Stibbe continues to support law incubator project IusStart in new academic year
For the sixth year now, Stibbe is participating in the IusStart initiative of KU Leuven. Through this initiative, final-year law students, academic coaches and lawyers support promising tech start-ups in their legal obstacles in the field of general commercial law and IP and IT law.
Stibbe has been involved in the project from the very beginning, when IusStart was still called the ‘ICT Law Incubator’, and this new academic year is no exception. Our TMT department gladly continues to assist final-year law students and start-ups by acting as their mentors.
Through the IusStart initiative, Stibbe supports the Belgian start-up community and stays closely connected with academic research and educational communities. We teach law students how to think practically and how to apply problem-solving techniques. By taking a hands-on approach, we teach them how to identify problems, how to draft contracts and policies efficiently, and how to engage with clients.
The goal of IusStart is to offer law students a more practical and problem-solving learning experience by incorporating a component in the master's thesis consisting of providing legal advice to start-ups. Although the educational process is paramount, bringing law students, start-ups, academics, and law firms together is also part of EU and national policies to support young businesses and stimulate innovation and employment. The "clients" of IusStart are start-ups (student entrepreneurs, young business starters, etc.) who do not have sufficient funding yet to pay for professional legal advice. Through this initiative, IusStart wants to support entrepreneurship at KU Leuven and in Flanders.
This academic year, Stibbe will support StriveCloud, a promising start-up providing gamified experience platforms. The start-up is designing and implementing gamification solutions for companies in order to motivate and challenge employees, customers and fans. It is a spin-off of the e-sportplatform Kayzr.
Previous participant Arno Soontjens of W3Technics, one of the start-ups supported by Stibbe last year, states: “Being a start-up without funding, getting decent answers to all of our legal questions can be really hard, as we don't have the means to pay for professional advice. The IusStart program gave us access to sound legal advice and counseling from master students of KU Leuven, under the expert professional guidance of the lawyers of Stibbe. For us as starting entrepreneurs, this cooperation is extremely valuable and helpful.”
Erik Valgaeren and Carolien Michielsen from Stibbe are coordinating the project.
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