Law-Meets-Science: leren adviseren in een multidisciplinaire simulatie

In de onlangs geopende Playground, aan de Universiteit Utrecht, oefenden studenten van verschillende masteropleidingen van rechtsgeleerdheid onlangs met het geven van juridisch advies aan andere masterstudenten die ideeën hadden voor start-ups in de life sciences en technologie. Het was de derde keer dat dit jaarlijkse "Law Meets Science"-evenement werd georganiseerd.

Deelnemers noemden de simulatie 'heel meeslepend, boeiend', de rechtenstudenten oefenden hun adviesvaardigheden en de wetenschapsstudenten kregen waardevolle juridische input voor hun start-ups. Het evenement draait om echte projecten, en biedt tegelijk een veilige ruimte voor studenten omdat beide partijen fouten mogen maken.

Dit artikel gaat verder in het Engels, de voertaal van het evenement.

Anne van Ewijk, Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship (at the Utrecht University School of Economics) teaches Science-Based Entrepreneurship at the Faculty of Science and is the organiser of this annual event. I'm very happy with how it turned out, this 3rd year around. Both parties, the law students and the sience-based entrepreneurship students, clearly benefitted from and enjoyed the event. Law Meets Science is a safe space to develop skills beyond traditional study, such as communicating with clients and working in a team of lawyers, all under the supervision of skilled professors. I hope this inspires more multi-disciplinary educational collaborations between faculties."

I hope this inspires more multi-disciplinary educational collaborations between faculties.

Participants and experiences

This year the participants were 52 students from the master's programme Science & Business Management and fourteen students from the School of Law. They came from various programmes such as Law & Technology in Europe, Intellectueel eigendomsrecht, innovatie en technologie, Law & Economics and the Legal Research master. Anne van Ewijk, Han Gulyás, Esther van Schagen and Bald de Vries facilitated and mentored the students

After the event, the law students shared their positive experiences in a so-called 'hot debrief'. "Clients often do not have everything thought out, and they learned through discussion. While it would also be satisfactory to advise on ideas that are further advanced, this did mean that we could help prevent potentially costly mistakes. As legal advisors, we can really act as moral gatekeepers, by outlining the ethical considerations underlying the law"

Some pratical learnings from the event, that law students reported, were for instance:

• Soften the blow of bad news, by introducing the reasoning behind it
• Refraining judgment of the start-up idea itself, but help develop it in conversation instead
• Identify motivations, finding out 'why’

Anne van Ewijk hopes to further develop this annual activity and is looking for ways to further embed it into the regular law curriculum, which would save the time-consuming effort of recruiting students.