Entrepreneurship Clinic Sets the Stage for Innovative Ventures | Yale Law School
Frances Pollock is a composer by training and businessperson by practice. She’s not a lawyer, but after working with a Yale Law School student legal clinic, she has started to think like one.
“I always joke that I feel like I’ve been to law school because I feel very confident now in being able to read a contract,” she said. “And a lot of that is just exposure to working with the students.”
Pollock, a Yale School of Music student and the founder of ventures that aim to transform investment in the arts, is a longtime client of the Law School’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Clinic. The clinic provides legal counsel to entrepreneurs on transactional issues that arise they establish and grow their businesses.
Since 2018, the clinic has advised some 75 clients, which have together gone on to raise more than $50 million for their ventures. Clients have included startups around the Northeast — including some in New Haven — in industries like biotech, health care, and climate tech. Some of the clinic’s current clients got their start at Yale, giving students on both sides of the client-clinic relationship an opportunity to learn from each other.
Clinical Associate Professor of Law Sven Riethmueller worked for 25 years in private practice before he came to Yale Law School to launch the clinic. In that time, he served as partner at two different international corporate law firms and as the global general counsel of a publicly traded life sciences company. He is careful to point out that transactional law is more than marking up documents and filing papers.
“The thing that makes a good lawyer on the transactional side is to be a good counselor,” he said. “And that’s what the students learn.”
The thing that makes a good lawyer on the transactional side is to be a good counselor. And that’s what the students learn.”
—Clinical Associate Professor Sven Riethmueller
To work with the clinic, clients’ ventures must have a positive impact on society, demonstrate a degree of innovation, and preferably be led by an entrepreneur or group whose background is unrepresented in the venture world, Riethmueller explained. Most of all, he added, clients must agree that students’ educational experience comes first. Clients willing to trade speed for a pace that accommodates learning receive high quality legal advice and a level of service they are unlikely to get at a law firm, according to Riethmueller.
“We have a very limited number of clients, and they’re each getting a lot of attention,” he said. “At the same time, the students really learn on these deals.”
Law takes the stage
Pollock said when she arrived at Yale to hone her craft as a composer, she knew little about business. But she was keenly interested in the idea of artists having ownership of and making money from their work. During the pandemic, she co-founded Midnight Oil Collective, a community of artists who raised funds together to produce their own work. Her ideas for a new investment model for the arts took off once she started making use of Yale’s resources for entrepreneurs like Tsai CITY, Yale Ventures, and the law clinic.
“If you’re at a university like Yale as a student, then you have access to some brilliant people,” she said. “I just started to look for opportunities to partner with people who might know the things that I didn’t know.”
The clinic helped Pollock and the collective legally establish MOC Spark, the first artist-run venture capital fund. Like funding pipelines in the tech world, this seed fund for screen and stage productions pools money from investors to finance startups. The fund invests in each “portfolio company” — the work of art — in exchange for 20% equity in the project. Creators own the remaining 80%.
The fund led to a second project with the clinic, MOC Innovations, a venture studio modeled after STEM startups. The studio aims to transform the way theatrical productions and films are incubated and launched. This investment model also addresses how artists make money when the initial work of art spins off other commercial products. Artists and contributors can benefit from their intellectual property the same way that creators in tech startups do.
A test case for the model is “The Bridge,” a musical with a score by Pollock and a book based on the true story of the woman who secretly engineered the Brooklyn Bridge. When songs from the show were performed at the Yale School of Music this fall, it was the culmination of Pollock’s graduate work: she completes her doctorate this spring. Just as significantly for the composer-turned-entrepreneur, the occasion was the debut of a new idea in business. Fittingly, Riethmueller and the clinic got a special mention at the performance.
“For me, Sven is as much a part of that night as any of the performers on stage,” Pollock said.
Emma Li ’26, a clinic student who works with Pollock, was also in the audience that night. Li is no stranger to the startup world, having founded an education tech startup before law school. But the business of art was new to her. Li was shocked to learn that for Broadway shows, producers might claim 70% of the profits. Clinic students were motivated by wanting to help artists have more skin in the game, Li said.
“Without this work, artists like Frances and her partners would get so little from such an amazing piece of work that they’re working so hard to put together,” she said.
Understanding the law behind the business
Madhav Lavakare was already years into developing the product that would launch his business when he arrived at Yale as an undergraduate. The idea for what became TranscribeGlass came about when Lavakare was in high school. His friend who was hard of hearing dropped out of school because it was so difficult to understand teachers and classmates. Inspired by his friend’s experience, Lavakare developed smart glasses that transcribe conversations and project them as subtitles onto the wearer’s lenses in real time.
As Lavakare and his business partner got ready to bring the glasses to market last year, they encountered a host of issues. They had to set up their business as a corporation, formulate terms of service and a privacy policy for the company website, and think about trademarks, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. All of these matters have been addressed since the venture became a clinic client this fall.
“We’d have been lost navigating these issues without the help of the EIC,” said Lavakare, who will work on the business full-time after he graduates this spring. “Beyond that, understanding strategic priorities for the business and how they could be beneficial from a legal aspect has been very important for us.”
While conducting preliminary trademark and regulatory research for TranscribeGlass, students had to keep up with new and evolving tech laws and regulations. Kaitlin Willardson ’26 said this aspect was challenging but noted that it is a common issue for tech startups.
Students also got to see how the company evolved as it neared its product launch in February.
“It was exciting to be there for such a foundational stage and to be able to offer advice that really shaped the company’s development,” Laura Bairett ’26 said.
Beyond legal help
Nick Callegari, an engineer, wants to bring down the cost to build housing while reducing the environmental impact of housing construction. His solution is a new type of 3D printer that uses sustainable materials to make structural walls for affordable housing. With this technology, housing can be built for fraction of the cost of traditional construction methods, according to Callegari.
Callegari developed his version of the 3D printer while at the Yale School of Management, from which he graduates this spring. He then worked with the clinic during the formation of his company, VeruStruct. The clinic drafted VeruStruct’s foundational documents, advised Callegari on strategy and business matters, and worked with him on intellectual property issues. Callegari said his conversations with students have helped him fine-tune the mission and vision for his business.
“Their guidance and mentorship have helped me grow into a founder that is comfortable navigating startup legal frameworks, hopping on calls with investors, and working through the less glamorous but critically important aspects of organizing and managing a team,” he said.
The company is working toward bringing its product to market over the next few years, after demonstrating the new technology’s capabilities. Callegari said the plan is to first print sections of load-bearing wall, then within 12 months of completing that step, print pilot houses of different architectural designs.
Sam Haddad ’26, one of the clinic students who worked with VeruStruct, said the “thrilling and high stakes” experience gave him a rare window into early-stage entrepreneurship.
Practical skills and an edge in the workplace
Some areas of practice the clinic offers are rarely taught in law school clinics, according to Riethmueller. For example, students facilitate intellectual property transactions, which may entail writing licensing agreements for patents and other technologies.
Recent law graduates usually learn on the job from more senior lawyers at a firm, but learning this way can have its limits. Partners generally don’t have time to give associates nuanced or detailed explanations of the logic behind how a document is structured, Riethmueller said.
In the clinic, students can learn without the pressures of the workplace under the watchful eye of Riethmueller and the clinic’s program manager and paralegal, Katherine Sadowski. They review students’ drafts of documents and give individual feedback.
Haddad recalled how his early attempts at legal documents were riddled with errors, before he knew that even getting small formatting details wrong could ruin a document.
“The EIC is where I have learned the most from my mistakes,” he said. “Now, I feel more confident in my ability to draft documents that fit my client’s vision and needs.”
Bairett knew the principles of contracts from studying them in the classroom. But when it came to actually writing one, she said, she barely knew where to start. Now she can capably write a contract and has developed an eye for detail. She thinks of the clinic as a practical companion to her contracts course.
Unlike litigation, there isn’t an adversary. Instead, with corporate law, you, your client, and your investors are working together towards a common goal.”
—Kaitlin Willardson ’26
“We’ve regularly needed to recall and apply important contracts topics like implied warranties, which has really cemented them for me,” she said.
Riethmueller said he wants students who take the clinic throughout their time in law school to gain experience beyond their years. He explained that former clinic students starting out at law firms after graduation have reported doing the work of lawyers two or three years into their careers. With clinic work under their belts, former clinic students in their first jobs may have better work assignments, more confidence in working on transactions, more control over their work schedules, and an overall more enjoyable practice of law, he said.
For Li, working in the clinic means getting a preview of what work life may look beyond a lawyer’s early years.
“Through drafting agreements and attending client strategy meetings with Sven, we are involved in and exposed to legal work at all levels — from junior associate all the way to partner,” Li said. “That’s been super valuable for me.”
Willardson said working with the clinic showed her the rewards of corporate legal work.
“Both you and your client want the company to succeed, so you end up having a really good working relationship,” she said. “Unlike litigation, there isn’t an adversary. Instead, with corporate law, you, your client, and your investors are working together towards a common goal.”
