Innovation at Brooklyn Law School

One of my colleagues forwarded me this feature from the Huffington Post. It discusses an innovative clinic at Brooklyn Law School that "represents Internet, new media, communications and other tech entrepreneurs and innovators on both business and policy advocacy." This description comes from the homepage of the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic, better known as BLIP. The Huffington Post puts it even more succinctly: the goal of BLIP is to train the "lawyer 2.0 for the digital era." The clinic is the brainchild of Professor Jonathan Askin, who is the son of a former professor of mine at Rutgers Law School - Newark. Professor Frank Askin and his wife, Marilyn, also an attorney, recently gave a large gift to Rutgers for the purpose of creating an endowment to support the clinical programs. A nice photograph of the three Askins appears in the press release announcing the gift.

BLIP is large by the standards of clinical legal education--it has twenty students who are, according to the Huffington Post, "deployed into real legal work for clients facing tricky issues ranging from drafting privacy policy, to incorporation, to wider policy related questions. And as the startups they work grow into full-fledged companies, other benefits present themselves as well." Some of the pro bono clients anticipate eventual hiring of in-house counsel from the students with whom they worked at BLIP. This clinic is a great idea for law schools serious about graduating practice-ready attorneys ready to work in the twenty-first century.