LAW992

The Startup Legal Garage course is a full year course. 8 units for the full year (2-unit class in the fall and 3 units fieldwork per semester, with optional related coursework in the spring per the instructor). Fieldwork component satisfies the Experiential Learning requirement.

Students will be helping early-stage startups with patent matters, predominantly "freedom-to-operate" analyses that will help the startups focus their strategy and attract funding. Many of the companies in the program come from QB3, which is an incubator for startups developed from biotechnology inventions at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and UCSF. Student work preparing analyses of relevant patents will be supervised by lawyers at leading law firms, who will be working for free for the duration of the semester. This course will help students develop and apply transactional lawyering skills such as transaction planning and management, client interviewing and counseling, navigating conflict of interest issues, and legal research. In the course, students will receive legal skills training related to those tasks and will have the opportunity to present and discuss their fieldwork for the group. This course will be of particular interest to students considering a career in intellectual property. Students must be accepted into the program by the Professors managing the Startup Legal Garage. Open to rising 2L and 3L students by application only. The application process takes place in the spring prior to the registration period in July.

Please email Professor Paul Belonick for an application.