Clinical Collaborations: Going Global to Advance Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

In the summer of 2012, transactional law clinics from three U.S. law schools: George Washington University; Georgetown University; and the University of Michigan launched a collaboration to serve a common client—Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization that supports close to 3,000 social entrepreneurs across 76 countries. While clinic collaborations within universities happen occasionally, clinic collaborations across universities are unusual. This essay focuses on the motivations, operations, lessons, and next steps of this cross-university, clinical collaboration aimed at advancing social entrepreneurship globally. Specifically, this essay examines why the collaboration was launched, how the collaboration is structured, what the collaboration offers clients and participating law students, how the collaboration has expanded the skills and knowledge of the three clinical directors who are participating in this collaboration, where this collaboration might go next, and finally, what others might learn from this experience when contemplating their own cross-university, clinical collaborations.