Business Fellows Program

The Business Fellows program is designed to provide students with the essential knowledge and practical, hands-on experience needed to become exceptional business attorneys.

The application for the Business Fellows program is available here.

Integrated across three years, the Business Fellows program equips future attorneys with the knowledge and skills necessary to become lawyers who will understand their clients’ businesses, ranging from entrepreneurial start-ups to large, publicly-traded companies, and provide these clients useful counsel on both the legal and business challenges confronting them.

The breadth of experience Elon Law will provide, and the emphasis on “doing” rather than just “studying,” will help Elon Law Business Fellows to appreciate that modern business clients require their lawyers not just to answer discrete legal questions, but to understand the interconnectedness between legal and business issues. When they graduate, Business Fellows will have the foundation to become lawyers who will understand their clients’ businesses and provide useful counsel on both legal and business challenges confronting their clients.

Highlights of Elon Law's Business Fellows Program

Each Business Fellow will take a core curriculum of business courses, such as Business Associations, Income Taxation, Securities Regulation, Secured Transactions, Business Drafting, and Negotiations. In addition, Business Fellows will have learning experiences outside the classroom, including:

• A summer externship in a corporate or business setting, such as in-house legal departments;
• Recurring Business Law Roundtables examining emerging legal issues in specific industry and corporate sectors, during which fellows will have opportunities to hear from and network with corporate counsel and senior business executives;
• Regular opportunities to meet with regional, national and world leaders in the fields of business and business law. In the past, Elon Law has hosted business leaders from corporations such as VF Corporation, Lincoln Financial Group, and GE Consumer & Industrial. In fall of 2012, students met with Elon Law advisory board member and former president of the American Bar Association A.P. Carlton (pictured at left in first photo above), Elon Law advisory board member and former North Carolina governor James Hunt (pictured in second photo above) and the Chair of the Elon Law advisory board and former advisor to four United States presidents David Gergen (pictured below);
• Opportunities to counsel businesses through partnerships in development with small business incubators in the state and region.

Other benefits of Elon Law's Business Fellows Program include:

• A stipend covering the tuition cost and living expenses for the summer corporate or business externship;
• A Business Fellows Scholarship toward tuition during the academic year, renewable for three years assuming continued participation in the Business Fellows Program, and;
• Opportunities to engage in current and planned cross-disciplinary courses and special initiatives with Elon’s Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, including collaboration with students and faculty from Elon’s MBA program, ranked #1 in the nation among part-time programs by Bloomberg Businessweek in 2011.

In 2012, The National Jurist ranked Elon #1 for small class sizes and one of “America’s 20 most innovative law schools.” Elon's small community atmosphere and focus on innovation will be hallmarks of the Business Fellows program.

How to Apply

Step 1 – Apply for admission to the School of Law. To be considered for the Fellows program, the application for admission must be submitted and completed no later than Friday, March 1, 2013.

Step 2 – Submit Business Fellows Program Application Materials. The application deadline for Business Fellows entering fall 2013 is Friday, March 1, 2013.  Please mail two essay responses, as well as a current resume, to Admissions Office, Attn: Business Fellows Program, Elon University School of Law, 201 N. Greene Street, Greensboro, NC 27401; or email your essays and resume to the Admissions Office at law@elon.edu (subject line: Business Fellows Program Application). If you have any questions about the application process, please call or email the Admissions Office at 888-ELON-LAW or law@elon.edu.

What happens after I apply?

Applications are reviewed by a faculty committee. Finalists for the Business Fellows Program will be interviewed. Candidates who are selected to interview will be notified by Friday, March 8. Interviews for candidates who are Fellows finalists will be scheduled on March 20, 21 or 22. Fellows will be selected and notified by Friday, March 29, 2013.

For information about other scholarship opportunities and financial aid programs at Elon Law click here.

If you have any questions about the application process or the Business Fellows Program, please feel free to contact Sharon Gaskin, Associate Dean for Admissions (sgaskin@elon.edu; 336-279-9347)