When Nate Howard signed up for Professor Karl Okamoto’s Law and Entrepreneurship class, little did he know that he’d play a role in opening a clinic for start-ups that would one day launch a new business that would hire him as its corporate counsel just one year later. If only he’d had a crystal ball.

Howard, who graduated in 2012, remembers discussing the power of entrepreneurs to lift the economy out of the doldrums when he was in the class. Okamoto and the students talked about how to help nurture start-ups, and the idea to launch the law school’s Entrepreneurial Law Clinic was born.

By fall of 2011, Howard was one of the first students to sign up for the new clinic, where he and a classmate began working with a trio of entrepreneurs on their plans for a company that would offer reduced-rate loans to MBA students. The entrepreneurs sensed that successful alumni from Wharton and other business schools would be eager to make low-risk, socially responsible investments that would offer a healthy return.

Howard and his classmate helped the entrepreneurs take initial steps to formalize their ideas for the company, CommonBond, and to create an operating agreement that would define their respective roles, rights and responsibilities.

Some of the work involved guiding the CommonBond founders to seek advice on investment funds from a firm that handles such specialized areas of the law.

"We were able to point out issues they weren’t even thinking about because they were so busy launching the business," Howard said, adding that he was pleasantly surprised by how much legal assistance students in the clinic were able to provide, with supervision from Clinic Director Steve Rosard and one of the clinic’s attorney mentors. "It was as much as an associate at a firm can do, if not more."

Just as importantly, Howard learned the importance of networking at social events in the start-up world from Rosard, an experienced attorney who has counseled some 200 owners of new businesses in his career.

"That’s what the good attorneys in this space do," Howard said.

Rosard said Howard showed an aptitude for the delicate work of helping entrepreneurs navigate minefields that can prevent new businesses from getting off the ground.

"Nate’s a very bright, very personable guy who had a really good understanding of what’s involved in starting up a company," Rosard said.

As Howard worked with CommonBond’s founders, he became bullish on the company, which had raised $3.5 million from investors and began planning to move to a new corporate office in New York City.

"Student loans are a real problem, and this company tapped into a great solution," Howard said, noting that the company plans to expand into non-MBA loan programs. "It’s such an exciting idea to get behind."

And when one of the founders transitioned into a corporate full-time role as planned after graduation, CommonBond’s two other founders voiced their enthusiasm for Howard, offering him a job as corporate counsel, days after he learned he’d passed the Pennsylvania Bar Exam.

"It’s really amazing," Howard said of the journey from a discussion in class to a promising job in New York City.