CHAPEL HILL – The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust has made a $1.5 million gift to establish a clinical entrepreneurship program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Law to serve entrepreneurs on UNC-CH and North Carolina State University campuses. The NC legislature has also appropriated $465,000 in recurring funds to support the program.
“Connecting the world-class legal community at Carolina with business professionals in the startup economy is a win-win approach to higher education that will prepare law students to succeed and provide valuable legal resources for emerging companies in our state’s rapidly growing economy,” said House Speaker Tim Moore in a statement.
In addition to providing educational opportunities for law students, the program is intended to fill a consistent gap across all startup settings: a lack of access to legal counsel. Legal advice for early-stage businesses and nonprofits, which typically have limited resources, can be hard to find. In an effort to control costs, many entrepreneurs never consult a lawyer and come to regret it.
Failing to consult competent counsel exposes a new business or nonprofit organization to a variety of risks. For clients of the program these risks will be lowered, giving them a greater chance of thriving and expanding.
The new program will serve business and social enterprise entrepreneurs on the campuses of UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, in partnership with UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, NC State University’s Poole College of Management, as well as the innovation and entrepreneurship infrastructures on both campuses.
Students will counsel business founders
The UNC School of Law also intends to identify one or more economic incubators in underserved parts of North Carolina that the entrepreneurship program can support.
Martin H. Brinkley, dean and Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor at UNC School of Law said in a statement, “The new entrepreneurship program will help Carolina Law embrace its mission by fulfilling dual goals of teaching and service. We will be able to provide an invaluable experiential learning opportunity for approximately 30 students a year while serving several times that number of for-profit and nonprofit entrepreneurial ventures each year.”
Funding will support three interwoven legal clinics at UNC School of Law: a for-profit ventures clinic, an intellectual property clinic and Carolina Law’s existing Community Development Law Clinic, which is a longstanding, highly successful nonprofit social entrepreneurship clinic.
Each clinic, supervised by a full-time member of the law school faculty, will train eight to 10 law students per semester. Students will counsel business founders on the advantages and disadvantages of various business entity structures, form appropriate entities, draft organizational documents, capture and license intellectual property assets, and seek tax-exempt status for community based nonprofit organizations.
The program is expected to kick off in the 2019-2020 academic year. An official name will be determined during the planning process with input from current students.
“This gift and challenge from the Kenan Charitable Trust will catapult UNC School of Law onto the cutting edge of legal education. From my own experience representing clients in mergers and acquisitions and startups, there is a great need for legal advice at the earliest stages,” said Larry Robbins, partner at Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton
