For Students

3Ls who have taken Business Associations

You’ll work in teams representing local businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs, both for-profit and nonprofit, on transactional legal issues critical to their success. You are expected to work approximately 8-10 hours a week on clinical matters, with 2 of those hours spent in the clinic office. During office hours, you will receive weekly individual supervision.

You will attend a week long short course the week before school starts to discuss substantive legal areas relevant to clients; and work on your client interviewing and counseling, effective oral and written communication, file maintenance and legal ethics/professionalism skills.

If accepted into the ECDC, you will:

• engage in an attorney-client relationship; 
• assume primary responsibility for meeting a client’s legal needs;
• learn about the myriad of legal issues that businesses confront and some of the substantive law underlying those issues;
• learn the importance of clear and concise oral and written communications;
• practice project planning and management;
• learn how a small law office operates, including procedures for client intake, conflict checking, file maintenance, project tracking, timekeeping and scheduling;
• learn the importance of pro bono service.


You will receive 4 credit hours—2 classroom credits and 2 non-classroom credits—for your work with the ECDC. Your letter grade for the classroom portion is based upon attendance, preparedness and participation. The field placement or clinical portion of the class is graded as High Pass/Pass/Low Pass/Fail based upon the quality and timeliness of your client work, productivity, professional judgment and conduct, initiative and teamwork, compliance with clinical procedures and other factors determined by Professor Mangan and communicated to the Clinic’s students.

The course does not meet the seminar or client counseling requirements.

Once you are a qualified 3L, you can enroll by completing the “Application for Enrollment” and submitting it per instuctions during the clinic enrollment period in the spring. Students will be selected for enrollment based on your application and a possible follow-up interview. Once you have been selected, you will enroll for two courses—both the field placement component and class component of the ECDC.