As law schools react to
reform curricular approaches to the “new normal,” many of them are employing
innovative strategies that include a focus on entrepreneurship. This panel will
discuss how law schools are drawing from the pedagogy of teaching students how
to represent entrepreneurs and applying it to teach them how to be
entrepreneurs (or at least entrepreneurial) themselves. Learning to think
innovatively and in an entrepreneurial manner is an important and transferable
skill, reflecting an important piece of this “new normal.”
The goal and learning
objective for this concurrent session is to increase awareness of how
entrepreneurship education is being used in law schools to achieve these goals
while sharing valuable tools with attendees to incorporate these ideas into
their courses.
The
panelists will describe different facets of entrepreneurship education in law
schools today including: the legal representation of entrepreneurs; the
mentoring and advising of law students’ own entrepreneurial ventures; applying
entrepreneurial skills in managing ones career; and the establishment of
nonprofit teaching law firms to educate students on the practice of law. As
panelists describe their programs, audience members will be encouraged to give their
initial reactions to the programs, their goals, and whether they are helpful to
students graduating in today’s legal economy. The session will then move to a
group discussion focused on honest reactions to the described programs, ideas
for new approaches to teaching entrepreneurship, and practical advice for
faculty looking to incorporate entrepreneurial thinking into their courses or
their law school curriculums more broadly.