Students from 12 law schools participated in the 2012 National IP LawMeet^® which took place at the Earle Mack School of Law on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9. 

The IP LawMeet^® is a lawyering competition created by Earle Mack School of Law professor Karl Okamoto where students negotiate a hypothetical intellectual property agreement as practicing attorneys would in a real-world scenario.  The 2012 National IP LawMeet^® is part of the LawMeets^® family of live, interactive educational competitions designed to give law students a hands-on experience to develop and hone their transactional lawyering skills.

Teams from American University Washington College of Law, the Earle Mack School of Law, New York Law School, Northwestern University Law School, Santa Clara University School of Law, South Texas College of Law, Suffolk University Law School, Temple University Beasley School of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Widener University School of Law, William and Mary College of Law, represented fictional mass energy storage facility technology clients negotiating a cross-licensing deal.

Over the course of the two-day competition, the teams were judged by veteran practitioners on their understanding of the intellectual property issues at stake and their ability to forge a favorable deal for their respective clients.

Earle Mack School of Law 3Ls Thomas Kelly, Mina Thomas and Deidre Martin reached the semi-final round of the competition with the top-prize eventually going to the University of Pennsylvania's team. 

Following the final round, competition judges Benjamin E. Leace from Ratner Prestia, Joseph T. Stapleton from Montgomery McCracken, Anthony S. Volpe from Volpe and Koenig and Steven J. Rocci from Woodcock Washburn, all experts in the field of intellectual property, performed their own version of the negotition so that the student participants could learn from the experts.  

Rocci praised the students for recognizing that a calm demeanor is important to any transactional negotition.  Volpe was similarly impressed by the students' professionalism while Stapleton commented that the students not only "looked like lawyers" but, more importantly, "prepared and acted the way lawyers should act."  Leace admired how the competition allowed students to carry on such detailed transactional conversations from a hypothetical scenario and also stressed that preparedness was the key to successful negotiating, claiming "preparedness breeds confidence." 

The IP LawMeet^® is part of a series of transactional LawMeets. The Fourth Annual 2013 National Transactional LawMeet^® will be held at the law school on March 28 and 29.