Day 69: Bring on the Shark Jokes

Photo by Karen Neri on Unsplash

My class on how to think like an entrepreneur - for lawyers - is a go for spring 2024!

This would be a 101-type of class in colleges and schools of entrepreneurship, but so far I’ve been unable to find a class like it at any other law school. Law schools that advertise entrepreneurship programs are usually talking about providing traditional legal services to entrepreneurs, or sometimes working entrepreneurially in public or private sector leadership roles.

This class is different - its goal is to get law students and lawyers to be entrepreneurs. Because it may take a lawyer’s perspective to understand where the “pain points” are for people in accessing legal services, and finding creative ways to solve them.

naming convention

I’m struggling to figure out how to describe the class to students, though.

If I say “it’s a class about entrepreneurship for lawyers,” they think about the more conventional Entrepreneurship Law courses - transactional lawyering focused on supporting entrepreneurs.

I’ve tried “The Entrepreneurship Method for Lawyers,” which is a closer description, but it’s a mouthful and won’t fit on the little 1-hour block on the spring course schedule grid.

Today as Immigration law Clinic class was beginning, the students and I were talking about our favorite reality TV shows. I mentioned Shark Tank, which got a lot of votes from the students too. Then I remembered the class.

“I’m teaching a ‘Shark Tank’ class!” I said.

This got an immediate reaction: What?!? Where?!? When?!?

I told them it would be a 1-credit, pass/fail class next semester. The goal is to teach law students the mindset and method that the entrepreneurs who go on Shark Tank use.

“Will we pitch?” one student asked.

“Yes!” They were enthusiastic.

My only problem, I told them, was what to call this novel class so that students would know what it’s about.

“Can you just call it ‘The Shark Tank Class’?” someone wondered. “That’s really what it is.” But others pointed out that trademark infringement would throw a wet blanket on that (otherwise perfect) plan.

“It has some stupid name now, and I changed it to something else that’s also stupid,” I said. “What should I call it?”

“ How about some play on that? Fish Tank?”

“Shark Lawyers?” I can hear the lawyer jokes already. (Not that they aren’t funny.)

That Which We Call a Rose

Well, I still don’t have a name for it. But I do have quite a bit of interest from law students, which I’m excited about. I hope to have a class so big that it becomes a challenge to design the exercises and feedback to get everyone from Zero to Pitch in fourteen weeks.

It will be fun to do something different in law school - something that builds skills for the post-AI law market. Mostly, I’m excited to see what happens when law students start thinking like entrepreneurs. There are a million aspects of legal services that are overdue for disruption - and who better to do the disrupting than lawyers themselves?