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Most days, students in UW Law School’s Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic work with supervising attorneys to provide free legal guidance to Wisconsin business owners and entrepreneurs.

But for last week’s Pitch Day, instructors turned the tables on 18 L&E Clinic students by challenging them to create business models for their own start-ups.L&E Clinic Student Joseph Calavenna | Photo by Nick Wilkes

In the spirit of the popular reality competition series “Shark Tank,” three teams of L&E Clinic students pitched their ideas to a panel of peers, supervisors and outside experts. Teams were scored on the effectiveness of their presentation, the diligence of their market research, and the quality of their product scope — and of the three, one team emerged victorious.

MadClass, the winning team, proposes a Web portal where Wisconsin entrepreneurs can find legal documents and services geared toward their business needs. Team captain Joseph Calavenna, a second-year law student, says MadClass resembles the website LegalZoom, with the added feature of video tutorials and instructional materials for businesspeople just getting started.

“It was a great experience because we learned firsthand about the challenges our clients face, like figuring out how an idea fits into the existing marketplace and how to effectively pitch and present a product,” says Calavenna.

With its win on Pitch Day, Team MadClass earned the opportunity to move its concept forward, meaning that in the fall, all L&E Clinic students will help fine-tune the MadClass business plan.

Students will work together to clearly define the products and services MadClass might offer, according to Lindsey Thompson, a supervising attorney at the L&E Clinic. After developing a list of criteria necessary to a MadClass launch, action teams will develop plans for addressing the criteria.

L&E Clinic Students | Photo By Nick WilkesWhether or not MadClass moves beyond the planning stages toward an actual launch is yet to be decided, says Thompson, but clinic instructors already feel the process has helped students learn how to think like entrepreneurs.

“L&E Clinic clients are often early-stage business owners going through this very same process,” Thompson says. “We hope that by experiencing the same business planning and launch process, our students are more able to understand their clients’ business and legal needs.”

The finalists:

Submitted by Tammy Kempfert on June 3, 2014

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