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SPEAKER 1: So looking out at the audience-- dark suit, necktie-- guess who the lawyer was on this team.
[LAUGHTER]
So the idea for a master's program in law, technology, and entrepreneurship actually originated about the same time as this project. So there is a real parallel, and it ties back into the crossdisciplinary nature of this particular project. You see it, as well, when you think about the ecosystem that exists around technology and entrepreneurship. So we often think about, and certainly lawyers think about, having a separate discipline from entrepreneurship, from technology, and technologists think the same.
It's driven by personalities. It's driven by training, a perspective on what makes the most sense when trying to get a deal off the ground. And the idea behind this program, really consistent with what you see with this ISS project, is to try to bring things together, to create a more crossdisciplinary process. This took me about 30 minutes, by the way, to do-- a crossdisciplinary process that ties law, technology, and entrepreneurship together.
And we're doing this by building off of the existing tech campus. So as you know, the new technology campus is currently housed in Google. It'll be in Roosevelt Island in the summer of 2017. The focus to date has been on business and technology, on entrepreneurship and technology. Beginning in the fall of this year-- quite frankly, we would have done this a year ago, but the reason it took us the additional year is New York state-- talk about laws and regulations-- New York State has an incredibly stringent process that they use in order to introduce new law programs.
So it took us an additional year. But we will be, in the fall of this year, launching this new program. There will be about anywhere from 8 to 12, but roughly 10, students on the tech campus who will be there specifically as the lawyers. This will be 8 to 10 out of about an entire class size of 200. You don't want too many lawyers, apparently. But over time, we do expect to increase.
So goals of the project-- so the idea here is to really train a new generation of lawyers to be interdisciplinary, to not focus simply on the law, but to also understand the other aspects of what goes into an innovative and entrepreneurial project. So of course we want them to make sure they know the laws, the regulations in the area, but more importantly, we're going to embed them into the venture-building process. So they will become a part of the tech campus in the same way that technologists and business people are today.
They have their own special skills, but they'll also be part of the creative process. I mentioned 8 to 10 students. It could be up to 12. You'd be amazed. The response to this program has been phenomenal. We've had about 250 applicants, give or take, for, again, about 10 spots. The downside to all this is that when they get to the point where we think they are likely prospects, I have to meet them, which was why I was a little late coming today because it's an hour-long interview for each person that we're considering.
But it does mean that when we end up with our 8 to 10 students, we think they will be very focused, very, very easy to integrate into the existing tech campus. We expect a lot of the graduates to go into law firms initially. Some of them will be entrepreneurs. Some of them may be in-house counsel. But we expect over time for them to become really the bulwark, a true pillar, certainly on the legal side, as the ecosystem for technology entrepreneurship continues to evolve in the New York City area.
In addition, we want the program itself to become a focal point. As many of you know, universities have had a substantial input, substantial influence on the way in which technology develops, in the way in which entrepreneurship develops around technology. And this is also true at the law. And so we want to develop not just simply standard forms, but a legal culture, if you will, that focuses on law as a means to enhance innovation as opposed to what happens in many cases, where law ends up actually getting ahead of, and potentially damaging, new developments.
So we'll start out in the Google headquarters, and we will eventually end up on Roosevelt Island. So it's kind of nice that the last of the three core programs-- at least the initial programs-- technology, entrepreneurship, and now law-- will end up being in the initial incubator, if you will, for Cornell Tech and Google. And we will then segue over onto Roosevelt Island in the fall of 2017.
Just to give you a general sense, this is our curriculum. And so the first part of the curriculum is very much simply the black letter law. And there, the idea is to engage students, make sure they have the basic legal skills to be really good at supporting technology and entrepreneurship. We're then going to go ahead and actually have them in classrooms with technologists and business people. It will be sort of the pedagogical version of this ISS project.
We're going to get them into the same room and be to think like, and work with, students from other disciplines. Now these first two buckets are sort of around in other universities. What makes us special is the third bucket, and that is where we're going to have the law students become embedded within the creative teams. And so if you look at, for example, law programs in and around the city as well as at Duke, there are a lot of clinics.
And in clinics, basically, lawyers act as lawyers. They have the clients come in. They will go ahead and hear what the issues are. They work with the clients in order to resolve the issues. What we're going to do is have our law students actually become part of the creative team. They will be the client. So you'll have a particular team with a technologist, an entrepreneur, and it'll also have a lawyer. In the fall, they're given what is called a challenge project, so Uber, or Bank of America, or General Motors.
At this point, you know, everyone is a technology company to some degree. They all have projects that they present to what basically become teams of students. The law students will be a part of this. In the spring, they have startup projects. And the idea is to get them to really understand what technologists are facing, what entrepreneurs are facing in the startup phase. In addition, we're going to group the law students into groups of teams of two or three. They will cover five or six teams as lawyers.
So they'll be very deep in one team-- part of the creative process-- and they will be the lawyers for five or six other teams. And the idea is to give them a broad spectrum on the legal issues, as well as to, again, very deeply understand the nature of the entrepreneurial technology, the innovative process that ultimately they will either become a part of or who will be their clients.
So we're very happy about this program. We're really excited. We have a good group of students now where we're actually still taking admission, so if any of you are lawyers and want to send in an application, please do so. But we're very close to actually firming up this first class.
Just to give you a sense of who's in the class, we have one person who graduated from Chicago Law School 10 years ago. He was a litigator. He said, you know, trial work not so interesting. He actually has a specialty in intellectual property. He wants to become a transactional guy. This guy is phenomenal. He could get a job almost anywhere. But he thinks this is a good bridge over.
We have another fellow. a Czech lawyer. He turned down a clerkship with the Czech Supreme Court to go ahead and do this program. Shocked me. I actually said, you're kidding me, right? But no, no. The only reason I found out about this is one of his recommenders is, in fact, on the Czech Supreme Court. And so it's a big deal. We have another person who was a researcher at Stanford, decided our program is better, so he's decided to come on our program as opposed to continuing the Stanford program.
So in any event, we're doing quite well. But the development of this ties very much back into the interdisciplinary nature of the ISS project itself, which is why it really has kind of tracked. So I think you've seen a lot of discussion today about some of the research projects, some of the collaboration among ISS members, but you also have seen some of the output come through sort of the pedagogical side, which is what you're seeing with this program. Anyways, thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Charles Whitehead, faculty fellow for the Institute for Social Sciences (ISS) collaborative project on Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, introduces Cornell's new Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship Program at the project's capstone event March 11, 2016. The project aimed to understand how novel ideas are created, developed, valued, and diffused, leading to ground-breaking changes in cultural, social, and economic interaction.
Founded in 2004, the Institute for the Social Sciences encourages collaborative research across the university on cutting-edge topics within the social sciences.
