Speaker 1  0:00  
heard it then. Good afternoon. Welcome to developing the early stage pipeline of professionals presented by Autumn. My name is Holly Lundgren autumns online professional development manager. And I'll be your staff host host for today. All lines have been automatically muted to ensure high quality audio, and today's session is being recorded. Since we're using the meeting feature today, rather than the webinar feature, we ask that you use discretion and remain muted throughout the presentation to lessen the distractions. After the presentation, we're going to have breakout rooms which we'll talk about when we get to that point. And at that point, of course, we certainly welcome you to unmute and have an open discussion. If you have a question for the panelists during the presentation, we encourage you to put it in chat so that we don't miss the question, and the presenters will address the questions as they come in. I want to take a brief moment to thank and acknowledge autumns 2020. Online Professional Development sponsors, we appreciate the ongoing support. Now we'll go ahead and introduce today's moderator, who will in turn introduce the panelists. Raja Krishnan is a commercialization manager for the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Kentucky. His primary responsibilities include assessment, marketing, and licensing of intellectual property, focused on the life sciences area, covering inventions from UK colleges of pharmacy and medicine. Previous commercialization experience includes working as an intellectual property manager at the Illinois Institute of Technology OTC. Prior to that Raj has spent more than 15 years working in roles of increasing responsibility in product development for various pharmaceutical companies, and lead the development for I'm sorry, will lead the development through the launch of multiple commercial products. Roger received a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Cornell University, a Master of Science in pharmaceutics from Long Island University, a master of science and law from Northwestern University, and most recently a Master of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Raja and welcome our distinguished panel. Welcome Raja Lesley Renee and Miki

Speaker 2  2:22  
Hi, Holly. Thanks, thanks for those kind remarks and introduction there. I appreciate it. This webinar has been in the planning stages for a really long time actually, it's something that I conceived about sometime late last year, I believe. And so I'm really really happy to for this day to be here and happy to moderate it. The goal of this webinar is going to be twofold as I conceived it, though, the one purpose would be to showcase the value of three different innovative MS and law type of programs that are based in law schools, and how they prepare students for different professions including in whether it's in licensing, intellectual property management, regulatory or other aspects. The second purpose was to demonstrate how this could be a potential source for recruiting future talent for these various positions that could happen whether it's in university tech transfer offices or on the industry side you know, technology scouting, or search and evaluation licensing, those type of fields so before we actually continue and further on here, let's do a quick poll and see who we have in the audience right now. So if you could please let us know what your current role is. So we get a sense of the audience I'll take we'll take a minute or two here

Speaker 2  4:24  
think we've got a couple of more people yet to vote maybe I'll just give a few more seconds to see if we get anybody else to vote.

Speaker 2  4:37  
I will close the polling right now. So yeah, it looks like you got you had a several licensing analysts and and few managers here in attendance, which is great.

Speaker 2  4:54  
So so let's talk about how I know how How do I know about these programs. And so first of all, you might have heard in the introduction of myself, I spent a little bit of time working at the Illinois Tech, Tech transfer office, and around 2013 2014 ish. And that's how I came to know about the program at Illinois Tech. And I am a and before and right after I worked at Illinois Tech, I, soon after joined the northwestern MSN law program. So I'm an alum of the MSN law program at Northwestern. So obviously, that's how I know about that program. And then, earlier this year, I had the fortune of coming across a licensing negotiation workshop that was at Suffolk law school and had some communication there. And that's how I came to know about Suffolk was really interesting workshop that they had put on, and they have done in previous years as well. And so I learned about that. And that's how I know these three different programs. So I wanted to give you a little bit of a sense from myself as a prospective as a as an alum. And so I found that what I learned, and my experience in the program that I attended was, was excellent. And it's been served me well on my job so far. And I expect it will do so continue to do so. And you know, some of the courses that provided me with a great background and job knowledge were courses that I took in contract law, and intellectual property and patent law, those were huge for me, I think they gave me a really good background and kind of almost a head start once I got onto onto the job. So you know, and it gave me. So I already had started gaining kind of the business perspective of how to look at these different agreements, doing these courses, and getting this education allowed me to have that legal perspective as well. And just as a general note, you know, before I went into the program, I didn't really realize this, but I was kind of surprised to learn how much I ended up enjoying, actually reading the different cases, it was a lot of reading, but I did enjoy reading the cases and the judicial opinions. And, you know, it was cool to get an understanding of how the law actually evolved over time. And actually, just recently, you know, we in our, in our office, our department, whenever we have staff meetings we do we take turns doing it teach something. So every every staff member takes gets a turn to teach something to the to the department. And recently when it was my turn actually did a presentation about an interesting case study that I learned about when I was in school. So that was that was pretty cool and interesting. So all of these different programs, they have a lot to offer and in terms of preferred preparing professionals to just get that enough working legal knowledge while not needing to get necessarily a JD. So I hope that you're gonna find this discussion to be really interesting and valuable. And as Holly mentioned at the outset, the format of the panel is going to be the following. So I've given a little bit of an intro here. And then we're going to have the three different speakers give a highlight and kind of summary of their programs. Then we're going to have a q&a session, which I will moderate. I'll have some questions. I will take some questions from the audience. Even if all your questions aren't answered, we're going to have the couple of different breakout rooms. And so we'll end the session with with a couple of those bait breakout rooms and and yep, that will be the experience that you'll have here. And you're welcome to put questions in the chat box. We'll monitor for that we can answer them during your q&a or otherwise during the breakout. So before we get to the introduction of the speakers wanted to put in one more poll into the field right now. So Holly Yeah, so just wanted to get a sense of why the audience is attending this webinar today.

Speaker 2  9:43  
Okay, so we've got a pretty you know, we got a mix here. So maybe a few that are looking at the program themselves or recommend to others a couple of year that are even thinking of our hiring considerations and we have several that are that are curious, which is great. So All right, so let's get to the let's get to the speakers. Now now that we know a little bit about the audience as well. So first will be Professor Mickey Pyatt and she has degrees in linguistics, information science and law. She is managing the program at Illinois Tech. So she has taught all areas of IP law, technology and law Telecommunications Law torts. She participated in the creation of the IP management and markets master's program, which is what she will be talking about today, and has taught several of the courses in the program since the program began. She enjoys the challenges and creativity associated with integrating ideas and experience for many disciplines to find solutions. So I will hand it off to Mickey at this point.

Speaker 3  10:59  
Greetings, y'all. Welcome, I'm so happy to be able to be with you today. And to give you a little bit of information about the program at Illinois Tech, the IP management and markets program is about 10 years old, and I've been involved in it since it's out since its beginning, we can go ahead and change slides, please. The program itself has been developed with the chief AIP officer in mind, we're looking at the person who supervises coordinates all of the activities that might be important. But this does not mean that we are looking just to that person. And I've shown you on this slide, a number of the pathways that people take in order to become the chief IP officer, very, very many different backgrounds, you could see lots of different opportunities for working in something that you might find most interesting. And I wanted to point out one of them patent integration specialist is up there. And that's something that I just found within the last four weeks as the suggestion from someone that this would be a position that we need to have in corporations, because corporations do not think about the IP aspects of the entire portfolio when they are doing r&d frequently. And so there is not the connection that there needs to be. And you can see that I factored out tech transfer man manager as one as well. There are a number of these that are interrelated, of course, but I thought that you might be unfamiliar with some of them and want to see them. Next slide please. All of those positions have some aspects of tech transfer tasks. But it assumes a an innovative business aspect, I noticed that some of my slides have changed a little bit in the transition. But the point of this slide is one that I think is really embodied to some extent in the courses that Raja had indicated I have taught. And in my background itself, the intellectual asset manager actually sits at the center of a lot of disciplines. And so this particular program is had was designed with that in mind and is a collaboration among the law school computer science department engineering school, the Institute of Design, and the business school. And all of the courses were designed in order to integrate those disciplines in a way that focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the strategic aspects of intellectual assets, intellectual assets that fall into the ordinary four regimes that we generally talk about in law being copyright, trademark patents, trade secrets, but going even farther beyond that, uncodified intellectual assets as well, because many of those are present and need to be considered. However, this diagram is also useful, because it shows you also how the intellectual asset manager and I'm sure that many of you have already experienced this sits almost as a translator. In the center of the CTO, the CEO The C fo, the chief operations officer, the HR department, the General Counsel, the intellectual asset manager has to know something about all of them. We don't have to be the most intelligent person in engineering in the room, the CTO is welcome to take that role. We don't have to be the best lawyer in the room, the General Counsel is welcome to take on that role. But we have to be able to know enough about all of those disciplines to be able to integrate them into strategic decision making as it applies to intellectual assets. And that is the importance of our position. Next slide, please. Moving to the basics of our master degree program, because it is a collaboration that is totally interdisciplinary and was created to be that way. It is not a degree that is given by the law school, the program lives because of some of the constraints of universities in the law school. But the degree is conferred by the Illinois Institute of Technology itself. And this reflects, again, the fact that it is this interdisciplinary approach. It requires 30 credit hours, and it generally is begun in August with a four credit two week, two week intensive course, that is the introduction to the law, all of the legal regimes are, are considered in this, but it is done in the context of the innovation design process. And I have historically taught that class the law part, but I co teach it with someone from the Institute of Design, so that we merge and marry those two things, and look at the way the intellectual property is impacted at the various stages in the design process. The program then ends in May, with another Capstone that is two weeks intensive. And the capstone is a real life consulting project in which we find a company. And the class actually acts as a consulting team to perform an IP audit inventory analysis and recommendations to the suite C suite of that company. It is real life, a real report a real presentation. And historically, the companies have taken our advice to heart and have followed it. And we've even had companies come back and asked us to do another one at a point that is maybe an inflection point in their progress just before an IPO or something. There are opportunities along this route along those 30 hours to have interdisciplinary projects that one works on in that role of a TA, there are opportunities for externships that are created specifically for the individuals that want them. And I wanted to point out that we have IPM courses, most of the courses are IPM M courses. But six of the hours of those 30 credit hours are electives. And those can be taken in any of those five disciplines. So if you are an engineer, for example, but you've been out of engineering and want to brush up, you can take some engineering courses as your electives in IP Mmm. If you don't, if you are an engineer and want to learn more about business or more about law, you can take courses in in those disciplines. Next slide, please. These This is a list of the courses just so that you get sort of an overview but I wanted to point out to this that there are some that are totally online and asynchronous. The reason for that initially, before the COVID problems that we have, were because we looked at this program and we had some inquiries and eventually created a cot A certificate that is from these courses. And those courses are the ones that are online asynchronous.

Speaker 3  19:58  
Next slide please. Is the certificate is three courses. This is a program that was developed specifically because there were people who were already as yourselves working in IP and thinking in terms of strategy. But you might be in a small portion of it. And when we think about intellectual asset management, we are incredibly broad in the way that we define that. And so we pulled out three of the courses. And those are the online asynchronous courses that we thought might be worthwhile for someone already working with IP, either through experience or education, who wanted to expand their horizons and perhaps the breadth of knowledge and position themselves so that they could move forward within their organization, or maybe even move to a new organization. So these are three courses that are done in a year, they are done one semester, each fall, spring, summer, totally online, and result in a certificate. And they are, as I said, designed for professionals already in the practice. Next slide, please. I wanted to point out to you some examples of places that our grads have gone. And this is by no means all of them. And it's by no means the only type of thing that they are doing. They've been very creative in finding places that they want. But I wanted to use this opportunity to mention to you all, you are in an area in tech transfer in universities that recognize the importance of intellectual asset management. And that is just simply not the case with most corporations and most businesses. And with regard to entrepreneurship organizations, startup companies, there's usually not a focus on the role that IP should be playing in their corporation in their business. And so very frequently, we have to do a lot of education, as we try to find employment for different positions that people want. And therefore, we on the faculty work very, very closely with students in the program. In the full time program, we can't, we don't have the resources to do so much with the certificate students. But in the full time program, we work very closely at resume building, and how to present yourself in a way that you are educating the person who's looking at your resume as well as promoting yourself. And I thought I would share with you just for the heck of it, just in case it's useful. Over the years, I have decided that there is one primary thing that people not just from this program, but all my law students as well do that is a really bad way to write a resume. And that is we have a tendency to write a resume, that would be great for the jobs we've had. But it is not written for the job we want. And so my best advice to you is to think about the position you're applying for when you write your resume, and write your resume for that position. Finally, in the last slide here, I have some information so that if you would like, next slide, if you would like to get more information. If you would like to contact me, I'd love to talk with you. I don't know if you can tell it, but I love this program and very enthusiastic about it. So I'm happy to talk with people more. Thank you very much Rajgarh and I look forward to talking people more in the breakout sessions.

Speaker 2  24:27  
Thank you, Mickey. Yeah, great overview on the program. And thanks for the great advice too, on the on the resume part. I agree with that. So our next speaker is Leslie auster. She is a clinical associate professor of law and Director of the Master of science and law program at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Before coming to Northwestern in 2012. She worked in a variety of administrative and academic positions in legal education. She was the Dean of Students at Berkeley's law school for 11 years, and also held positions as a special assistant to the dean at the University of San Diego School of Law and Assistant Dean for strategic planning at the University of Texas at Austin. She has taught a variety of skills classes and classes on innovation. As an instructor at UC Hastings, a director of legal writing at UC Berkeley and director of lawyering skills at the University of San Diego. She was also a senior lecturer at UT Austin. So I'll give it to I'll give it to Leslie.

Speaker 4  25:41  
Thanks, Raja, happy to be here. And it's especially nice for me to be moderated by one of the alums of our program, not just an alum to didn't you take a class with me, Raja? You did the innovation lab? Yes. Yeah. That's great. Awesome. So, you know, we have a good connection to and I liked that Roger has stayed connected to our program. I want to say a little bit about the master of science and law program at Northwestern. When we started thinking about this program, the thing that motivated us was a gap, a gap between people who had legal and regulatory knowledge and people who had technical knowledge. We started thinking like, what can we do to bridge that gap? One of the early conversations we had was with the director of our tech transfer office at Northwestern Alicia Leffler, we went to see Alicia and like from Ward one, she was so excited about this program and its possibilities. She's been a big supporter of our program ever since. And we've maintained a very strong relationship with the tech transfer office at Northwestern, including we've had interns there, we've had our some of our students hired, we've had some of our instructors come from that program. It's been a really nice relationship. And one that has inspired us to continue to develop our curriculum, as we learn more through our relationship with invivo, which is the tech transfer office at at Northwestern info has helped us find instructors for program for some of our classes as well. So it's been a very nice relationship. From what Mickey said, I think you you're getting a sense, something you'll get from all of the programs that are presenting today, you heard words from Mickey like connections into related interdisciplinary, integrated design translator, what we're talking about is bridging this gap between the technical side, the business side, the legal side and the regulatory side. I think that's a goal that all of these programs share in common. I want to talk a little bit about our specific program and how it evolved. It's, in some ways, it has differences from the program that Mickey described, because we have a more a wider curriculum. So what we've tried to do in this program is to really look at law, business and technology and the many ways in which they interact and to try to create a curriculum around that, as you'll see as we go through the slides. Okay. Let's advance the slide to the next one. The and then we'll pull up the answers what it is. So a lot of people have heard of JDS MBAs. These masters of legal masters programs are somewhat different. They have aspects and they cover some of the same substance that you might get in a JD and MBA, but they're really packaged differently. Ours at Northwestern is packaged with the STEM focus. It's different a little bit from both the program they're going to hear about and the program that Mickey described in that people are bringing the stem to our program. We're not teaching stem STEM subjects in our program. People bring the stem so everybody in the program either has a degree in a STEM field has been working in a STEM field. Some people come to the program with PhDs. Other people come straight out of college, some people come with five to 10 to 30 years of work experience. What they share in common is both a STEM focus and an interest in law or some kind of preliminary exposure to law. But we've created a curriculum around STEM professionals that is exposing them to business legal and regulatory concepts. The program at Northwestern is very practical, though many of our classes are taught by Northwestern law faculty. They're caught in a different way from JD classes, and they all tend to integrate these different strands of law and policy, business and regulation. Finally, because we do have a very broad curriculum, students come into this program and sort of chart their own path. So some people might be interested in tech transfer, we get a lot of IP in other ways health data, a variety of different areas. And our curriculum does allow students to tailor and customize it for their own interest. Students in the program take about 20 classes. And the great majority of those are electives. So it's not as prescribed a program. Okay, the next slide is we just looked a little bit at what it is the next slide is going to show you who it is. And you might recognize that guy that's three from the left there in the picture of this is Raj this class of of students, you can see that they have a lot of fun together, I don't know if you can see that. But if you knew them, you would know that the average age of students in our program, all of our programs is 30. But that glosses over a really important distinction, we have a part time program and a full time program, the full time program is younger, the average age in the full time program is about 2627. And the average age in the part time programs is about 35 or 36. So most everybody in the part time program has work experience brings that to the table that makes it a very rich environment. We're we have a lot of diversity. A lot of people with advanced degrees, a lot of people come to the program with MBAs, which is interesting, they they already have a business background, but they realize they're missing some really important substance that you would get by studying law and regulation. One thing that our students share in common is that there are many things but one thing they share in common is that they seem to kind of want to understand the why behind things. So lots of our part time students are obviously learning a lot at their jobs. And they're you know, but there are gaps. And there are conversations that they're either left out of or don't really understand. So our program allows people, including a lot of people in tech transfer to really get the why behind things like contracts and business financing, negotiations and licensing, and whatever other topics that they're dealing with on a daily basis. Our program is adding foundational knowledge that allowed them to just be more effective at what they're doing. The next slide is going to show you the a little bit about our online. So I mentioned that we have a full time program and a part time program. Within part time, we have both residential and online. So the residential part time program is great for working professionals in the Chicagoland area. But if you don't live in Chicagoland, we have a very well designed robust program that's fully online. And what we do with these classes is not we don't livestream a class for online students, what we do is we have created classes in the online format, specifically for our online students. They include lecture videos, synchronous sessions, where everybody's online at the same time with the professor, a lot of group work, interactive discussion boards, and a few other components that faculty put together in the way that they see fit for their course, these classes take hundreds of hours to design. And you can see here like this is a class in our online program. Because the synchronous sessions are really some of the highlight days of the class. And students all join the little yellow square you see there on the left is the professor. So there's a lot of interaction between the professor and students and between the students themselves. So the online format of this program just opens up a lot of possibilities, options for people, they can go a little slower, they can go a little quicker. They still have a very robust curriculum to choose from. But the program is designed specifically for them. Online students can take residential classes if they happen to be in Chicago, and the students that are residential can take online classes if they like. So there's a good mix back and forth. At any given time. We have about 100 students in each of these formats.

Speaker 4  34:24  
So 100 online students, 100 residential students. It's a lot of students and they bring a lot to the table and they share a lot. So it's a very great community. The next slide is going to go a little bit more into detail about our curriculum. As I said before, we have these four areas business, IP regulation, and skills. And most of our classes could be categorized into one of these, although almost all of our classes have aspects have more than one of these in them. There's a lot of customization that goes on in the program. Students are responsible for that At so students have to really get to know the curriculum, we work together with them to help them get to know the curriculum, and to sort of take what they've done in their career and combine it up with what they want to do after the program and, and settle on a curriculum that speaks most to their interests. I'm going to run through the, the classes now there's a lot of them. And I'm going to go category by category. So you can take a look at what we're offering in the program, some of the things that you know, our students are taking, we're going to start with the next slide, which shows the classes in that are required classes, everybody takes these classes. Okay, so everybody's taking IP fundamentals, legal and regulatory process and these other classes across each of the four categories of our program. This gives everybody a common basic understanding before they move into the electives. And there's a lot of electives, different formats for classes, we have the full time students are often taking classes during the day. But the part time students usually taking classes in the evenings, or on the weekends. And so there's a lot of flexibility, we have some classes that lasts for a half of semester, seven or eight weeks, and some that lasts for three days. So there's a lot of different types of classes in the program, and not to overwhelm you. But the next slide is going to show you the classes in the IP area of the program. And you can see, again, there are some classes that are focusing on patent preparation, some classes that are focusing on the business side IP strategy and management, IP valuation and IP investments. So there's a lot going on here on the IP side. And one class I am going to call out is the introduction to IP licensing, which is offered both in our residential and online program. That's the r&d to residential and online. When we were working with Alicia at the info office at Northwestern, she suggested somebody she thought would be great to teach the class, Pam Cox, Pam was the head of the licensing executives, society. We disaggregated that class from the IP strategy and management. So we have a focused, intensive class on IP licensing, which has been very valuable, particularly for our tech transfer people. The next slide is going to show you the courses in the business area. And again, what we're trying to do here people are people are taking classes in each of these areas. And they're integrating putting these classes together. So you see here, again, a variety of courses, some sort of straight business courses, like securities and tax, other courses that maybe are more specific to law like litigation operations. You we have classes in data, mergers and acquisitions, lots of these classes, focus on business relationships in particular, some of them focus on entrepreneurship and small businesses, which is something I think is very valuable in tech transfer to understand how small business finance works, what are the rounds of financing, fundraising issues. So these are things that are covered in the business law classes. entrepreneur, I think, Roger, you probably took entrepreneurial finance and venture capital, a lot of people take that advanced contracts, obviously very relevant in the tech transfer world. The next slide shows you the regulation courses, there's a lot of them. And the reason is that there's a lot of areas of regulation. So some of our tech transfer people have been particularly interested in global global compliance and regulation. That's a class class and technology standards, which is relevant, a lot of classes in general regulation, and then in specific areas of regulation. The last slide, that is a curriculum slide is going to show you the classes in the skills building area. So obviously, there are some very important things here for folks in tech transfer negotiations is a huge one on presentation design, communicating scientific information. There's a lot of these classes tend to have a lot of feedback associated with them, and they're kind of performative students are actually doing the work. So this is a great opportunity for our students to really shine a light on some skills that they would like to develop further. The next slide is just to show you that we have a blog for the MSL, and you can learn a lot about our program from the blog. We have students write pieces, alums write pieces, we have profiles of students. And and when it comes to profiles, we have a lot of students and they're all you know, as I mentioned, we have a lot of diversity. We've had students go off and work at USPTO. We've had students go off and work at tech transfer Raj is a good example of that. We've had students go off and work at startups and they're you know Handling IP for that. Law firms in house. There's there's a lot of options for people because of their kind of well rounded understanding of law, business and technology. We also have some great instructors in the program. I wanted to say I mentioned Pam Cox. Alicia Leffler has come and talk to our students. We have consultants, lawyers, people from large and small businesses. So there's, there's it's a very eclectic program. I think that's what I will leave with. And thank you for the time today. And I'm happy to talk to folks afterwards.

Speaker 2  40:38  
Thanks. Thanks, Lesley. great overview of the program there. I you know, as I said, In the beginning, I really enjoyed my time there. And, by the way, for everybody, I was a, I was a full time in the program. And so I really also got a chance to, you know, make use of the opportunities to get involved in different extracurricular activities and engaging with even the law, the full time Law School students as well the JD students. So, yeah, so now we'll go to the next speaker. Next speaker is Rene Rene Landers. She's a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, and is the faculty director of the school's Health and Biomedical law concentration, and the Master of Science in law Life Sciences Program, which is a program she'll be talking to you about today. She served as Deputy General Counsel for the US Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration. She's a former chair of the section of administrative law and regulatory practice of the American Bar Association. And she serves on the boards of several nonprofit healthcare organizations. In 2018, she was a distinguished visiting fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance. She has been a member of other things, including study panels on strengthening Medicare's role in in reducing racial and ethnic health disparities, health insurance exchanges, and others. She is currently the co chair of the study panel on economic security. Finally, she has written on racial and ethnic disparities in health care, aspects of the Affordable Care Act, diversity in the legal profession, privacy, and it's also a regular commentator on legal issues. So I will hand it over to Rene now.

Speaker 5  42:41  
Great, thank you very much, Russia. And thank you, it's really been a pleasure to sit and listen to the descriptions of the detailed descriptions of the other two programs. So our program is different in a couple of respects. First of all, we're just starting it. And the we are planning to enroll our first group of students in January of 2021, which is a slightly delayed start because of all the, you know, challenges presented by the COVID 19 situation. But we do, there are some similarities and I won't go over all of the different reasons, you know, the different materials and the different rationales that both Lesley and Miki have already explained. Um, can I have the next slide please? So I want to say a little bit about our university, because it does. The foundation of our university, in part explains why this program sort of fits with the university's mission and sort of what's going on in the in the way the world is changing and the complexity of the world now, our University was founded in 1906 on the promise of bettering students lives through education. And it started off our University started off as an evening law school, and Suffolk University has evolved into a global institution that lends a lot of traditional and experiential learning, and really tries to work with partner institutions around Boston and beyond, to help our students evolve and to help our educational programs evolve. One impetus for the master of science and law Life Sciences Program has been, you know, focusing on not only the gaps that both Mickey and Leslie talked about, but also the way in which the world you know, rapidly involves the world of technology, the world of law practice, the world of business, and Suffolk has always been committed to trying to offer content canoeing education for the legal community in Boston. And for our students that, you know, education really is not, you know, sort of you get your one degree and you're done. But you're it's a lifetime learning and re re learning process. As, as as time goes on. Can I have the next slide, please? So, one of our hallmarks, especially at the law school, and actually throughout our university has been its focus on experience based learning, and career readiness and adaptability. We have really strong clinical programs in the law school, and there are a lot of focus. There's a lot of focus throughout the university, on preparing students through internships and externship opportunities. We also are focused on trying to Lesley talked about the skills building aspect of her program. And we have viewed that as a very important feature of the educational experience that students have. And again, we really want to prepare students and our alumni for a lifelong career and community success and provide opportunities through for lifetime and career long learning. Can I have the next slide please? So we, the MSL l program, Raja encouraged me to talk about a couple of the other offerings that we have that are related to the MSL program. We have a evening JD program. I already mentioned that as the origin story of our university. We also have an accelerated JD program, a hybrid JD program, which is just coming online this year. And we are trying to gear our offerings to both attorneys and non attorneys. And that's where part of the MSL l focus comes in. We have a legal innovation and technology certificate. And Raja also already mentioned the online intellectual property certificate program that we have offered for a number of years again, focusing on this opportunity for people to continue their education even after they finish their a formal degree program. Could I have the next slide, please? So our MSL l program, just like the programs that Leslie and Mickey's described, is a graduate program for people who either need to gain knowledge and tools or to pursue a career in the life sciences sector, or really to further a career to improve their credentials for careers on which they've already embarked in life sciences. Again, we we are offering a program that is going to combine coursework in law, business and science. And the idea of the program is to prepare people for a whole variety of careers and positions in the life sciences, similar to what Vicki talked about with her slide. Her slides about different career opportunities of Could I have the next slide, please? So partly, and maybe this is not the audience that needs this definition. But sometimes when we're talking about these programs, you know, people have to understand what does life sciences mean, you know, what kind of what kind of companies, what kind of activities, does that term embrace. And there's sort of two prongs to the term of the biotechnology aspect of the field, which involves therapies made or derived from living organisms, and then the pharmaceutical aspect of therapies made or derived from chemicals or synthetic processes. And both of them, you know, sort of feed up into this hierarchy of, you know, the broad concept of Life Sciences. Um, can I have the next slide, please? So, some of the trends in Massachusetts and our, you know, some of the statistics I have a really focused on what's happening in Massachusetts, which is the Center for the life sciences, Biotechnology Industry. Recently, there was an article in The Boston Globe, which is our largest daily newspaper, which indicated that even though the real estate market has been somewhat challenged because of the impact of COVID, that the life sciences, biotechnology sectors are having an almost insatiable demand for real estate. And so that indicates that, you know, there will be plenty of jobs in those fields as time goes on, because, you know, they obviously the space is required because people need to be working in those spaces. And so in Massachusetts There's been a 35% increase in life sciences jobs over the past decade, and more jobs projected by 2024. Obviously, all the research and development on vaccines to address COVID-19 as well as different therapies to address the treatment for the disease for people who contracted disease, are really, you know, one of the reasons for this expansion in the short term. And so, one of the other statistics that the local media has reported on is that it sometimes takes these life sciences companies more than three months to fill a job opening, as people compete, the companies compete for promising candidates. Also, there in our local area, the companies are challenged, because sometimes they find themselves recruiting people from all over the country and all over the world. And, you know, there seems to be an opportunity here to build a cadre of people who would be well qualified locally to fill many of these positions. And so, you know, the result of this is that, you know, this competition is that, you know, companies lose time, and the costs of hiring and training people increase as a result of the, of the gap in the market for people who the company is deemed to be qualified to hold some of these positions. So, can I have the next slide, please. And so this slide is really hard to read, and I apologize for that. We keep working on it to try to improve it. So it's a little more readable, but it just shows the, the yellow shirt on this shows that the extent to which hiring managers expect there to be an increase in need for people in different areas in the life sciences industry, including regulatory affairs and compliance, business development, marketing, and intellectual property. Can I have the next slide, please.

Speaker 5  52:15  
And this just shows a five year trend. This bar graph shows us five year trends and hiring and the in demand through this year in the life sciences industry, in Massachusetts. And could I have the next slide, please? So what about our program our program is, requires 30 credits for completion, we have full time options where we would expect that full time students would complete the program in one year, and different, you know, range of completion opportunities for students who pursue the degree part time, between 18 months and two and a half years, we do not require any kind of standardized tests. Although we do ask if people have happened to have taken any of these tests that they provide the scores to us. It is a stem approved job so that for international students, I was sent an approved program, so that for international students, they wouldn't be able to extend their visas and work in the country for a longer period of time after completing the program. We have, we're flexible on the start dates, as I indicated, we are, you know, starting the program in January, but we also have opportunities for Fall start dates as well. And then most classes will be in the evening recognizing that many of the students will be working and that the evening classes will be might be more convenient for them so that they can balance other interests and obligations that they may have. So the next slide, please. Here are some of the sample courses that will offer and I can give some descriptions of these courses in the breakout sessions if people are interested. But the most important thing I want to say about all of the courses is that they are taught by people who are have expertise in the fields that science courses are taught by the biology and chemistry faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences at Suffolk. And then, you know, we we have, you know people in the law school and on the in the business school who are teaching some of the other courses, for example, the biostatistics course for clinical trials is taught by someone in our business school who focuses on the use of statistics in the pharmaceutical industry. The so, you know, the point is that there people will be exposed to a variety of professional disciplines and to people teaching the courses who have expertise in those areas. All right, can I have the next slide please? So potential employment outcomes, I think that Mickey and Leslie have, you know, covered this concept pretty well, of the different kinds of professional opportunities that people who complete one of these programs would be able to be qualified for. And I think that, you know, the the list is very similar to their list. So I won't, won't belabor this point. But the idea is that, you know, as both Leslie and Mickey have talked about, that people who have you know, training either in science, or law or business will have the opportunity to really try to understand the intersections of what they know, with, with the other fields, so that they can be actually more useful members of any kind of team in a company or university tech transfer office. Can I have the next slide, please. So we're going to try playing excerpts from a couple of videos and the full length videos are on our website, each video will be only about a minute or a little over a minute, we'll cut it off there. So we had, we obviously have a lot of alumni who are working in some of these fields already who have not gone through this program, but who I think can speak to the need for interdisciplinary training it for people who are working in the pharmaceutical industry or in universities, and so why don't we try to play this this is that we had a panel of alumni who talked about some of their experiences.

Unknown Speaker  57:09  
greatest part about going to Suffolk was it provides for that education to lay a foundation to go anywhere person wants to go and to be anything they want to be because it takes such a common sense approach.

Unknown Speaker  57:26  
One thing that makes people successful if they're going into industry is the ability to pivot quickly and to be flexible and to take on multiple roles. Because we have to respond to what's going on around us.

Unknown Speaker  57:51  
Really tough to break the barriers into life sciences, if you weren't a scientist, and I had been told time after time that I didn't have a background in science. And I didn't have a core background in order to be able to work for a biotech or a med device or a pharma company, even though that was where my trajectory was taking me to do you have any

Unknown Speaker  58:10  
basic science background at all? And if they don't, I recommend that, you know, they learn a little bit because even if they're in the legal offices only, they do have to understand enough of basic science that they can translate. They can talk to scientists and see what what it is they're doing and why it's important. I'm a big proponent

Unknown Speaker  58:27  
of every

Speaker 5  58:29  
year now. I think that's good. That's great. Thank you very much. So I think I wanted to show these clips because it shows people who have, you know, training and one sort of anchored in one discipline, all of those people speaking on that particular video happened to have be graduates of our law school. But Heather Duffy came with a PhD in neuroscience before she came to Suffolk. And so she had a you know, very serious science background. But I think that the lesson from those outtakes is that, you know, having some understanding of science for people who are working in the law, is probably really important if for lawyers who want to work in this field of Life Sciences. Can we have the next slide please? And then, the next video I'm going to show is advice from one of the professors in our program, blue slicer, who is a lawyer, but he talks about the intersection of business and law. And you know, how training this interdisciplinary multidisciplinary training will be very beneficial and useful for people to pursue very, very interesting careers and life sciences. So if we could play this video, please that would be great.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:00  
I'll just spend a minute talking about the masters of science and law Life Sciences program. For me, it's an interesting concept. And I think Sufix really engaged in a breakthrough here. Although this isn't the law school, it's a program that's designed not just for people with a legal background, but for folks with a technical scientific background for folks with a business development background or a business background in project management, as a way to sort of package what we all may have learned sort of by osmosis into more of a framework that you can really understand the interplay between law, business and science in the biotech world, the focus of the classes will be on, on biotechnology business, there'll be classes on genetics on data security and privacy. There'll be an intellectual property, focus, as well as regulatory compliance and, and clinical research. So I will say, from my own journey, I literally stumbled into biotech, I was working as a high tech lawyer in the 80s, and had an invitation to come and talk with one of the founding biotech companies should have access to it about moving into the field. And what I found over the last 30 years is, it's a really fun place for the lawyers and for the people who I've worked with, because, from my perspective, you're never working on the same thing, any particular day of the week, from a legal perspective, it's a multi specialty practice, you have to understand the whole range. As you look on the right hand side, we'll see that

Speaker 5  1:01:28  
you cut it off there. I think that's good, thank you. And then we can go to the last slide. I think it's the last slide.

Speaker 5  1:01:48  
And then next slide. Very good. So just a little bit about what the opportunity the career opportunities are, like every law school, and every university, we have a very active career in professional development office, and extensive, you know, placement services, where we really will work hard with people who enroll in the MSL l program, you know, to find the right placement for them after they complete the program. And obviously, you know, we have, as I talked about this extensive network of alumni. Let's go to the next slide, please. And so we have one more online drop in session, which you know, if if people want further information, they can look at our website and get this information. And then the next slide, please, which I think will give us some people who can be resources for further information about the program. And I'm happy to speak about that in the breakout session. So thank you very much for your attention. And we aspire to grow our program into a programs like the other two that you've heard about today.

Speaker 2  1:03:02  
All right, thank you very much, Renee, I think we will, you know, I think hopefully, everybody that's viewing this as kind of seeing the value that these type of programs can provide and in advancing their careers and, you know, obtaining new new skill sets. So we'll go into a little bit of a q&a here before the breakout room. And so, you know, welcome you guys, anybody in the audience to put in questions in the chat window as well. I'll start off with a few questions here. Let's let's do this one first. So, you know, are these programs, are they focusing on what type of people to focus on? Is it why would somebody working in tech transfer, want to do a program such as this? Or, you know, is it meant for people that already have some experience or people that have no experience? You know, what do what would somebody get out of one of these programs? Anybody want want to go first? I will. Okay. All right, Leslie.

Speaker 4  1:04:10  
It's a I think it's an interesting question. So interesting that I actually asked one of our students who works in tech transfer at Northwestern why she's doing the program. She's had an extensive career. And she said that she wanted to be more effective. She wanted to understand the why behind things. So she already understood the what she learned that on the job, she knew how to do licensing agreements, but she felt she was at a little bit of a disadvantage when talking to inventors or talking to people who are forming a new business because she didn't always understand the why behind some of the some of the things that she was telling them to do. So it shook her confidence a little bit. Whereas now being in the program at the at the law school at Northwestern and understanding sort of what goes into a contract and why you might have this provision or not that provision, what is an indemnification clause like things that she just kind of scratched the surface of, now she really understands. And that has increased her confidence and made her much more effective. So I think, again, there's you can learn a lot on the job. But it also sometimes help to helps to have that underlying foundational knowledge that propels a discussion forward, that makes you a full participant in discussions that you're going to have. So for her, she found it very valuable. And I think in general, all of us would find valuable like studying, really what we're doing what we're doing, but also studying what we're doing. And learning more about it. I don't know, Mickey, Rene, if you want to add to that,

Speaker 5  1:05:49  
yeah, and just sort of coming at it from the other direction from someone who is not a scientist, but needs to know understand more science, you know, just sort of not having you know, every term that's thrown about in the conversation about a particular product, or, or device, be completely mysterious, you have to, you know, go running to look things up on Google it, you know, afterwards, and to understand, really, you know, kind of the sort of basic theories underlying some of the scientific processes that products are based on, I think, is probably a really useful thing for lawyers or business people to know. And then on the statistics side, you know, really understanding, you know, what statistical terms mean? What, what is the significance of a statistic that's, you know, being offered. And we're not trying to make statisticians out of people or epidemiologists out of people, but just so that they understand what, what it means, you know, to, to give a statistics about a statistic about the efficacy of a vaccine or a drug or something.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:02  
Any further thoughts, Mickey?

Speaker 3  1:07:04  
Well, I wanted to add one more thing. And that is, I think all of us get caught into the daily drudge of whatever is on our desk that we need to get done. And we have a tendency to focus in a very narrow way on issues. And I think programs like this, that really expand our reach, causes to become number one more aware of the way that we can find solutions, from other places that we don't have to do things always the same way. But it also creates a creativity in us in the way that we think about things. For example, I use myself as an example, I taught IP for years, and then was asked to teach torts. And torts really changed a lot of the way that I approach IP, because I saw those connections, I saw things coming together that I hadn't seen before. So I think this is part of a lifelong learning. But I think that it expands our thinking in such a way that it also expands our desires, as in terms of where we are going and what we are doing, and we do it all better.

Speaker 5  1:08:33  
Yeah, I would say also, that, you know, we've, the human beings have divided up the world into all these disciplines. But the world isn't actually really organized this way. This is a construct that we have put upon it. And so the more that we have the flexibility to try to transcend those constructs, I think the more effective we are in our jobs.

Speaker 2  1:08:58  
Now this is Yes, great. I agree with all those comments. And I myself, one of those that learn and work better, while I'm if I'm doing both, actually. So if you're doing work on the job, and you're learning, I find it to be more effective for me. So let's go. Let's see it. Try another question. So I am curious. You know, I know, Mickey had mentioned about practicums, and things of that sort. But, you know, in any of these programs, any types of just hands on practical projects that students might do just kind of just a general description or kind of an idea.

Speaker 3  1:09:39  
If I could answer that. I would say the students think our entire program is that way. Because whatever course work that we're doing, for example, we have a patent analytics and landscape reports class, and you learn how to do it, but you Learn how, because your overall final project is one. And so as you're learning the various pieces and the way to do it, you're actually accumulating the knowledge to do it yourself. And I know that in several of the courses, the way that students are taught is by doing, it's by doing a negotiation over a license agreement, it's by one of the things that, that people in business never know is about your competitors business, you never have all the answers about your competitors business. And so you have to hypothesize and you have to learn, where do I go to get the information about which I can hypothesize what their motives are, what their future is, in order for me to figure out how that's going to impact the business that I work for. It's, it's very hard, because it's very abstract, and you have to do it. And so almost everything we do is very, very pragmatic, very hands on, and very integrated. Great,

Speaker 4  1:11:16  
I can just say, something similar to what Mickey said in terms of the the classes are very hands on. Many of them result in something like a project or something that is very real world, we have a class called the entrepreneurship lab, where students invented medical device, working together with doctors at Northwestern. And then they take all the steps to commercialize that invention. And that is a obviously very hands on and students, many, many students have formed businesses, based on the ideas that they do that they develop in the entrepreneurship lab, we have a similar class that focuses in the energy area where there again, businesses have grown out of that. So there's that we have students who in turn, do internships at tech transfer and startups and an incubator. So students can kind of make it as hands on as they want, they could dwell in the more theoretical classes, but there's also a lot of really hands on classes, classes that culminate in writing a term sheet or analyzing a term sheet or, you know, putting together a business plan. So there's a really a lot of hands on stuff. And I think that makes these programs really valuable, and also makes them somewhat different, maybe from GED programs.

Speaker 5  1:12:38  
Also, to the extent that people entering these programs actually have experience work experience in some of these fields, I think that that helps enrich the academic discussion as well, because they bring that experience. And you know, you can see the aha moment. So now I know why he was doing all that those years or, you know, what the practical, what the relationship is between the theoretical learning and the practical learning? I think it's very important.

Speaker 2  1:13:08  
Okay, great. I think one more question a lot of people might have is, how do any of these programs and do they prepare you for the Patent Bar?

Unknown Speaker  1:13:20  
My N RS, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 3  1:13:25  
The Patent Bar has restrictions that are totally based on coursework that you have taken as an undergraduate getting your degree or primarily. And, and if you don't have that science, whatever it is, I mean, I can remember when I was in school eons ago, computer science didn't count as something that would allow you to sit for the Patent Bar. So unless you have that technical background, that meets their requirements, you can't sit for the Patent Bar and nothing I can teach you will help that

Speaker 5  1:14:07  
we have taken the same approach. You know, I will say that our law school, you know, because of its location in the port, and because of the part time program, we have a lot of patent agents who come and complete the JD program in the evening program, so that then they are eligible for the Patent Bar, but these are people who actually have the requisite background that Mickey was talking about. And so, you know, if you come to one of these MSL programs, you will probably encounter those people in some of the classes but and you know, that would be you know, you know, good networking opportunities, good net network learning opportunities for people in the MSL tell programs, but the program is not designed to prepare people for the Patent Bar by I'll

Speaker 4  1:15:00  
say just one other thing. Most of those students in our program are Patent Bar eligible. And many of them consider taking the pound bar, we have, again, a fair number of students who come having already taken the Patent Bar already there. They're already doing patent work as Patent Agent or as a patent examiner. But there are programs out there that are more focused on preparing people specifically for the Patent Bar, Notre Dame had one, Minnesota has one. And so that, so there are programs that are very focused on that there, they tend to be more narrow programs than any of the programs out that we're talking about. Most people who take the Patent Bar, take a Patent Bar Prep Course. So if you're Patent Bar eligible, you would take the practicing law Institute or another organizations, Patent Bar Prep Course. But if you've had the background that you get in a program, like one of ours, you're it's gonna pave the way, in a lot of ways we have patent prosecution class students are doing claim drafting, they're learning things that are valuable as they embark on the Patent Bar. And then they study like hell for the Patent Bar. We just had two students from our graduating class and class of 20, that pass the Patent Bar that you know, was very exciting, and everybody celebrated that.

Speaker 2  1:16:25  
Okay, great, cool. One more, I think that would give a perspective for viewers, maybe on how the environments like doing it maybe in a full time program, so in any of these programs, when you're in full time, you know, what are you know, extracurricular activities? Or how do these students may be engaged with other full time students and the GED programs? And, you know, how would they broaden their experience that way? Besides the coursework? Any thoughts on that? I don't know. Leslie, do you want to

Speaker 4  1:16:58  
go first, or the I'm gonna put this year aside, because this year has been very hard for people to interact across programs just because nobody's in the building. But normally, our MSL students, including those part time, students who are residential get very involved in the life of the school. There's an intellectual property law society, there's a high tech Law Journal, there's a health law society, there's Entrepreneurship Center, all of these different activities attract different students of ours. And the full time students tend to get very, very active, very involved in, in the life of the school in these various activities. Some of our classes involve JD students and LLM students as well as MSLs. Especially those hands on like kind of invention classes. So our students are working together with students in those programs. And, and so there's a nice integration of this program into the life of the school, our online students get to take advantage of that a little bit too, because we either live stream or record every event. And we just have a library. So if they can't come at the time the thing is offered, they can watch the recording, but a lot of them do tune in over zoom to watch an event. And, you know, that allows us to have a lot of ongoing relationships developing between our own students, but also students in the LLM program. And students in the JD program, a lot of times they have very similar interests. When you think about something like entrepreneurship doesn't really matter if you have a STEM background, a legal background, everybody, there are a lot of people come to that area of interest with different backgrounds. And these kinds of extracurricular and co curricular activities allow students from different programs to mix.

Speaker 2  1:18:50  
Okay, great. Yeah, there's any other thoughts on that? Otherwise, we can go on to getting any other questions? If anybody has any questions in the audience, you could, you know, unmute yourself, turn your video, you could ask questions at this point. We have a few minutes left here. If not, I will ask some other questions I might have. It, let's do it this way. Do you guys have any final thoughts? Let's do that way closing remarks by by each of you. Mickey, do you want to start with just just just a summary of this little thing? Or what do you want to depart with or depart the viewers with?

Speaker 3  1:19:37  
I think that the lesson from this is that there are programs out there that are relevant to people in tech transfer specifically, and intellectual Asset Management more broadly, that are available to you. And these are three examples. that can move you to other places that you might want to be, can make you better at what you're already doing. And that if you have that kind of inquiry mind, then these are examples of something that you can avail yourself of, to continue your inquiry.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:27  
Okay, was it you want to go?

Speaker 4  1:20:30  
Yeah, I'll just say this. If you're going to work in trench in tech transfer, you have to be a jack of all trades, you can't, you can't just be good at one thing. All of these programs are designed to help you expand your capability. So if you're more on the law side, you know, it's going to be helpful for you to be conversant in science. If you're more on the science side, it's going to be helpful for you to understand law and regulation, there's so many issues that come up, that are actually rooted in legal and regulatory and business concepts. And so if you, if you come to tech transfer with a science background, which I know a lot of people do, expand your horizons, and you'll be better at your work. Because instead of saying, I can't go there, you'll be able to go there.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:16  
All right, Rene, closes off.

Speaker 5  1:21:19  
So I would agree, when I reflect back on one of my former positions at the Department of Health and Human Services in the general counsel's office, right, and, you know, huge expanse of subject matter, you know, from, you know, cutting edge research science at the NIH drug approval process at the FDA, and then, you know, to all of the the intersections with those areas with, you know, what the Medicare and Medicaid programs are going to pay to, for people to receive treatment, right. And so this tremendous intersection of, you know, science law, and then, you know, what is the impact of all these government programs and policies on the business world. And so, um, you know, having a preparation that really allows you to, you know, understand each of these sectors, I think, is really important, if you're going to work in this field, and I think all these programs will give you the opportunity to develop that perspective.

Speaker 2  1:22:22  
Okay, sounds good, good way to close up. And if we don't have any more questions, I wanted to thank all of the speakers here today for giving their time and sharing about this program and these programs and the value it brings to the professionals. I also want to thank all the viewers that could join us and please do you know, let others know about these programs as well. And, and again, thank you very much, and hope you enjoyed it. I

Speaker 1  1:22:53  
just want to say thank you to all the panelists on behalf of autumn. We really appreciate your time. Those that joined us. Thanks for joining and we have recorded this. So if somebody was joining late, they couldn't catch the recording on the autumn website next week. Have a wonderful afternoon, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai