Clinic Pairs Students with Start-Ups

SAN DIEGO - How does a semester's worth of law school credit without the onerous task of taking classes sound?

Too good to be true, perhaps, but that's what students participating in the University of San Diego School of Law's new legal clinic for startup technology and life science companies will get this September.

The first eight to 10 students who participate in the partnership between the law school, CONNECT - a local nonprofit that links new high-tech and biotechnology ventures with business resources - and six participating law firms, won't be cruising for a semester, however.

The students being reviewed for slots in the Technology Entrepreneurship Law Clinic will be paired with attorneys to offer corporate, intellectual property and employment law advice to clients from CONNECT's Springboard program, which pairs startups with mentors from established businesses.

"We'll have more interest in legal services than students to provide them," said Ted Sichelman, the USD law school professor overseeing the clinic.

Each semester, the law clinic will begin with a boot camp to prepare students for the types of issues they'll encounter. The students will have no other classes during the semester but they'll meet regularly with Sichelman, the law firms' supervising attorneys and clinic clients.

Participating law firms include Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo; Procopio Cory Hargreaves & Savitch; Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear; Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth; Benchmark Law Group; and Birch Stewart Kolasch & Birch.

"It's appropriate, given the slump in the economy, that there be this reach out to technology companies to give them some services they might not have access to," said John Carson, a partner at Knobbe Martens.

Carson will work with students assisting technology companies while fellow Knobbe Martens Partner Chris Steinhardt will work with students dealing with biotechnology clients.

"One of the benefits of being involved as a law firm is getting involved with top-quality new companies," said Carl Kukkonen, a San Diego member of the intellectual property group at Mintz Levin and co-chair of CONNECT's Springboard program. "The law students can provide some execution of corporate or legal advice that we sometimes can't do as mentors to companies."

Almost all of the companies enrolled in Springboard have asked the program's sponsoring law firms to provide pro bono legal services, according to Camille Sobrian, chief operating officer for CONNECT.

"Some law firms will do that and accept one or two companies over the year," Sobrian said. "But it's very hard, because law firms aren't structured to do the volume of services that we would need for free."

CONNECT tries to help Springboard companies access funding for their operations so they can pay for legal services. Startups, however, often need to patent their ideas before they can get venture capital funding and that process requires legal advice.

So it is no surprise that five Springboard companies have signed up for the free law clinic.

"It's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing," Sobrian said. "I'm excited for this [clinic], because it will greatly increase the ability of these companies to get funding and to be great clients for the law firms in the future."

Other California law schools offer student clinics focused on technology, small businesses or entrepreneurs, but the USD program has carved out a niche providing legal advice to technology entrepreneurs.

The intersection of law and technology is the focus of the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. In one case, the clinic is working with documentary filmmakers to address the intellectual property issues of using material from other films.

"It has to be something the students can sink their teeth into, where they can have an active role in the project and develop their skills," said Jack Lerner, clinical assistant professor of law at USC and director of the school's clinic.

The Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Clinic at the University of San Francisco School of Law has a focus on online privacy and freedom-of-speech issues.

"A lot of the time when they're doing summer internships, students do a lot of research, but they don't have contact with clients," said Robert Talbot, a USF law professor and director of the clinic. "Here they're calling and e-mailing and they're the ones the clients rely on. This is why they want to be lawyers."

Attorneys involved in USD's new clinic say students will work more closely with clients than they would as interns or summer associates.

"In law school, you get a broad exposure to all different sorts of law but you don't have the opportunity to go in depth in many areas," said Paul Johnson, a partner at Procopio.

Hayden Trubitt, a shareholder at Stradling, said the benefits to participating law firms is much more than tapping free student labor.

"The important thing here is the students get the experience and the law firms, through the students, develop a relationship with an emerging company," Trubitt said.