Taking law off campus

Perhaps some of the 47 people who were signed up turned the bike around and drove to the harbour pool instead of South Campus on this historically hot day in May where a new course, which pairs up master’s students from the Faculty of Law with Copenhagen entrepreneur companies.

They missed a cheerful presentation of the course, which is the first of its kind where the faculty will collaborate directly off-campus with Copenhagen start-ups and incubators for new companies that call themselves things like innovation hubs.

The implication is that Copenhagen’s oldest university is to pull its socks up, and no longer lag behind the Copenhagen Business School and the Technical University of Denmark DTU in terms of cooperation with business. UCPH law student should also “Dare to be bold”  – as it is formulated in a PowerPoint in the presentation.

About 30 people are Monday 14th May meeting in a bright conference room on South Campus. There are shirts in all shades of pastel blue in the mustard yellow Hay chairs.

A lawyer in the good year 2035

Alexandra Horváthová, who is responsible for the course, asks the room what it is that will be required of a good lawyer in 2025, 2035 or 2055. She replies – while the lawyer Michelle Obama appears on the whiteboard behind her – that the profession needs to change its mindset, and be able to foresee the unforeseeable if lawyers are to remain relevant for future companies.

She laughs a bit herself over all the buzzwords. But the message is: If future lawyers are to be successful, they need to qualify themselves in new areas: The new generations need to be able to think inter-sectionally, interdisciplinary and entrepreneurially, she says. And they need to do so already during the course of their studies.

Before the course starts in September, there are already up to 40 startups on board. They all want to work with students on practical realities and the legal challenges that they will encounter on the market.

“Someone kickass cool”

A guy called Anders from the startup Swipp Payments tells us that his company is a part of it, because business startups are so closely regulated that it is ‘kickass cool to get someone like you [a law student, ed.] on board the company.”

The course is set up so that students work with the legal ramifications of the set up and operation of the selected startup. They will provide legal advice in cooperation with business lawyers and they will receive close academic feedback along the way.

Associate Dean for Education Stine Jørgensen drops by, and praises the initiative of the course. She refers to entrepreneur ace Tommy Ahlers, who is now the new Minister for Higher Education and Science, and who studied law at UCPH.

Ahlers, who has previously chastised the UCPH law programme to be old-fashioned, should drop by soon. Because then he would learn that the Faculty today is a modern campus that interacts proactively with the surrounding community – and the the programme here shows it, says Stine Jørgensen.

And then there is a glass of prosecco for everyone.