Last Updated on March 25, 2024 by Ranking
Law schools must teach law students to think like entrepreneurs, and business law clinics provide a natural environment. This article adopts a qualitative case study approach to explore how qLegal, a pro bono commercial law clinic based at the Center for Commercial Law Studies (“CCLS”) at Queen Mary University of London (“QMUL”), teaches students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset thinking .
qLegal provides legal and regulatory advisory services for companies starting operations at an early stage of development. He specializes in solving a number of difficult problems related to the management of intellectual property (“IP”). qLegal’s customer base has grown to meet changing market needs and now includes entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries.
During the 2021-22 academic year, qLegal students provided legal advice, support and education to over 150 startups and entrepreneurs. Of the clinic inquiries received, 55% were from startups in the development phase and/or without turnover, and 64% had not received any funding. The vast majority acted independently.
Students can raise awareness of specific legal issues affecting entrepreneurs by hosting targeted legal education information sessions in venues serving startup communities. Interest and engagement are then channeled to individual clinics, where clients can receive tailored written advice or be directed to self-service, publicly available resources. We hope that startups using these services will thrive in the future.
The O-shaped Lawyer program is “a cross-industry movement that aims to drive positive change” and encourages “a fundamental rethinking of the provision of legal training and development for future lawyers and those already in the profession.”
QLegal places students with startups one day a week for six months. Students learn to solve problems, empathize with customers, respond to criticism, and engage in a teamwork approach. qLegal emphasizes the importance of each of these four skills during our introductory training, where we engage in problem-solving.
Students need to become comfortable with open contact with the public. This shift from teacher-student to co-participants and co-learners is most likely new to students, especially postgraduate law students who have spent many years passively learning from lectures. The ability to fail, also known as resilience, is a skill that law firms have noticed that younger lawyers lack.
The qLegal internship program offers students the chance to exercise their creativity with limited resources. Students train and serve their clients using the Design Thinking methodology. The Design Thinking process requires practitioners to devote time and resources to thoroughly implementing a project to fully understand the problem the client is facing.
qLegal shares its internal strategy and processes with students. It asks students to identify the unmet legal needs of start-ups and entrepreneurs. Two qLegal employees are entrepreneurs, and one is a legal advisor in private practice. The goal is to teach students to think like a lawyer and think like an entrepreneur.
One of the authors, Eliza, believes that the client work that most developed her entrepreneurial mindset, and the work of her students, involved significant direct contact with clients. In many respects, teaching students entrepreneurship is a natural fit for commercial law clinics, where our clients are start-ups themselves.
