Taking care of business: a new clinician's experience of supervising and developing commercial casework

Northumbria University’s Student Law Office has been offering members of the public assistance with business and commercial law related issues for a number of years. This work includes reviewing and drafting commercial contracts, advising on business set up, directors’ duties, constitutional documents and trading disclosures, dealing with contentious and non-contentious intellectual property issues, and advising on information technology matters including domain name ownership. In March 2011 I joined the Student Law Office from a medium sized commercial firm. I was presented with the task of developing what was then known as the “small business” work carried out in the clinic. Whilst touching on some of the general issues most new clinicians come across during their first year, this paper will concentrate specifically on the development of business work in clinics. It will review was has and, perhaps more importantly, what has not worked during my first academic year. I will be making particular reference to the three “C”s: Connectivism (encouraging the students to network and setting up scenarios to allow them to do that), Commercial Awareness (training student to think like a commercial lawyer and learn more about the business world) and Creating a Product (document drafting and presentation).