Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Establishes Teaching Fellowship for Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic at Stanford Law School

Business Wire, March 28, 2007

Orrick Commits $250,000 to Fund Teaching Fellow for the School's New Clinic

STANFORD, Calif. -- Stanford Law School today announced the establishment of the Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe Fellowship for a Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic at Stanford Law School.

Orrick has committed $250,000 to support a teaching fellowship for five years for the law school's newest clinic, which will provide students with opportunities to work with not-for-profit entities and micro-businesses in a way that provides great value to clients and allows the students a practical opportunity to develop their legal skills.

The Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic is now one of ten clinics that operate within the umbrella clinical education program, the Stanford Legal Clinic. It is expected to launch in fall 2007, following the appointment of a clinic director and the Orrick Teaching Fellow.

Clinical education at Stanford Law School provides in-depth, hands-on learning opportunities that prepare students for real-world legal practice, and it helps instill in students a fundamental, lifetime commitment to public service and pro bono activities. By teaching students how to practice as general counsel within the context of serving non profits, the clinic provides both legal services to nonprofits and closely supervised clinical training to students that they can apply to both nonprofit and for-profit settings.

Under the supervision of a clinic director and the Orrick Teaching Fellow, students in the Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic will help form not-for-profit entities, advise clients on corporate governance matters, work on corporate disclosures, and provide general counsel services to the clinic's clients. In addition to teaching skills in not-for-profit representation, the clinic will enable students to take an entrepreneurial approach to social problems by engaging in activities that will benefit society and generate economic growth as well. These activities could range from public/private partnerships funded initially through charitable gifts to arranging micro-loans for cooperatives.

Professor Larry Marshall, who serves as the David and Stephanie Mills Director of Clinical Education, and Associate Dean for Public Service and Clinical Education, explained that, "Stanford has a wide array of clinical opportunities in the litigation context, but this will be our first explicitly transactional program. Students pursuing corporate practice careers benefit greatly from the reflective, highly supervised hands-on training that is the hallmark of our clinical program. This new clinic will also drive home the message that public service and pro bono practice takes place in many arenas--in the boardroom as well as the courtroom."

The Orrick gift to the Stanford Legal Clinic is the first of its kind for the law school and is a natural extension of Orrick's significant corporate practice and the firm's tradition of pro bono service. Orrick is nationally known for the caliber of its transactional practice (areas such as public finance, structured finance, capital markets, emerging companies, and mergers and acquisitions). Orrick is also recognized for its pro bono tradition, providing free legal services on matters ranging from transactional work for nonprofits, to assisting nonprofit organizations that serve underdeveloped countries. Among other things, Orrick administers a $1.8 million micro-financing operation, which provides loans to small startup businesses in developing nations such as Guatemala and Nicaragua that would otherwise not qualify for traditional financing through banks and other lending institutions.

"Orrick's transactional expertise, community responsibility commitment, and pro bono program align perfectly with the focus and goals of the Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic at Stanford Law School," said Steve Graham, Managing Director of Corporate Practices for Orrick. "We are happy to support the teaching fellow for this new clinic, and we are excited about the community work that the clinic will do while helping students develop skills in transactional practice areas."

"We are deeply grateful to Orrick for this important gift," Stanford's Marshall said. "This is a true win-win. Our students are being prepared to be thoughtful, skilled and ethical lawyers at the same time as nonprofit organizations and causes will benefit from high-quality legal services," he added.

The launch of the Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic and the establishment of the Orrick Herrington Sutcliffe Fellow are part of changes underway to Stanford Law School's second- and third-year curriculum--part of a comprehensive plan to transform the JD into a multidimensional degree program that combines the study of other disciplines with team-oriented, problem-solving techniques and expanded clinical training.

The school is modifying its curriculum based on the belief that the work of modern lawyers requires a new kind of legal education--one that is multidimensional and emphasizes problem solving, creativity, collaboration, and professional ethics in addition to a strong grasp of legal theory. A key part of preparing law students for the work they will do is an opportunity to work on real cases, with real clients, before graduation--while students can consult with trusted teachers whose job is to instruct and who can analyze student opinions and assess their work in an academic setting.