A lot has happened since the first of two BU-MIT law clinics opened in 2015 to provide free legal services to MIT student innovators while giving BU School of Law students experience in the rapidly expanding fields of technology and startup law.
More than 750 MIT student teams have received support from LAW students, who have provided them with approximately 50,000 hours of client work, accounting for well over $10 million worth of free legal services.
In a major entrepreneurship competition at MIT last year, two-thirds of the finalists had benefited from the clinics support. On BUs side, 44 law students worked in the clinics during the past school year and over the summer, accounting for almost one-sixth of the entire law class.
A lot of advanced computer science research can look and feel like the sort of hacking that is prohibited by laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So, often were helping clients stay on the other side of hacking laws.
The numbers show the importance students place on being on sound legal footing, as they bring a disruptive startup or revelatory research paper into the world. It was an easy decision in May for the two schools to renew the clinics operations for five more years.
For a startup or an academic researcher, its not knowing [about potential issues] that can be the most paralyzing thing, says Andrew Sellars, a LAW clinical instructor who directs the Technology Law Clinic at BU. What we offer is we can give them the map. We can say here are the legal issues, heres where the law is pretty settled, heres where the law is unsettled, here are some things to do to mitigate your risk. And by doing all that we can add some extra confidence and energy to the venture.
BU and MITs collaboration began in September 2015 with the launch of the first clinic targeted towards entrepreneurs and supporting students as part of a new Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, and Cyberlaw Program at BU. A year later, the second clinic began operations as planned, focusing on complex student needs in the technology area. Both clinics, at their founding, consisted of a supervising lawyer and eight student advocates.
What we realized pretty much immediately was, that wasnt going to do itwe needed to grow, Sellars says. And the major story of the last four years has been figuring out what the needs are and growing to meet those needs.
Today both clinics provide an expanded level of service. The Startup Law Clinic helps student entrepreneurs navigate issues associated with launching a venture, like establishing a corporation or LLC, securing intellectual property, and hiring employees. The Technology Law Clinic, whose client base includes researchers as well as entrepreneurs, helps ensure students work aligns with laws around data collection, privacy, information disclosure, encryption, and more.
Each clinic includes three licensed attorneys, although BUs law students do most of the work advising and representing clients. The students also write white papers on specific legal areas and conduct presentations at locations around MIT, including the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the MIT Media Lab, to reach a broader audience. The clinics hold regular office hours at the Martin Trust Center, the Media Lab, the MIT Sandbox, and elsewhere at MIT, making it easy for MIT students to access clinic services. They also do similar work for BU clients at the BUild Lab and elsewhere.
Our goal is to educate our law students to do the work and have the client relationships, although were there supervising, says James Wheaton, a LAW clinical associate professor who became director of the Startup Law Clinic in 2018.Since 2017, the collaboration has been bolstered by the Matthew Z. Gomes Fellowship Fund, a program that supports students from underrepresented communities in order to foster greater diversity among the next generation of technology and startup lawyers. Four of the seven fellows working for the clinics this summer are Gomes Fellows.
The tech sector has known this about itself for some time: We have a major diversity problem in all corners of tech, including in the lawyers who represent tech companies, Sellars says. We wanted to think of some ways to improve diversity in technology by improving the pipeline.
In 2014, MIT PhD candidate Amy Johnson filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the CIA seeking information about the agencys Twitter account. When the CIA failed to produce any documents, Johnson worked with the Technology Law Clinic to file a lawsuit against the agency, which sent her just 30 documents related to her request.
Johnson and her legal team decided that wasnt enough, and, after several more rounds of litigation, she has now received approximately 400 records. That case is ongoing and Johnson is still seeking more documents.
We really kicked in the door by suing the CIA our first year, Sellars says.
The CIA case is one of several high-profile projects the law clinics have been involved with. The Technology Law Clinic also helped MIT researchers publish a study revealing bias in multiple companies facial-analysis programs. The study showed the algorithms had an error rate of just 0.8 percent for light-skinned men but 34.7 percent for dark-skinned women. The clinic helped the researchers ensure the study complied with computer access laws and to coordinate disclosure of the results of the study with the companies in advance of its publication.
More recently, the clinic helped researchers in MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as they published technical papers that exposed security vulnerabilities in a mobile voting application that had been used in the 2018 midterm elections. The vulnerability gave hackers the opportunity to alter, stop, or expose how users voted.
A popular area we work in is computer science, both because of the huge population of CS students at MIT, and also because a lot of advanced computer science research can look and feel like the sort of hacking that is prohibited by laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So, often were helping clients stay on the other side of hacking laws, Sellars says. Then there are a lot of data-related questions[dealing with] data privacy, access to data, use of data, and web scraping, which is writing a script that systematically gathers info across the web.
While the field of computer science accounts for a large portion of the clinics work, students from across MITs campus have benefited from the clinics support, something people familiar with MITs innovation ecosystem expected from the start.
Im not surprised at all that the clinics have supported students from all five of MITs schools, says MITs David H. Koch Professor of Engineering Michael Cima, who also serves on the board of the clinics. Student-led startups, in particular, are very diverse in their makeup. These include not only for-profit oriented businesses, but also sustainable nonprofits.
The clinics provide the BU students with invaluable practical experience in increasingly important areas of the law. Felicity Slater (LAW22), who joined the Technology Law Clinic in May, has worked with seven different clients across a wide array of MIT departments.
Several of the clients that Im working with are graduate student researchers at the Media Lab, doing truly unique and fascinating research, Slater says. Im also working with a few clients who are starting businesses, and I assisted an MIT undergraduate with an employment law question. Im finishing out my summer by working on a dispute about a Freedom of Information Act request that is in active litigation.
Its pretty revolutionary to have the opportunity to work with real clients, Slater notes. It brings the work alive and makes everythingthe research, the writing, the editingmore meaningful, she says. Ive thought about how the uncertainty and trepidation that people can sometimes have around the lawCan I do this? Is this legal?can cause stress, and make people hesitant to take on interesting and important work.
Slater says shes become increasingly interested in pursuing a career in tech law in some form, but is also committed to doing work that promotes civil rights. Im going to be a research assistant for LAW professor Danielle Citron next year, Slater says, and I am really looking forward to learning more about her work on cyber civil rights.
The disruptions caused by COVID-19 have forced everyone to adjust to remote work, but they havent slowed the law clinics work in support of innovation at MIT. In fact, April 2020 was the busiest month in the clinics history, and theyve continued to see a dramatic increase in work as students pursue ideas to help with the pandemic.
Now that the clinics have been renewed for five more years, their directors are brainstorming ways to further expand their services. The pandemic has shown the clinics can work even if members cant meet in person, and has reinforced the idea that technology can help scale operations.
We know no matter how big we grow, the program will never fully meet the needs of the MIT student body, and because of that were trying to think of more ways to have an impact, even if youre not a client, Sellars says, noting the clinics have started work on guides and how to documents for students that will be offered on the clinics websites.
The clinics have been successful teaching and learning labs for both MIT and BU students, and have helped our students advance their passion for innovation and entrepreneurship, says Mark DiVincenzo, vice president and general counsel at MIT. The issues have been varied, cutting edge in many ways, allowing BU students to assist MIT students in projects that are [impacting] or will impact the world.
This article was adapted from an MIT News Office story.
View post:
BU and MIT Renew Partnership on Technology Law - BU Today
- Technology Synonyms, Technology Antonyms | Thesaurus.com - January 7th, 2017 [January 7th, 2017]
- Information technology - Wikipedia - January 7th, 2017 [January 7th, 2017]
- Technology and Electronics Reviews - USATODAY.com - January 7th, 2017 [January 7th, 2017]
- Technology Forum - reddit.com - January 7th, 2017 [January 7th, 2017]
- Technology: Industries: PwC - January 22nd, 2017 [January 22nd, 2017]
- National Education Technology Plan - Office of Educational ... - January 22nd, 2017 [January 22nd, 2017]
- Technology News - The New York Times - January 24th, 2017 [January 24th, 2017]
- Computer Business Review - Computer Business Review - January 24th, 2017 [January 24th, 2017]
- Technology - Pogue's Posts Blog - The New York Times - February 2nd, 2017 [February 2nd, 2017]
- What the Tech: Neuro-Bio Monitor Technology - KFDX - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Globalization failed too many people. Here's the technology that could help it work for everyone - Quartz - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Bill Nye forecasts next 50 years, says we're at a technological crossroad - Digital Trends - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Interview with Matt Nix about his new Fox show APB. - Slate - Slate Magazine - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- In This Year's Super Bowl Of Technology, Intel Led The Way With A Sky Full Of Drones - Forbes - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Learning From Last Year: Technology Funding Outlooks For 2017 - Forbes - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Ossia hires new CEO to help commercialize its wireless charging technology - GeekWire - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Microsoft's AI group debuts customizable speech-to-text technology, rapidly expanding 'cognitive services' for ... - GeekWire - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- A flare for self-destruction: How technology is the means, not the cause, of our demise - National Post - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Broadcaster dangles new technology for Winter Olympics - Reuters - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- These Four Black Women Inventors Reimagined the Technology of the Home - Smithsonian - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- How 3D and Self-Design Will Change Technology - Huffington Post - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Factory Boss Says Fishing Technology Could Improve Controversial US Border Wall - Voice of America - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Republicans Aim to Kill Election Technology Standards Agency - Gizmodo - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Solutions replace technology as the focus at ISE 2017 - Installation International - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Five Rules That Define The Technology Innovator - Forbes - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Three Ways That Digital Technology Can Help Chemical Producers - Forbes - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Cinematographers Deploy Innovative Technology to Create Better Images - Variety - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- How Technology Transforms Dreamers Into Economic Powerhouses - Forbes - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Coming technology will likely destroy millions of jobs. Is Trump ready? - Washington Post - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Mysterious $5 Billion Biotech Moderna Hit With Legal Setback Related To Key Technology - Forbes - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Berlinale: Jury Talks Up Art But Politics and Technology Enter Discussion - Variety - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Opinion: Harry Boxer's stocks to watch: biotechnology and technology - MarketWatch - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Nasdaq plans venture arm to invest in financial technology: sources - Reuters - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- A modern-day Rosie the Riveter campaign: Women in technology - The Hill (blog) - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- A growing concern: Technology and transportation - Florida Today - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Top 10 Mobility Technologies Market by Technology & Geography - Global Forecast to 2022 - Yahoo Finance - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Volvo melds technology and luxury in the XC90 T8 hybrid - Engadget - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- CEFC warns against risky investment in 'clean coal' technology - The Guardian - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Scientist calls for industrial scale-up of greenhouse gas-eating microbe technology in UK - Phys.Org - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Software company introduces game-changing technology for Michigan Realtors - HousingWire - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- New laser technology enables more sensitive gravitational-wave detectors - Phys.Org - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Why Quotient Technology Inc. Stock Surged 21% Higher on Friday - Fox Business - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- How Technology Is Improving Influencer Marketing (And Can Help Improve Your Brand) - Forbes - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Hands-on: EVGA's sensor-laden iCX technology revolutionizes ... - PCWorld - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- New Ground Technology uses digital graphics on turf - Golf Channel - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Facing State System review, Cal U to emphasize science and technology - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- International Game Technology: A Lottery Bet That's Paying Off - Barron's - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Our seas have become a plastic graveyard - but can technology turn the tide? - Telegraph.co.uk - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Technology identifying fastest checkout lanes comes to metro - KCCI Des Moines - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- This Technology Could Be a Game-Changer for the Marijuana Industry - Fox Business - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Editorial: Higher education and technology are job creators, so why is the governor cutting their funding? - STLtoday.com - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- BLAEDC: Entrepreneurs find a technology-friendly home in the Brainerd lakes area - Brainerd Dispatch - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Small cell technology is large endeavor for state - Crain's Cleveland Business - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Eye tracking technology will change these 4 domains - The Next Web - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- The technology fixing Britain's parking problem - The Independent - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Tim Cook: Augmented Reality is as big of a technology as the smartphone - BGR - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- How technology is encouraging society to be stupid - The Next Web - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- IBM Adds Voice Help to Cybercrime-Fighting Watson-Powered Weaponry - Campus Technology - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Market Higher As 4 Key Steel, Technology Stocks Top Buy Points - Investor's Business Daily - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- A look at North Korea's missile launches and technology - ABC News - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- The CFO Imperative: Next-Gen Technology Drives Cost Optimization - Knowledge@Wharton - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Technology puts 'touch' into long-distance relationships - Phys.Org - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- A New Angel Investing Platform Connects Deep Technology And Science Startups With Capital - Forbes - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Formula 1 now capable of 'internet' broadcasts with new technology - autosport.com - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- How dangerous is technology? - OUPblog (blog) - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- Apple's Eddy Cue says technology companies have a responsibility to combat fake news - Recode - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- Valentine's day: what's your secret technology crush? - Naked Security - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- Parents and technology How much is too much? - WGBA-TV - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- Is Magic Leap Lying About Its Acid Trip Technology? - Vanity Fair - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- BYU-Idaho dedicates and showcases new Science and Technology Center - LocalNews8.com - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Even Indian technology entrepreneurs think they are living in a ... - Quartz - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- 3 tips for regulating our kids' technology use - The Herald-Times (subscription) - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Don Cunningham column: Technology giveth, and it taketh away - Allentown Morning Call - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Warren Buffett's Increasing Passion For Apple And Technology - Forbes - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- DNA technology gives new face to decade-old cold case - The San Diego Union-Tribune - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Can Technology Really Solve China's Healthcare Crisis? - Forbes - Forbes - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- Emerging technology is keyword: Demand for experts in robotics & big data up 50% - Economic Times - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- Five technologies that will change how we live - Financial Times - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- Football League agrees to use goalline technology in Championship - The Guardian - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- Telecom operators navigate three technology transformation options - TechTarget - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]