As part of the Northwestern Law Board’s recent biannual meeting, MSL Director Leslie Oster and Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center (DPELC) Director Esther Barron organized a panel of entrepreneurs who work at the intersection of law, business, and technology to discuss Trends in Entrepreneurship. This meeting happened to fall on the day of the DPELC Conference, so the Law School was buzzing with innovators and entrepreneurs.  The panel was an impressive group, each representing a different segment of the Northwestern Law community:

 

To introduce the panel, Leslie summarized some of the exciting developments in the Law School’s strategy to encourage entrepreneurship:

• The creation of the MSL Program: addresses the needs of professionals with technical and scientific backgrounds to develop law and business skills in order to advance their ideas as entrepreneurs.
• The Innovation Lab course: brings together JD, LLM, and MSL students to collaborate in developing a tech product that will solve a legal problem. This is an interdisciplinary course designed to encourage students to develop the well-rounded mindset of a successful entrepreneur.
• The Entrepreneurship Team Project: an elective course in the MSL program that immerses students in the legal and business landscape of a particular region — read more about this year’s immersion trip to Silicon Valley in our previous blog posts.  JD students from the DPELC also participated in this trip.

The panelists were very passionate about their work in entrepreneurship and needed little prompting to get the discussion started. Driven by questions from Leslie Oster and members of the Law Board, the panel addressed the following:

How can we leverage the advantages of being in Chicago?

Dwyer emphasized that Chicago has a robust network of institutions that encourage entrepreneurship. From Northwestern’s Kellogg and the Garage to external organizations, such as MATTER and 1871, entrepreneurs have access to world-class resources and the ability to learn practical skills to help their businesses. The tech transfer office of Northwestern, INVO (Innovation and New Ventures Office), allows students and faculty to translate their inventions into commercialized goods. Students also have access to hands-on, skill-building courses in the curriculum, such as the Innovation Lab and NUvention courses that teach young entrepreneurs user-centered design. The benefits of having access to this level of support and these valuable resources cannot be overstated: as Gunn reaffirmed, these resources give students the ability to move their ideas forward with a lower risk of failure.

How did your experiences before entering the law school at Northwestern affect your choices and your interest in entrepreneurship?

To answer this question, the panelists discussed their pre-masters/JD careers:

• Prior to enrolling in the MSL program, Amy Garber worked as a biological engineer and for GE as a patent agent. She reached a point in her career where she sought more of a challenge and she wanted to explore, in depth, how intellectual property assets can support business opportunities. The startup she currently works for, Hazel Technologies, originally came together in a Northwestern course: NUvention Energy.
• Jonathan Gunn was also a member of the bio engineering world prior to returning to school to study law; he had previously earned a dual PhD in Materials Science & Engineering and Nanotechnology and was working in cancer research.  While at the law school, he took the NUvention Medical Innovation class, and therein his company — Briteseed — was born.
• Joe Dwyer was already semi-retired when he decided to go to school as a JD-MBA candidate. He sought to work in venture capital and knew the JD-MBA was a good path to that career. With the momentum of his prior work experience, he was very aware of the gaps in his knowledge as an entrepreneur. Law taught him how to consider all the potential outcomes — including negative outcomes — and how to address potential conflicts; the MBA taught him how to identify trends, and reassess goals and strategy accordingly. Combining these areas, he is able to endure conflict within the market and make informed decisions that allow him to drive his business forward.
• Nazar Yasin had less work experience coming into the Law School than Joe, but calls his time as a JD-MBA student a “transformative experience.” He solidified existing skills and gained a vast amount of intersectional knowledge that influenced his business decisions.

The takeaway? Prior work experience certainly gave our panelists a specific drive and motivation during their studies. They came into school knowing which industries they wanted to improve or even disrupt. Their time at the Law School had profound impact on their future careers, spawning companies and partnerships that led to many of their successes.

Thinking about activities and courses at the Law School, what did you think were the most helpful aspects of your education here?

• Garber appreciated that the MSL curriculum gave her an introduction into many fields; her favorite course was IP Strategy. It taught her the process of constructing a solid portfolio, conducting proper patent searches, and navigating through IP platforms. The concepts she learned in the course directly and positively impact her work today; she is currently the chief IP officer for her company.
• Gunn found Contracts, IP Strategy, and Entrepreneurship Law most valuable. Specially, learning the ability to identify potential risks for startups has enabled him to avoid making mistakes. Many of the courses he took taught him to navigate through risk and potholes and taught him how to de-risk and identify issues.
• Dwyer suggested that learning to think like a lawyer is an unfair advantage, but a hugely desirable one to have in business negotiations. Learning about law to interact with lawyers gave him the ability to choose good lawyers in his business deals. He also appreciated coursework in Contracts, through which he developed skills in reviewing, editing, and identifying “red flags” in contracts.
• Yasin reiterated Dwyer’s sentiment that learning to think like a lawyer is immeasurably valuable. He added that with so many industries facing huge changes in this day and age, professionals should and can push for developing all of the skills necessary to adapt to this ever-changing economy.

As JD-MBAs, both Dwyer and Yasin emphasized the value of being well-rounded entrepreneurs. They were convinced that their legal education set them apart in the business world by allowing them to understand complexities that other professionals don’t always understand.  Amy agreed, and felt that the combined focus of the MSL on business and law provided her with similar advantages and allowed her to situate her technical background.  Jonathan agreed that being able to understand law and business was the perfect compliment to his science background, and allowed him to effectively inhabit his role as CEO of a medical device company.

 

How does having an entrepreneurial mindset help in your legal or business career?

Having the ability to think like a lawyer and an entrepreneur was the unifying theme throughout the panel. All three panelists agreed that this ability gives them a unique skillset in their field. Innovation generally operates at the intersection of business, law, and technology, and so having a handle on all three areas allows entrepreneurs to succeed on the cutting edge.

To sum up the panel, Leslie Oster concluded that law and entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand to encourage a healthy attitude toward risk and drive innovation forward. No matter which degree option students chose, Northwestern Law equips students with an impressive set of skills and unmatched resources to cultivate their entrepreneurial ambitions.