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Eric Gouvin says that foryears now, law students atschools across the country

have been engaged in what isknown as “experiential learning,”or what amounts to learning bydoing.

The concept has provided aneffective bridge between the class-room and the courtroom, saidGouvin, a professor of Law atWestern New England Collegeand associate dean ofAdministration, Alumni, andCareer Services, who noted thatpracticing law is much differentthan reading about it in a book.

But historically, the vastmajority of experiential learningprograms have involved litigation— practical experience arguing acase before a judge or jury — andGouvin, a business law specialist,has long desired a clinical formatthat would provide his studentswith practical experience in deal-ing with the myriad aspects of thatbroad area of the law.

And he wanted to do it withoutstepping on the toes of thoselawyers already working for a liv-ing.

After exploring and ultimatelyrejecting a number of options,Gouvin found what he considers aperfect laboratory for his students— the business incubators in theSpringfield Enterprise Center(SEC) at Springfield TechnicalCommunity College.

The SEC has two incubators:

one for students, and the other for‘graduates,’ entrepreneurs whohave established businesses andare engaged in taking them to thenext level. The common denomi-nator in both facilities is a group ofaspiring individuals who coulduse some help from the legal pro-fession — and often don’t have thewherewithal to pay for it.

“It’s a captive audience in away,” Gouvin said of the tenantmix in the SEC’s incubators,adding that the program he hascreated is the hands-on aspect of aclass titled Small Business Clinic.The course, which also includesreading and lectures from Gouvinand a host of area business leadersand lawyers, is a unique hybrid(believed to the school’s first) thatinvolves students in WNEC’s

schools of Law and Business, whoprovide a wide range of services,free of charge, to SEC tenants.

MBA candidates provide serv-ices that include accounting, taxplanning, and business valuation,while the law students becomeinvolved in everything fromemployee handbooks to choosinga business classification, protec-tion of intellectual property tosecuring a patent.

Deborah King, director of thebusiness incubator, says the collab-orative with WNEC provides aeffective complement to the con-sultative services already providedby the staff at the SEC and a 35-member advisory board. She saidthe SEC was created to providefledgling companies with the tech-nical support needed to survive

the rugged first years in business.“Our tenants have to do a lot

of bootstrapping,” said King.“That’s why this program worksso well. Most of the tenants don’thave the ability to pay for legalservices, but they really needthem. We have some lawyers onthe advisory board, and they andothers provide some basic legaladvice. But to have some second-and third-year law students work-ing with you for an entire semester— that’s a tremendous asset.”

For the students, the clinic pro-vides an opportunity to go beyondwhat’s in the textbook, and also togain valuable experience workingfor a client — something one can’tdo in a classroom.

“Experiencing the challengesand joys of working with a client iswhat makes lawyering real,” saidAmy Munnings, who took theclass last spring, graduated fromWNEC Law in May, and now hasa date with the bar exam. “That’swhat made the clinic so valuablefor me.”

Case in PointIn his course outline, Gouvin

sends a direct message to his stu-dents about what they’re upagainst in Small Business Clinic.“This course actually involves youin practicing law,” he writes. “It isvery serious stuff, and it willdemand a lot of time and effort.”

He also describes the course asa bridge between law school and alaw practice. In the latter setting,he told BusinessWest, lawyers con-tinue the process of teachingthemselves. And he wants them tobegin getting practice doing justthat as they provide a host of serv-ices to the business owners in theSEC.

Referring to business lawyers— good ones, anyway — as “prob-lem solvers,” Gouvin said they arepart of a team of professionals

Practical LessonsWNEC Students, Budding Entrepreneurs Help Each Other

Reach Their PotentialBy GEORGE O’BRIEN

Eric Gouvin and Debbie King say the unique collaborative effort betweenWNEC and the Springfield Enterprise Center provides real-world experi-ence for law students and important legal help for budding entrepreneurs.

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A unique program involvingstudents at Western NewEngland College School ofLaw and entrepreneurs inthe Springfield EnterpriseCenter is providing valu-able, real-life lessons for theformer, and much-needed legal assis-tance for the latter.

that business owners need to maketheir ventures successful. Sensingthat young lawyers could becomebetter problem solvers with morepractical experience in the trench-es, he sought a way to provide thathands-on work.

“When I was in law school, Iknew I wanted to be a businesslawyer, but I knew there were noopportunities for people with thatorientation to learn by doing.When I became a law professor, Isaid, ‘why not?’”

His first endeavor was a simu-lation course, one that created ahypothetical business and dealtwith its hypothetical problems.But he ultimately decided thiswasn’t real enough. His next incli-nation was to approach areamicrolenders to see if his studentscould act as their lawyers in someof the deals they made. Thelenders were enthusiastic, butGouvin was worried that he wouldnot have a predictable flow ofcases.

Eventually, Gouvin discussedthe matter with Russell Denver,president of the AffiliatedChambers of of Commerce ofGreater Springfield, who eventu-ally put him touch with ThomasGoodrow, vice president ofEconomic and BusinessDevelopment at STCC. The twoput the wheels in motion for a pro-gram that both organizations arecalling a classic win-win.

The primary beneficiaries arethe tenants in the incubators, saidKing, noting that businesses in theSEC have been involved in othercollaboratives, including one withSpringfield College that involvesstudents in its marketing pro-gram. The collaborative with thetwo schools at WNEC — Law andBusiness — takes the practicaland technical assistance beingoffered to SEC tenants to a higherplane, she said.

There are now nine businessesin the SEC, said King, and theycross a number of business sec-tors. There are several technolo-gy-oriented companies, a firmselling Russian herbs, another

that makes customized umbrellas,and a recent addition that haspatented a new kind of skate-board wheel.

Each tenant has some specificneeds, she said, but there aremany legal matters common to allsmall businesses, said King, notingthat businesses have been provid-ed with assistance in a number ofareas, particularly contracts,employment law issues such asbenefits and policies, and workwith patents and copyrights.

When first offered a year ago,the clinic involved only entrepre-neurs in the student incubator,said King, adding that for thissemester, two companies —Banana Publishing and C2CCommunications — located in thelarger business incubator wereadded to provide a broader rangeof work to students and assistother, more established businesses.

Firm GraspDescribing his role with the

class, Gouvin said he acts essen-tially as a partner in each of the“law firms” set up for the course.

The six students are dividedinto three firms, he explained, andeach company is assigned twobusinesses in the SEC. For the 15weeks of the spring semester, thestudents act essentially as legalcounsel for the businesses to whichthey are assigned.

Because students are not actu-ally lawyers, their work must bereviewed and approved by anindividual who is licensed — inthis case, Gouvin — before it canbe considered “client-ready.”

The process begins with anintroductory meeting, at whichthe students and business ownersare thoroughly versed about whateach can expect from the other.Individual interviews are thenconducted between firms andtheir clients, said Gouvin, in amanner similar to the way itwould happen if the companies inquestion were paying for the serv-ices.

“Any time a business begins arelationship with a lawyer or firm,

there is a meeting to familiarizethe lawyer with the company, itsgoals, and what its short- andlong-term needs are,” heexplained, adding that the clinic ispremised on the idea that businesslawyers must not only master thelegal knowledge and analysis nec-essary for competent perform-ance, but they must also under-stand the needs of their clients, theunderlying business, and entrepre-neurship in general.

After the initial meeting —which is conducted in the SEC’sDeliso Videoconferencing Centerand reviewed by Gouvin — stu-dents then get to work on specificprojects assigned by the clients.Most of the issues to be raised willbe typical of what actual lawyerssee from clients in the start-upphase of their enterprise, saidGouvin. These include choice-of-entity decisions, employment mat-ters, intellectual property issues,and review of contracts for thesale of goods and services.

At Banana Publishing Inc.(BPI), a now three-year-old enter-prise, there is a long list of projectsalready underway, said companyPresident Stephen Cosenke, whotold BusinessWest that by semes-ter’s end, he expects that his busi-ness will have received some valu-able service, and the students willhave gained some invaluableexperience.

The company, which publishesphone books that cross theMassachusetts/ Connecticut bor-der, has assigned its students thetask of reviewing copyright issues,especially those pertaining to pho-tographs BPI may want to use onits covers. Also, the company hasrequested a thorough review of itsemployee manual to make surethat it is current with the manychanges in employment law, and ithas also sought review of car-allowance policies and a profit-sharing proposal.

“I think this is a great pro-gram,” said Cosenke, noting thatthe company made use of aSpringfield law firm to handle themany business-formation issues to

arise, but has not sought legal assis-tance lately, preferring instead tofocus on the product and marketpenetration. “We just started a fewweeks ago, but I can already seethat this is going to benefit ourcompany and the students.”

Gouvin said that while the firstsemester of the program wentwell, he has already identifiedmany areas for improvement, andbelieves there will be more tweak-ing to maximize the experience forboth the students and their clients.

Part of that tweaking involvedsetting priorities for the work, sothat those firms who really neededlegal assistance — as opposed tohelp from the MBA students —were scheduled accordingly.

“Some of the people that did-n’t really need legal help we han-dled first anyway, so that was a lit-tle frustrating for my students,”Gouvin said of the first semester.“And with some of the people whoreally had some interesting issues,we didn’t get to them until theend, so we couldn’t really get themwhat they needed. So this spring,we did a little triage in a way.”

Final ExamStudents participating in the

collaborative do not get paid fortheir services, said Gouvin, butthey do keep track of their timeand submit bills — an exercisewhich actually benefits both par-ties.

“Law students should get inthe habit of keeping track of theirhours and understanding the busi-ness aspect of this profession,” hesaid. “Meanwhile, these businessowners should understand thatlegal services cost money — andthey’ll have to pay for them downthe road.” Those lessonsare among the many that thisunique program provides. AsGouvin said, the exercise amountsto learning by doing, and in thiscase that means both the buddingentrepreneur and the lawyer-in-waiting. ❖

George O’Brien can be reached atobrien@businesswest.com

Reprinted with permission, © 2004 by BusinessWest, Inc.1441 Main Street • Springfield, MA 01103 • 413-781-8600

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