Bloomberg Law Honors BLIP Clinic as Top Legal Innovator

Brooklyn Law School has been named as a top-10 finalist in Bloomberg Law’s inaugural Law School Innovation Program for the work of its Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy (BLIP), which represents startups in emerging businesses, helping them navigate what is often new legal terrain. 

Founded by Professor Jonathan Askin, BLIP is a student-run, full-service law firm for startups and entrepreneurs, enrolling upwards of 30 students each semester—which Askin believes makes it one of the largest, if not the largest clinic of its kind. Its hallmark: pursuing ventures and issues that existing law has not anticipated. 

“BLIP students learn the intricacies of representing startups in emerging businesses where few, if any, laws were designed to accommodate new ideas,” Askin said. Students also advocate on behalf of causes and businesses whose interests and concepts have otherwise not been represented in various legislative, regulatory, and judicial arenas. 

The clinic fills a training gap for law students in the ever-evolving technology field, Askin said. 

“Very few law firms or law schools have adequately trained attorneys to understand the full spectrum of procedural and substantive issues that will confront the tech-oriented lawyer and client,” Askin said. “BLIP is an effort to train this new generation of attorney who understands all the issues that might confront the tech entrepreneur in the digital world.”

During a typical semester, BLIP serves more than 50 clients, offering varying legal, business, and policy challenges across the spectrum of technology, Internet, media, and telecommunications issues that would confront a 21st-century technology-oriented law firm. 

BLIP provides both routine and first-impression legal support and business guidance to start-ups, including incorporations, contract drafting, Web documentation, intellectual property protection, government and other policy advocacy and litigation support. 

To date, BLIP has served more than 1,500 diverse clients over its 14-year history, creating by rough estimates more than $55 million in generated value and delivering more than 150,000 hours of legal work for clients.