San Francisco Immersion Program

The San Francisco Immersion Program (SFIP) is offered to JD and JD-MBA students interested in understanding the legal and business environment of growth-stage startup firms, venture-capital and private-equity firms, and established high-tech companies.

Students selected for the program learn from Pritzker and Kellogg faculty, local Bay Area alumni, and business and legal leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area. Students spend the first 10 weeks of the Spring semester in San Francisco taking classes at Northwestern's San Francisco location. The program offers both externship and non-externship options. Students with externships work two-to-three days a week in externships in legal departments of Bay-Area companies.

Courses

The San Francisco Immersion Program is an accredited curricular experience. Courses focus on the technology and entrepreneurship environment of San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley areas. Below are recent course offerings:

Assessing AI & Computational Technologies
Business & Law of Venture Deals
Entrepreneurship Culture: Innovation, Teams & Law
Social Entrepreneurship
Information Privacy
Launching and Leading Startups
Business, Law & Technology of Space Commerce
IP Business Strategies
Business, Law & Technology of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
Private Equity Transactions
Cannabis Law, Business & Policy
High-Tech Business Strategy
Company Law Engagement Seminar

Prior and Present Externship Companies

10x Genomics
Affirm
Amyris
Angel Island Capital
BreachRx
Brex
C16 Biosciences
Carta
Credit Karma
eBay
Freewire
Golden State Capital
Golden State Warriors
Gusto
Hewlett-Packard
Human Capital
Impossible Foods
Infleqtion
Iron Ox
Legion M

Luminar Technologies
Momentus Space
Nextdoor
OpenAI
Ouster
Riot Games
Rivian
Roofstock
ServiceNow
Settle
Shipt
Skillz
Spaceflight, Inc
Splunk
Stripe
StubHub
Swell Energy
Tesla
Twilio
Webflow

Faculty

Professor Tiller teaching

World-class faculty

Facilities

Classroom

State-of-the-art classrooms

Seattle Tech-Law Experience

The Seattle Tech-Law Experience offers Northwestern Pritzker Law students the opportunity to learn about the role of law in the high technology business environment of Seattle. The program is offered to students undertaking the San Francisco Immersion Program as a comparative experience in another west coast market heavily associated with technology and entrepreneurship. Students spend the first 10 weeks of the semester in the San Francisco Immersion Program and the last 4 weeks in the Seattle Tech-Law Experience. Students interested in the the Seattle Tech-Law Experience must indicate interest on the SFIP application. Learn more about the Seattle Tech-Law Experience.

Eligibility

All rising second and rising third-year JD students are eligible to apply. Among other factors, students are selected based on their stated interest in experiencing high-technology or venture-capital environments, and/or appropriate externship match with a Bay-Area or Seattle company, and maintaining a reasonable balance between second and third-year law student participants.

Note to JD-MBA students: JD-MBA students are eligible to participate in the West Coast Initiative during the Spring semester of their 3J year. Due to overall program requirements, JD-MBA students are not eligible to participate in either the Law School’s West Coast Initiative program or Kellogg’s San Francisco Immersion during their 2J year.

Note: There is a 16-unit cap on course credits for the program semester and students must reserve 1500 bid points for the program. The curriculum will be exclusively comprised of the courses designed for the program and students may not enroll in classes offered on the Chicago campus during the spring semester program. Participation in this program does not excuse any other graduation requirement.

Student Perspective

"The San Francisco Immersion Program was truly the highlight of my law school career! During my externship, I was able to get hands-on learning in various areas of the law (privacy, intellectual property, commercial, product, etc.). I was particularly impressed by guest speakers who gave candid discussions about their careers. From these experiences, I gathered insights that ordinary law school classrooms simply cannot provide."

Tomide O.
JD '22

"My best experience at the law school! The program really opened my eyes to the endless opportunities ahead of me, as well as the rich connections Northwestern Law has to the Bay Area and entrepreneurship."

Tori H.
JD '23

"The San Francisco Immersion Program was one of the most foundational experiences of law school for me. Getting to extern in the legal department of an innovative biotech company gave me the chance to get the practical, hands on legal experience and training that would be impossible to replicate in a classroom."

Sam M.
JD '23

"The San Francisco Immersion Program was one of the things that attracted me most to Northwestern Law. Specifically this program is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the exciting world of startups and innovation by taking classes with industry experts and getting hands-on practical experience at some do the world's most cutting-edge companies. I used so much of what I learned in the San Francisco immersion program in my work this summer at Gunderson Dettmer, and the connections I made will forever be a source of inspiration and guidance."

Shane V.
JD '23

“The San Francisco Immersion Program was really impactful during my law school career because it gave me experiential learning in the city that I was trying to work in after law school. Building connections in San Francisco has been really helpful post graduation and the classes that I took definitely helped give context to some of the issues that arise for most SF clients. The program does a great job of showing how and where you can use your legal training."

Sunaya P.
JD '22