FAQ

Participation in the BLC is comprised of a few different elements:

1. Seminar. Each week, all BLC students meet as a group for a weekly seminar. Seminar topics may include drafting, client communications, and professional responsibility, among others. In addition, the seminar devotes time to discussing student-client issues in a “case rounds” format. 
2. Client Work. Each BLC student is assigned 3-6 client matters throughout the semester. Client work is the largest time component of BLC participation (on average, 10 hours per week) and the majority of this work is conducted in a dedicated student workspace, located in the Bank of America building in downtown Athens. 
3. Supervisory Meetings. Each BLC student has a regularly scheduled weekly supervisory meeting with the BLC faculty to discuss progress on client work. The meetings offer students opportunities to receive substantive feedback on submitted work product, discuss roadblocks encountered and pathways forward, explore ethical considerations, and identify client management issues.
4. Outreach and Education. Each semester, BLC students may provide presentations on specific substantive legal topics to fellow law students, or to groups of entrepreneurs affiliated with the university or a community group. 

The seminar time is not set in advance or published in the course schedule. Once the application period for any given semester of the BLC is completed, and a roster of students is selected, we will work together to select a seminar time that accommodates our specific group. 

The services page of this website gives an overview of the types of projects you might work on, although there is a lot of variety semester-to-semester. When possible, we will accommodate specific interests (e.g. intellectual property or entertainment law) when assigning client work so be sure to speak up about your interests.  

While all client work is performed under the close supervision of a licensed attorney, BLC students assume primary responsibility for client communication and for the completion of work product. As an BLC student you will conduct interviews, arrange meetings and conference calls, identify legal issues, plan strategy, conduct research, and draft and revise work product. 

Students are not expected or required to have specific pre-existing substantive legal knowledge regarding the matters they will complete. The supervising attorney will provide initial information and instruction, and then will supply multiple rounds of direction and feedback before ultimately signing off on each work product.

The BLC is a 4 unit course. Over the course of the semester you will work a minimum of 140 hours, which you will track in our case management software. We typically schedule these at the rate of 10 hours per week for the 14 weeks of instruction, although some weeks may contain slightly fewer or slightly more hours

You can fill out a contact form here. Please note that the BLC operates on the academic calendar and during spring and fall semesters only, so you may experience a lag in hearing back from us particularly in the summer months. 

There is not one method we use for choosing clients. Because the BLC is an academic program, we are generally looking for a mix of different types of work that provides a variety of experiences to the students enrolled in the BLC, and that provides a valuable service to entrepreneurs, small businesses and nonprofits. We also select projects that work with the timeline of our supervisory review process, so we can rarely take on a project that, for example, needs to be completed in the same week. Because the demand for our services outweighs our ability to supply them we unfortunately are not able to accept all clients who apply. 

If you are selected as a client, a team of law students will reach out to set up an initial interview. During this interview they will get a better sense of your legal needs. After this meeting they will meet with a supervising attorney to determine how we can help. They will follow up with an engagement letter that clarifies the scope of the project, and then they will get to work! There are typically one to two additional meetings conducted to answer additional questions and to deliver the final work products and answer any questions.

All work completed by the BLC is ultimately signed off on by a licensed attorney. The practice of law is highly regulated, and law students are not permitted to engage in the practice of law on their own. However, this is an educational program, so students do most of the work. Your point of contact will be with law students, and they will take the lead on drafting all work products. The students will meet regularly with a supervising attorney; every work product they produce will be subjected to multiple rounds of comment and revision with a supervising attorney; and the work product a client receives has been approved by an attorney.

No. The BLC accepts clients from anywhere in the state of Georgia, and you do not need to be affiliated with UGA.

No! The BLC is glad to work with you at the earliest stages of your project.