Law school welcomes new clinic director

-By Lori Stuenkel

Jack Lerner, a highly respected intellectual property expert and current fellow at UC-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, will join the USC Gould School of Law faculty this fall as a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor.

Lerner will direct the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic during the 2007-08 school year while Associate Professor Jennifer Urban is visiting at Stanford Law School.

Visiting Clinical Assistant Prof. Jack Lerner will direct the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic.

As part of USC Law School’s clinical education, Lerner will work with students as they counsel and represent real-world clients on projects such as developing model licenses for artists and drafting friend-of-the-court briefs in high profile IP and technology cases.

“As innovation has become a cornerstone of our economy, new technologies have wrought profound changes in how we do business, communicate, create art, film, and music, and even govern ourselves,” Lerner says. “The USC IP and Technology Law Clinic presents students with a unique opportunity to help artists, technologists, people in government, and others confront the challenges that arise from these changes.  I am excited to be able contribute to the important and exciting work that the clinic has been doing.”

Prior to taking the Boalt fellowship, Lerner practiced IP law with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. in Palo Alto, where he participated in cutting-edge patent and copyright infringement litigation involving technologies such as peer-to-peer file-sharing software, flash memory, and educational software.

“Jack brings a remarkable range of substantive knowledge and experience to USC,” says Associate Dean Gregory Keating. “He comes to us from a clinical teaching fellowship at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at Boalt, where he has led students in representing technologists, nonprofit organizations and even the governments of developing countries.”

In 2004, Lerner was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, where he earned his J.D. in 1999. Lerner also clerked for Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Fred I. Parker and U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas Judge G. Thomas Van Bebber.