorneys provide guidance and supervision. Credits: 3 to 5(fall and spring) and 7(summer). Permission of the instructor required.  For more information see UWLE.ORG


Introduction

The Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic (L&E Clinic) has three goals. Two of those goals are attuned with student learning outcomes and are set forth below with corresponding competencies under each along with a method for measurement. The third goal is for our work to have an economic impact. While that goal does not lend itself to student learning outcomes, it remains an important goal of the L&E Clinic and regularly guides and influences our strategy.

Learning Outcomes

Goal #1: To provide a challenging experiential learning opportunity that provides students with the opportunity to develop critical thinking and practical research, drafting and client management skills.

Student will demonstrate the following competencies:

• Critical thinking and judgment
o Legal analysis and reasoning
o Pragmatic problem solving
o Strategic thinking and judgment

• Service Orientation with Clients
o Responsiveness to client
o Good client rapport and relationships
o Effective planning and organization of work

• Communication
o Effective oral communication
o Effective written communication
o Effective listening

• Practice Orientation
o Commitment to self-development, including seeking out new and different opportunities
o Proactive commitment to L&E Clinic practice requirements
o Follow through on use of L&E Clinic systems and processes
o Resilience, perseverance and self-awareness
o Effective teamwork

Metric: At the end of each semester, supervising attorneys will rate students on their ability in each of the above skill areas using the Core Competency Assessment Tool. Individual ratings will be used to provide students with personalized feedback. Aggregated ratings will be shared with the group as a whole and used by the staff to measure group outcomes in each of the skill areas. Class aggregate scores on the Core Competency Framework Assessment ski areas will be 3.5 out of 5 or above.

Goal #2: To provide quality work product for the client

Students will demonstrate the following skills when working with clients:

o Effective written communication skills
o Effective oral communication skills
o Expectations were set and met or exceeded
o Thoughtful and thorough issue analysis
o Produce documents and work product that meet their goals

Metric: At the end of each engagement, the responsible student sends a Close Out Letter to the client, This Letter includes a link to a survey seeking client feedback on the above skills. Where identifiable information is provided, results will be shared with individual students. Aggregated client responses will be shared with students as a group and used by staff to measure group outcomes in these skills areas. Class aggregate Client Exit Survey scores in each skill area will be 90% Satisfactory or higher.

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