Brooklyn Law launches center to train lawyers to think like ‘digital entrepreneurs’

Attorneys are trained to help businesses work within the rules. That becomes tricky when companies are devising businesses for which the rules haven’t been written yet, so a Brooklyn Law School professor is working to train attorneys to think more like digital entrepreneurs.

A panel of tech attorneys gathered for a panel last week at Brooklyn Law School‘s Subotnick Center for a showcase of entrepreneurial lawyers. The panel was led by Prof. Jonathan Askin and marked the launch of the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship [CUBE]. The new organization is the next phase of the school’s commitment to training attorneys ready to take part in startup activity and write the next century’s digital law.

CUBE is an outgrowth of the school’s most popular clinic, the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy clinic, the founder of both, Professor Askin, explained in an email to Technically Brooklyn. Law students apply for the program and, once accepted, work directly with startups to help them overcome legal challenges. It’s the largest such clinic in the country, according to Huffington Post:

BLIP’s students are just as dedicated as their professor. BLIP has no room for the half-hearted. As the most popular clinic at Brooklyn Law, no first-year students are admitted, and almost no one is admitted on their first application. Even so, the size of the clinic is twice that of the next largest clinic in the country.

CUBE has offices downtown and in Dumbo and will have training in six specific areas:

1. Real Estate Development
2. Technology
3. Cre­ative Arts and Media
4. Community Deal-Making
5. Energy
6. Social Enterprise

While it is still too early to say much more about what CUBE will do, BLIP is taking leadership alongside five other law school clinics nationally to defend startups against patent trolls.

Launched in October, it is called the Law School Patent Troll Defense Network and part of the Application Developers Alliance. Startups can enlist the law students and allied attorneys in defending their businesses pro bono against patent claim shakedowns.

Meanwhile, Askin, under the auspices of CUBE, has also been commissioned by a consortium of sixteen European academic partners to launch BLIP-like programs across the EU.