There are references in the text to sample documents that may be accessed by clicking on the collections designated in bold letters. Most of these are “standard documents”, namely those in widespread use throughout the legal profession whose authors are unknown. Others are the original work product of a transactional clinic— usually drafted by law students in connection with actual client assignments. Materials pertaining to the states of Delaware, California and Illinois, and other jurisdictions, are included for illustrative purposes only—but tend to be representative of what might be appropriate in other states as well.

The purpose of supplying such information and documents is to provide a starting point from which faculty and students can work, on the assumption that the advice given and the documents drafted in the law school clinic will be tailored to reflect the particular facts involved and the differences in legal requirements in each jurisdiction. The names and situations identified in the sample documents are hypothetical.

Of course, there are literally thousands of legal forms, law review articles, and other source materials that students can find in their own law school libraries, by usingLexis or Westlaw, or through commercial search engines like Findlaw.com. A particularly useful resource that one transactional clinic requires its students to purchase is Jean L. Batman, Advising the Small Business, Forms and Advice for the Legal Practitioner, ABA Publication, 2007. The samples referred to and accessible through this explanatory text are only a tiny percentage of what is available. For links to additional source materials and abstracts of relevant legal literature see Resource Links and Entrepreneurship Law Scholarship.

The clinical instructor will have to decide whether the sometimes conflicting objectives of providing timely assistance to real clients while teaching students how to become good transactional lawyers will be better served by directing students to specific materials or by encouraging them to find such materials for themselves. In either event, the clinic will want to establish some kind of depository for electronic copies of items produced or relied upon by the clinic in the course of representing clients. Over a period of time, this will become a valuable resource in and of itself.