In January, approximately 40 selected LL.M. students at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) will start providing free legal and regulatory advisory services to early-stage, start-up companies, primarily in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector. As part of the recently launched qLegal program at QMUL, the focus of these internships will be on helping tech start-ups address a range of challenging intellectual property management issues.
The project will kickoff at Google's headquarters in London in January.
The interns are currently receiving training from both legal professionals from collaborating law firm and QMUL academics, whom will also supervise the internships. Among the participating law firms are Mills & Reeve, a major UK law firm with extensive experience of working with start-ups and spin-outs, and Kilburn & Strode, a specialist intellectual property law firm.
The Centre for Commercial Law Studies within QMUL's School of Law is the coordinator of iLINC, a European Network of legal incubators at leading law schools including the universities of Amsterdam, Hamburg and Leuven (as core network partners) and over ten further universities (as active partners within a broader network of European law schools). The iLINC Network is further enhanced through the direct involvement of the 'Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic' (BLIP) from Brooklyn Law School in New York.
Funding for this project has been provided by the European Commission’s FP7 program.
QMUL will also be hosting a virtual open day on December 11 for prospective students interested in any of QMUL's postgraduate law programs. QMUL administrators and academics will be available to answer questions.
For more information, please visit the Virtual Open Day website.
