Free Legal Services for Startups

The Startup Legal Garage at UC Hastings is a selective program that offers free legal services to early stage technology and biotech companies. These free legal services are worth an estimated $15,000 to $30,000 to an early stage company and are performed by top UC Hastings law students working under the supervision of attorneys from prominent law firms, such as Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Orrick, Cooley, and Perkins Coie. We are currently accepting applications for our next session, which will run from August 20th through November 20th.

Our program is divided into two modules: Corporate and Patent. In the Corporate Module, the student/lawyer teams handle a wide variety of matters including entity formation, intellectual property matters and strategy (trademark and copyright), capitalization tables, and basic contract and personnel issues. On the Patent side, we focus exclusively on patent landscape surveys. Past clients have come from a variety of industries, including biotech, medical devices, finance, mobile services, payments, gaming, identity protection, bitcoin and fashion.

You can learn more about our program here: https://www.startuplegalgarage.org/ and apply here: https://www.startuplegalgarage.org/applications/

Applicants need to have less than $1 million in funding or pre-Series A and a strong tech or biotech component to their business model. They must also be past the “wet-napkin” stage; i.e. have a beta, an MVP, or a product already in market, and be ready to commit time to their legal needs.

Applications will close on August 3rd at 5pm. We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis as they come in and will begin interviewing founders in late July. Accepted startups will be assigned to projects by the end of August. Have any questions? Feel free to email us at startuplegalgarage@uchastings.edu.