Innovation Trek 2022 Announcement

The Innovation Clinic at The University of Chicago Law School is proud to announce its inaugural Innovation Trek, which will take place March 15-17, 2022 in the Bay Area. Students participating in the Innovation Clinic will, for the first time, have the opportunity to travel to Silicon Valley to meet with world leaders in emerging companies and venture capital, in industries such as consumer products, life sciences, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and more. Students will learn from business and legal experts regarding issues facing startups at every stage of the company life cycle, from inception to exit to life as a public company.

The Innovation Clinic provides second and third year students at the Law School with the opportunity to counsel startups and venture capital firms both within and outside of the university on transactional and regulatory matters. While there are many entrepreneurship and transactional clinics at law schools across the country, what makes the Innovation Clinic unique is its focus on high growth startups as well as its ability to advise startups on complicated and unsettled regulatory questions.

“The idea behind the Innovation Clinic since its inception has been to help disruptive companies that can bring great benefits to society but whose business models are hindered in some way by existing regulations to navigate that regulatory landscape and succeed,” says Emily Underwood, Associate Clinical Professor of Law and the Bluhm-Helfand Director of the Innovation Clinic. While many lawyers, Underwood says, are able to advise companies of all kinds as to compliance with well understood bodies of law like data privacy, securities, and the like, the Innovation Clinic is different. “We want to work with companies who, because of the novelty of their projects, are disproportionately negatively affected by existing legal regimes that never intended to catch these novel projects. We help them reframe their business strategy or lobby relevant legislators and executive branch actors to change the relevant rules in cases where that may be an option.” Of course, students also get a well-rounded experience working on the basic startup transactional matters that affect every startup, from entity formation and founders’ agreements, to complex and crucial customer and vendor agreements, to fundraising, so that they are well prepared for a legal practice as it exists in that space today, but also future-proofed against increasing commoditization of the transactional work in the space.

The Innovation Trek will be an unparalleled opportunity for Innovation Clinic students to network with professionals in the Bay Area, which remains the nation’s largest hub for venture capital and innovation despite great strides by other major cities, including Chicago. Students will broaden their horizons and have the opportunity to hear from professionals who might not be as accessible to them in Chicago, and to experience the venture capital ecosystem in the Bay Area firsthand. It will also give the Innovation Clinic an exceptional opportunity to raise its profile outside of the City of Chicago and to diversify its client base to continue providing peerless academic experiences for participating students.

The inaugural Innovation Trek is funded by a generous gift from Doug Clark, an alumnus of the Law School and a Managing Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. “The Law School has always been a leader in forward-thinking legal scholarship,” says Clark, “The Innovation Clinic extends that ethic to advising creative entrepreneurs. I’m pleased to be able to assist the Innovation Clinic’s students in obtaining exposure to the vibrant business environment of Silicon Valley.” The Innovation Trek will be hosted in Wilson Sonsini’s Palo Alto office, with some offsite activities occurring at other locations such as accelerators.

Both Clark and Underwood hope that the Innovation Trek will not only provide a great educational and networking opportunity for students and industry experts alike, but will also spark interest on the part of law students to practice in this space after they graduate. “The Law School historically has not sent as many alums to Silicon Valley as we have to Chicago, New York, and Texas, and we have not seen as many alums enter emerging companies or venture capital practices as we have seen enter other, more traditional corporate practices. There are so many opportunities for students in this area, whether at a firm, or in house at a startup or later stage company, or in regulatory consulting or government roles, that it’s a huge missed opportunity and we hope to close that gap. Ideally, when we do this Trek years from now, we’ll be meeting with lots of Innovation Clinic alums who have pursued both conventional and unconventional career paths in innovation and venture capital.” Law school alumni in the area have repeatedly expressed a desire for more Law School students to follow them West, a request the Innovation Clinic hopes to fulfill.

If you have any questions about the Innovation Trek, or the Innovation Clinic, or would like to get involved and participate, you are encouraged to please contact Emily Underwood at underwood@uchicago.edu.