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Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial Law Clinic

The Entrepreneurial Law Clinic provides students with unique practice experience opportunities while offering valuable free legal services to local businesses in need, generally those without significant funding such as access to venture capital or angel investor resources. The Clinic's clients include individual entrepreneurs, start-up companies, professors, graduate students, and entrepreneurs with special needs. Second and third-year Colorado Law students staff the Clinic under the joint supervision of a full-time clinician and experienced attorneys from the Boulder office of Hogan & Hartson, an international law firm. Students interact directly with clients to provide legal advice. Issues cover the business law spectrum and include entity formation, intellectual property, employment, and contracts.

Representative clients, projects, and initiatives include:

  • Clinic students helped two University of Colorado researchers form an entity committed to catalyzing renewable fuels and chemicals that are environmentally friendlier than petroleum-based products. The company has since received funding from two Silicon Valley-based venture capital firms and now has an exclusive University of Colorado license to move forward with its technology.
  • Clinic students assisted a client who built a Denver-based business around a dessert recipe from her Mexican village. The Clinic helped the client form a business entity and develop a viable intellectual property strategy around the secret process for creating her products.
  • Clinic students joined a "Mock Pitch Day" in which three Clinic clients gave a 15-20 minute presentation as if they were seeking early-stage company financing. Presentations were vetted by a Boulder-area venture capitalist and business school professor.
  • Two clinic students led a community outreach presentation to a Spanish-speaking class of prospective entrepreneurs concerning how to select and form a legal entity when starting a business. Students worked with the clinic supervisor to develop and refine their presentations, then delivered the presentation in Spanish.