Small Business Legal Clinic

The Small Business Legal Clinic (SBLC) was established to provide third-year students with hands-on business transaction experience in a live-client setting.

Background

In 1992, the American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar issued "The Report of The Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap," also known as the MacCrate Report. Central to the MacCrate Report was a section entitled "The Statement of Fundamental Lawyering Skills and Professional Values," that set forth 10 fundamental lawyering skills and four professional values "which new lawyers should seek to acquire." The identified skills include problem solving, legal analysis and reasoning, communication, negotiation, counseling, and recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas. In discussing the need for skills and values education in the law school curriculum, the MacCrate Report acknowledged the valuable contribution that law school clinics make to a law school education, noting that clinics are a key component in the development and advancement of skills and values throughout the profession.

Traditionally, in the development and advancement of skills education, law school clinics have focused on teaching litigation and alternative dispute resolution skills. The SBLC (a) compliments the existing clinical programs by focusing on transaction and other nonlitigation skills, and (b) represents one strategy in meeting a stated objective of the College of Law of "implementing a broad skills curriculum in business and entrepreneurship law, including client counseling and drafting in a real-life setting."

Clinic Clientele

The purposes of the SBLC are to give students who have taken Business Associations real-life experience handling transactional legal problems and to provide assistance to business owners and entrepreneurs in Idaho.

Clients who are accepted by the SBLC are required to sign a formal engagement letter. The most common assignments involve the formation of an appropriate business entity, preparation and review of confidentiality and employment agreements, review of commercial leases, and, in the case of nonprofit organizations, the preparation and handling of applications for tax-exempt status.

Student Work Assignments

Client work is done by students under the close supervision of a faculty member with substantial experience in private law practice. No litigation or contested proceedings are handled. The program is operated in the same way as in a corporate law firm: the student participant and a faculty supervisor meet together with the new client; both ask questions about the proposed venture or legal problem facing the client; both prepare notes of the meeting. Following the meeting, the student drafts a letter to the client summarizing the points discussed at the initial conference and estimating SBLC fees and official charges. The letter is then reviewed by the faculty supervisor and is sent to the client over the student's name with a copy to the supervisor. If the client elects to have the SBLC undertake one or more of the items outlined in the first letter, the student does all of the required research and drafting under faculty guidance and supervision. When the engagement is complete, the student prepares a statement for services and expenses and a letter transmitting it to the client. Once a week all student participants and faculty supervisors meet as a group to review the accomplishments and challenges of the prior week and to discuss matters of common interest.

SBLC student participants are graded on the quality of their work and on the amount of responsibility they assume for meeting clients' needs.

Contact: Lee Dillion, Associate Dean for Boise Programs, dillion@uidaho.edu, (208) 364-4013