Whenever I tell people I’m teaching a class on lawyers as entrepreneurs, they assume I’m teaching “entrepreneurship law.”

I’m not — not even close. “Entrepreneurship law” means using traditional legal skills to represent entrepreneurs. Students in entrepreneurship law learn things like how to recommend and create new business entities; how to protect intellectual property rights; and how to identify special funding programs or tax incentives for new businesses.

All great skills. Many lawyers love representing entrepreneurs, facilitating the creation of innovative new ventures.

That’s not what I teach. My class — “lawyers as entrepreneurs” — focuses on the mindset and method of innovating and launching new business ventures. Entrepreneurship scholars have demonstrated that entrepreneurship isn’t just a magic wand that some people possess. It’s a skill and a method even a lawyer can learn.

Lawyers as Entrepreneurs in the age of AI

Why should the lawyer-as-entrepreneur be such an unfathomable idea? Yes, lawyers have been associated with entrepreneurship on the support side for a long time. I understand the confusion.

But lawyers run businesses too. And lawyers are intimately familiar with something in society that always needs improvement: the justice system. Why not train lawyers in the tools that creative people have honed to improve other products and institutions? Why shouldn’t that proven mindset be employed to improve something that matters as much as justice?

Besides, even the conventional business practices of lawyers are bound to change dramatically in the coming years. AI will free up lawyers from what they’ve traditionally done — processing information. With all that free time, shouldn’t lawyers be learning to do something that computers won’t be able to do any time soon — imagine a better world and use proven techniques to bring it to fruition?

Law Student as Entrepreneur

So far, I still have not found another law school teaching “lawyers as entrepreneurs.” Several law schools advertise an “entrepreneurship for lawyers” program, but when I explore their course offerings and extracurricular programs (at least online), they really seem to be teaching lawyers to support entrepreneurs. While students may get some education about tools like business models and balance sheets, those are more the material of schools of business, not schools of entrepreneurship. (Yes, they’re completely different.)

I’m thinking of writing a law review article about the “law student as entrepreneur.” Unless I actually do a survey of law schools, I don’t think I’ll have any other way to identify who else is teaching the method and mindset of entrepreneurship to law students.

The justice system needs to change. The legal profession will change. Why not consciously equip the next generation of lawyers with the tools that successful entrepreneurs use to change the world?