The BU/MIT Student Innovations Law Clinic (SILC) is a free and confidential legal service for students at MIT and BU who seek legal assistance related to their research, advocacy, and creative projects. The clinic is staffed by BU Law students under law faculty supervision in three different practice groups: Intellectual Property & Media; Privacy, Security & Health; and Venture & Finance. Over the course of the year, SILC provides counseling and representation to clients on a wide variety of legal issues, including intellectual property, information privacy, corporate law, cybersecurity, finance and business regulation, and media law.
SILC is the newest chapter in BU Law’s partnership with MIT, which began in 2015 with the creation of the BU/MIT Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property & Cyberlaw Program, home to the Technology Law Clinic and the Startup Law Clinic. The two clinics merged in 2023 to become a unified, full-service legal program. For more about us, read our FAQ below.
The clinic represents currently-enrolled undergraduate or graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Boston University, or entities who have a currently-enrolled MIT or BU student as a key part of their leadership. We are the only legal service in the country that exclusively represents students.
What sorts of legal work do you do?
We can help with many of the legal questions that you encounter while doing innovative work as a student. This can include:
Research – legal issues that come up while conducting independent research projects. This can include issues around intellectual property, information privacy, conflicts between research and your employment, and starting your own projects and ventures that expand from your research activity. We also defend research that faces legal threats, and work with those who seek to use the law to further their research through laws like the Freedom of Information Act or data subject access requests.
Advocacy – any legal questions you have while engaged in technology and innovation law and policy advocacy. We help students interested in interrogating technologies or doing investigative work that might present legal questions, as well as those who seek to participate in the law and policy process by filing regulatory comments, friend-of-the-court briefs, or other activity. We also help students navigate employment and confidentiality issues if they seek to speak out about an issue.
Creation – if you are launching your own project, venture, or organization, we can help you navigate that process. We advise students on when and whether to form an entity, what type of entity to form, how to deal with organizational governance and management, and how to handle early-stage financing and support. We also deal with business and nonprofit regulations that you might encounter as you get your venture off the ground.
Our Specific Legal Practice Areas
Intellectual Property & Media, which addresses:
Counseling on IP protection strategies
Use of third-party IP in various tech and innovation contexts
Registration in trademark and copyright law
Content liability laws and online content liability
Freedom of speech issues in academic and advocacy work
Privacy, Security, & Health, which addresses:
Information privacy laws and regulations in research and industry
Data transfer and cross-border data issues
Cybersecurity and computer access laws
Health regulations, including FDA compliance
Venture & Finance, which addresses:
Entity formation counseling and entity choice
Nonprofit and for-profit entity and governance questions
Business, finance, and securities law regulatory compliance
Early-stage financing
We also work with a network of attorneys in the Boston area that help us with a broader set of legal questions related to your innovative activity.
When is the right time to contact SILC with a legal question?
If you know you are facing some sort of legal threat or demand, please use our intake questionnaire to contact us right away. Waiting to respond in these situations can jeopardize your situation. Outside of that, there are many legal questions that can come up at the project design phase Most are usually best addressed once you have a clear sense of what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. We love to work with students right after they design their research, experiments, publications, and creative project, but before they execute on it. That includes before you do any data collection, as there can be legal issues related to how and where you get that data.
If you’re thinking about forming an entity, registering a trademark, or taking other steps to register your activity with the government, that’s a great time to reach out as well. We routinely advise students on when is the right time to do that and what the consequences are for doing so. We often find that moving to that stage too early can create more problems than it solves, and we can help you with developing intermediate steps as well.
Here are some other situations where it might be good to contact us:
If you’re worried that something about your venture, project, or publication might make someone else upset or angry, or might cause someone else trouble or harm.
If you plan to offer goods or services to the public in the near future.
If you plan to raise funds or hire staff related to your project or venture.
If you’re using data or content generated or controlled by someone else as part of a public-facing project.
If you’re running code that will access others’ computers or websites, such as web scraping or vulnerability testing.
If you’re planning to do research that includes reverse-engineering software or media.
If you’re planning on publishing something that could be used to break the law, cause harm to others, or reveal private or confidential information.
If you plan to incorporate a for-profit or nonprofit venture, or file for status with the IRS.
If you’ve received a legal threat, cease and desist letter, subpoena, or court complaint.
When in doubt, go ahead and fill out our questionnaire and we can assess your situation from there.
Does SILC represent BU or MIT? When should I contact you and when should I contact BU’s or MIT’s attorneys?
The Student Innovations Law Clinic does not represent the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the Trustees of Boston University; we represent students at those universities. When a student is doing work at the request of the university or its faculty or staff, you should instead raise any legal questions internally. That usually means raising the issue with your supervising professor or manager, who can then contact that university’s Office of the General Counsel. We can also help you contact the university counsel’s office if needed.
The line between what’s a “student” project and what’s a “university” project can be confusing, but as a general rule:
We can typically represent you with the independent work you do outside of your normal coursework, or if you want to take your coursework and expand on it separately.
We can typically help you with the projects, groups, and ventures you form outside of MIT or BU, and any issues that they have.
Work that is done directly as part of a professor’s research or a project of the university is more likely to be handled by university attorneys.
We may be able to work with you on projects related to university student groups or your coursework, but that often depends on the particular facts. Feel free to contact us and we can introduce you to your university’s counsel if we determine that they should handle the matter instead.
Please note that we do not represent students in any disputes with MIT or BU, or any of its current staff or students. If you have an issue there you should contact a private attorney.
How much does this cost?
We do not charge for our time doing legal work in this program; this is a service that is made available to students thanks to the support of both MIT and BU. If there are out of pocket expenses related to our work—for example, a governmental filing fee or a cost to use a specific service—you will be expected to cover those expenses. We will do our best to let you know if we think that will happen, but for many projects it does not.
I am a BU/MIT student and I think this is really cool. How can I support you?
Tell your friends about us! We’re trying to make sure that all MIT and BU students are aware that this resource is here for them, and that they can always contact us if they need help.
I am not a BU/MIT student, but I think this is really cool. How can I support you?
We welcome your support! MIT has created a donation page where you can give funds specifically to support our program. Or, make a gift through Boston University’s website. You can also contact our Executive Director, Andy Sellars, at sellars@bu.edu, and he can talk more about that.
Researcher Vasanth Sarathy (’10) is exploring how AI algorithms can be deployed to flag and counteract misinformation online, in part by identifying spurious arguments.
