The Duke Law School Start-Up Ventures Clinic provides legal advice and assistance to seed and early stage entrepreneurial ventures that have not yet raised significant amounts of outside capital.  The clinic assists clients in a wide variety of legal matters including formation, intellectual property protection, commercialization strategies and operational issues.  

“Our mission is to provide legal services to entrepreneurial start-ups in the Duke, Durham and Triangle communities” said Clinic Director Kip Johnson.  “Entrepreneurial activity has always been a significant business and employment generator for the Triangle and we hope that we can accelerate that process by providing free legal services to promising new companies.”

Clinic students provide advice and assist qualifying clients on new entity formation, founder equity and vesting, shareholder agreements, intellectual property assignment and licensing agreements, website terms and conditions, and other issues that new enterprises face in their start-up phase.