Roadmap to Innovation
At BU Law, Paresh Kumar (’18) hones his experience at the intersection of science, business, and the law.
Paresh Kumar (’18) came to Boston University School of Law with a purpose and a plan. After earning his doctor of pharmacy from Northeastern University, he felt drawn toward entrepreneurship and drug development. “I came to BU Law because I wanted to help bring breakthrough medical technologies to patients,” he says. “That was the roadmap for my law school experience.”
While in school, he concentrated on developing knowledge and skills in both intellectual property and corporate transactional law. He also sought out hands-on opportunities to implement what he learned.
On the recommendation of a mentor, Kumar applied to join the MIT Volunteer Consulting Group (VCG). Open to graduate students from the Boston area, the competitive program places accepted students into small groups tasked with solving a business problem for a local company. Once the program concludes, students present their recommendations to the client.
Kumar was accepted to participate in the program’s summer 2016 and winter 2018 projects. “During both engagements, I was on teams with mostly with PhD students from Harvard and MIT,” he says, noting the dynamic set of skills and interests each participant brought to the table to solve the same problem. “I learned a great deal from my teammates.”
In one of the engagements, the client, a local biotechnology startup, was looking for predictions and advice on the current therapeutics market. They turned to Kumar’s team for guidance and a commercialization strategy. “We were trying to help them better understand their landscape,” he says. “They’ve come up with something very interesting and exciting.”
Working on these projects has opened Kumar’s eyes to “the interplay between science, business, and law,” he says. “It is important to tackle business strategy from all three of these angles. In the end, it’s all about spotting and managing risk, and my legal training allowed me execute on that.”
Now, as a student attorney in the BU Law Entrepreneurship & Intellectual Property Clinic (launched in 2015 in partnership with MIT), Kumar works with entrepreneurs on a daily basis. Under the guidance of licensed attorneys with years of experience in startup, intellectual property, and transactional matters, clinic students manage each step of the client relationship, from the initial intake interview through the completion of the engagement. “The best part is seeing innovative solutions to real-world problems,” he says, “and of course advising these passionate entrepreneurs as they set out to make an impact.”
Ultimately, Kumar says, the key is to identify and ask the right questions. “The most valuable skill that BU Law gave me was the ability to think like a lawyer,” he says. “It’s a unique mindset and invaluable skill. Coming from a science background, I used to think about problems in a linear way-testing a series of hypothesis until one checked out and I found the answer. Law school is not like that. At first, I was uncomfortable with the amount of subjectivity during my 1L classes, but now, I see that my role is to identify and evaluate possible solutions and ultimately make a decision or form an argument.”
After graduation, Kumar will join McDermott Will & Emery (Boston) in their patent litigation practice.
Reported by Josee Matela (CAS/COM’20)
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