Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center

Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center

The Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center (DPELC), is an academic center at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.  With the prevalence of entrepreneurship in business and law around the country, lawyers need to be prepared both to serve entrepreneurs as clients and to approach legal problems in a more entrepreneurial manner. 

The DPELC, originally founded as the Small Business Opportunity Center more than 20 years ago, is one of the first comprehensive programs in the United States to provide intensive, hands-on training for students who want to be transactional lawyers or founders of start-up companies. Since that time, the DPELC clinical program has served hundreds of entrepreneurs while educating future lawyers about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking through a variety of traditional, clinical, and simulation-based course offerings, a marquee annual conference, a speaker series, a transactional law competition, and workshops and outreach efforts in the entrepreneurship community.

The DPELC clinic has a national reach, serving clients in both California and Illinois, and serves as a model for similar programs developed in law schools across the country.