Clinics and Externships

The clinic provides legal advice and assistance to entrepreneurs and to seed and early stage ventures that have not yet raised significant amounts of outside capital in a wide variety of legal matters including company formation, intellectual property protection, commercialization strategies, and operational issues. Student-attorneys work with actual clients from the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem on Duke's campus and in the broader community. Supervising professors give guidance on legal issues; for complicated transactional questions, students also can draw on advice from attorneys at local law firms.

Duke’s prime location in the Research Triangle – one of the nation’s most dynamic centers for entrepreneurship – makes it an exciting place to advise start-ups while they’re still in the germination phase. Several clients have moved on to well-known incubator and accelerator programs and others have launched a product or service.