Innovation Practice Institute

Overview

The Innovation Practice Institute (IPI) is a first-of-its-kind collaboration among a law school, the practicing bar, and local innovators and entrepreneurs.  The IPI re-imagines how the legal profession can advance regional economic development and puts that into practice with cutting edge research, new classroom models, hands-on mentoring of law students, and community engagement.  The product will be a class of new lawyers who are uniquely positioned to participate in 21st century innovation.

Executive Summary

Innovation is critical to our global future; and law and lawyers are critical to innovation.  Innovators and creators need all kinds of resources to bring their insights to productive fruition – from protection from competition, to financing, employees, and operating space.  Lawyers are uniquely positioned to design and implement solutions to all of those challenges, and to do so in an efficient one-stop shop. 

The Innovation Practice Institute (IPI) trains lawyers to work with innovators and to think as innovators.  The IPI develops educational programs, including course offerings, live client opportunities, and academic symposia and conferences that build and strengthen ties between law students, the practicing bar and innovation communities across the Pittsburgh region.

IPI programs are designed to do three things.  First, the IPI prepares law students to succeed in a rapidly-evolving marketplace for lawyers and legal services, by learning to effectively serve both the broad needs of entrepreneurs and the region’s innovation communities and the advancing the interests of innovation ecologies more broadly.  Second, the IPI offers a venue and a platform for the development of a flourishing sector of practicing lawyers who are committed to and contribute significantly to the success of an innovation-based economy.  Third, IPI programs provide innovators and entrepreneurs with quality, cost-effective legal services and education.