Given all the disruptions to livelihoods and businesses in 2020, a case can be made that the workplace is fast becoming the nation’s new frontier, a suddenly borderless landscape inviting innovators, dreamers, and adventurers from every walk of life to stake their claims to the economic engines of the future.
Entrepreneurs and startups are nothing new, of course. But, with employment and professional norms deeply shaken by the realities of Covid-19, society is discovering that business and commerce—even scientific discovery—may never be, or may never need to be, the same.
So, it’s time to take stock of the startup culture to see what role lawyers may play in this promising and newly “essential” ecosystem.
Lawyers may not be the first professionals who come to mind when imagining the be-sneakered, jean-clad sorts who seem to rule the startup universe, but, if Boston College Law School students are any indication, a lot are willing to take the leap into the universe of perpetual innovation. Indeed, numerous alumni already have.
Several programs and courses at the Law School are preparing the next generation either to start their own businesses or to partner with their entrepreneurial contemporaries. Lawyers bring to this workplace skill sets and frames of mind leavened by the study of law that can counterbalance the creative, high-risk impulses that often drive new enterprises.
Startups and the structures and systems that support them are growing around the world, in the US, and in Boston. The numbers in this report provide a glimpse of that entrepreneurial ecosystem and BC Law’s place within it.
To view the infographic, click here.
Sources: Financeonline; Fundera; Crunchbase; US Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy; Smallbizgenius; HubSpot; Solopreneur Institute; Boston Business Journal/Renaissance Capital.