Yesterday, students in Entrepreneurship for Lawyers delivered their final “pitches” of the projects they’d worked on in class all semester.

• We heard from an AI platform that gives insurance adjusters and civil defense lawyers a data-based valuation of their claims.

• We heard from a company that combines a nicotine pouch with an energy drink for blue-collar workers or anyone who needs to get their focus and energy in a jiffy.

• We heard from a subscription-based service that brings music education to early childhood.

• And we sampled some delicious prototypes from a future bakery for Fairmont, a West Virginia community that lacks one.

Building the entrepreneurship ecosystem, One Innovator at a Time

For this short introductory course, the students didn’t compete. Few plan to launch these businesses now while in law school, although some might do so in the future.

But everyone who learns the method and mindset of innovation and commercialization may be West Virginia’s or the legal profession’s next creative entrepreneur.

The West Virginia Entrepreneurship Ecosystem currently has $72 million to invest in promising new ventures in the state. All a budding entrepreneur has to do is contact any of the incubation, lending, or investment professionals in the Ecosystem, and they will make sure that entrepreneur finds the resources they need to develop and launch their idea.

Students in Entrepreneurship for Lawyers now have several contacts they can reach out to, now or someday, when they’re ready to make their innovations a reality.

What the state needs most is people with the method and mindset of the entrepreneur. In Entrepreneurship for Lawyers, we’re building that community, one innovator at a time.