Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic: Clinical Coursework

The Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic provides students the opportunity to help shape the course and outcome of significant legal and policy debates before courts, regulatory bodies, legislators, and other policy makers. Students in the clinic engage in hands-on representation of clients in cutting-edge matters involving IP (copyright, patent, and trademark) and other laws and technology policy that affect innovation, such as online speech and content moderation, antitrust, pharmaceutical regulation, privacy, cybersecurity, net neutrality, and more. They draft amicus briefs for the Supreme Court or federal appellate and district courts, or pursue litigation in district court, or submit detailed comments and live testimony in rulemaking proceedings before the FCC, Copyright Office, PTO, FDA, FTC, and other agencies. Students also provide counseling and legal advice to help their clients solve complex tech, IP or other innovation-related legal, technical, and business problems. Students may draft public-facing policy whitepapers or "best practices" documents to influence tech policy in ways that benefit innovators and innovation. Throughout the quarter, clinic student engage with and seek to understand the role that race, racism, and structural inequality play in the development, deployment, use, and regulation of technology, and advocate for antiracist policies, laws, and regulations. Our clients are non-profits and advocacy organizations; groups of innovators, entrepreneurs, technology users/consumers, legal academics, computer scientists, or technologists; or sometimes individual entrepreneurs, startups, biohackers, media critics, or open-source advocates, among others. Students' work ranges across tech areas such as internet/information technology, biotech, pharmaceuticals, and online speech and media. Our policy advocacy will often involve intertwined factual, technological, business, economic, political and public relations considerations along with the substantive legal issues. Students in the clinic may be called upon to collaborate with technologists, researchers, doctors, economists, social scientists, industry experts, and others to develop and articulate the appropriate advocacy for their clients. The bi-weekly clinic seminar focuses on student-led workshops regarding client projects, and on engaging with current thinking around race, technology, and the legal system; innovation and innovation economics; and the impact of IP, antitrust, and other law and regulation on innovation. Students will critically examine the role of lawyers advocating for the public interest, for racial justice and reforms to the legal system, and for sound and sensible innovation policy outcomes. A background in technology may be useful in some cases but is not necessary to a successful experience in the clinic.--Special Instructions: General Structure of Clinical Courses -- The Law School's clinical courses are offered on a full-time basis for 12 units. This allows students to immerse themselves in the professional experience without the need to balance clinical projects with other classes, exams and papers. Students enrolled in a clinic are not permitted to enroll in any other classes, seminars, directed research or other credit-yielding activities within the Law School or University during the quarter in which they are enrolled in a clinic. Nor are they allowed to serve as teaching assistants who are expected to attend a class on a regular basis. There is a limited exception for joint degree students who are required to take specific courses each quarter and who would be foreclosed from ever taking a clinic unless allowed to co-register. These exceptions are approved on a case-by-case basis. Clinic students are expected to work in their clinical office during most business hours Monday through Friday. Students are also expected to be available by e-mail or cell phone when elsewhere during those hours. Because students have no other courses (and hence no exams or papers), the clinical quarter begins the first day of classes and runs through the final day of the examination period. Students should not plan personal travel during the Monday to Friday work week without prior authorization from the clinical supervisor. The work during a typical week in a clinic is divided into three components. First, as they are for practicing attorneys, most of the hours of any week are taken up by work on client matters or case work (this time includes meetings with instructors to discuss the work). Again, as is the case for practicing lawyers, in some weeks these responsibilities demand time above and beyond "normal business hours." Second, students will spend approximately five-to-seven hours per week preparing for and participating in weekly discussions or other group work in their individual clinic (scheduling varies by clinic). Third, over the course of the quarter each clinic student (with the exception of those enrolled in the Criminal Prosecution Clinic) is required to prepare for and attend a few inter-clinic group sessions. Students will be awarded three separate grades for their clinical quarter, each reflecting four units. The three grades are broken into the following categories: clinical practice; clinical methods; and clinical coursework. Grading is pursuant to the H/P system. Enrollment in a clinic is binding; once selected into a clinic to which he or she has applied, a student may not later drop the course except in limited and exceptional cases. Requests for withdrawal are processed through the formal petition and clinical faculty review process described in the clinic policy document posted on the SLS website. Students may not enroll in any clinic (full-time or advanced) which would result in them earning more than 27 clinical units during their law school career. The rules described here do not apply to advanced clinics for students who are continuing with a clinic in which they were previously enrolled. For information about advanced clinics, please see the course descriptions for those courses. For more information about clinic enrollment and operations, please see the clinic policy document posted on the SLS website. Elements used in grading: Attendance, preparation for and participation in clinic seminar; reflection papers; and clinical case and project work including specific elements of methodical analysis, critical thinking, close reading, efficient writing, effective collaboration, and strategy development, applicable across client and seminar work.