18
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
ISSUE 05 2014
London is one of the main global hubs for digital technology innovation, demonstrated by the vibrancy and growth of the Silicon Roundabout in east London
Pro bono legal advice and toolkits One example of this response to legal needs is at Queen Mary University of London, where its School of Law developed a legal advice clinic that helps students provide legal counselling and advice to start-ups. The law clinic, qLegal also sees students go out to the technology community and facilitate workshops with partner organisations, and additionally has a research arm in which students draft topical toolkits on various legal issues:
www.qmul.ac.uk/qlegal
This model of providing legal advice is replicated across the US, at universities such as Brooklyn, Harvard, Kansas, Northwestern, Columbia, NYU and Chicago. The benefits are easy to see. Students are presented with the often daunting opportunity to engage with real-world clients and provide advice, a process which is of huge educational benefit to them, while the clients receive advice for free (albeit often over a longer time frame). Law clinics also provide universities with the opportunity to look at the legal needs of clients and how best to tailor student learning and pedagogical approaches to teaching in light of these needs.
In Europe this research has been advocated and funded by the European Commission leading to the development of a legal network for start-ups, entrepreneurs, students and universities. A consortium of universities across Europe are developing the iLINC Network (
http://lincup.eu) which seeks to look at what the legal needs of start-ups are, how start- ups access legal advice and how students learn and are assessed in the practical (rather than theoretical) study of law. It’s an extremely exciting community which will develop into a European-transatlantic hub of knowledge, experience and academic research. It will also allow clients to see what
universities provide legal assistance, in which legal areas and how the process works. The network has the capacity to really help start-ups and entrepreneurs.
Obviously legal clinics at universities can’t provide a full service like a law firm and neither are they trying to, but they do go some way to plugging the gap, particularly for those businesses which have limited funds or are at an early stage of development. Students are also eager to learn and working closely with start-ups and entrepreneurs is exciting for them. One student commented: “I very much appreciated the direct contact with clients and putting into practice what I was learning during my LLM was priceless.”
As technology develops, so too must the law and who is better placed to research and advise on those issues than the lawyers of the future? They will push the boundaries and seek solutions if they’re taught to do so and legal clinics provide them with that opportunity. LTE
Patrick Cahill is a Solicitor in England and Wales and coordinates qLegal, Queen Mary University of London’s legal clinic for technology start-ups and entrepreneurs. He is also a researcher for iLINC, the European Network of Law Clinics.
np.cahill@
qmul.ac.uk nwww.qmul.ac.uk/qlegal n
http://lincup.eu/
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