Beginning in January 2025, Cornell Law School’s Entrepreneurship Law Clinic will expand from Ithaca, New York, to the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, allowing the school to provide a clinical offering in New York City for the first time.
Based at the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, David Reiss, professor and research director of the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law, will coteach Cornell Law School’s Entrepreneurship Clinic.
Reiss will also teach in Cornell Law and Cornell Tech’s program in Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship. Reiss joins Cornell from Brooklyn Law School, where he taught for more than 20 years and founded the Community Development Clinic.
“Training excellent 21st century lawyers require law schools to keep up with technological innovation while also maintaining a focus on lawyering fundamentals: research, writing and advocacy,” Reiss said. “Cornell Law School’s clinical program is keeping these two goals front and center.”
Celia Bigoness, clinical professor at the center, said more students will gain the hard legal skills of transactional lawyering along with the soft skills of managing long-term relationships with clients.
“Students will learn how to think from a business owner’s perspective, how to communicate about finance and risk management and how to hit the ground running when they begin their full-time practice as lawyers,” Bigoness said.
Through the clinic, law students provide pro-bono legal services to emerging businesses, entrepreneurs and startups in the Ithaca area under the guidance of faculty.
Established in 2018, the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic stands as the law school’s only transactional clinic, which means students gain hands-on legal experience in business.
In 2023 the law school received a donation from Franci Blassberg ’75, J.D. ’77, and Joseph Rice III, which helped establish and expand the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law.
