New York Law School (NYLS) is launching its Fashion Law Initiative with the day-long symposium “Robot Couture: The Future of Fashion, Law, and Technology.” The symposium is a meeting of legal practitioners, scholars, and fashion designers on topics such as the privacy and intellectual property issues raised by smart devices in fashion, anti-counterfeiting enforcement for fashion brands in the digital age, and the impact of 3-D printing on the future of fashion. Guests include counsel for Balmain, Christian Louboutin, Coach, Estée Lauder, Hermès, Rebecca Minkoff, and others.
“As ‘New York’s Law School,’ we sit within the beating heart of the legal, fashion, and technology sectors,” said Dean and President Anthony W. Crowell. “Through the Fashion Law Initiative, we will train a new generation of lawyers who can meet the fashion industry’s complex and evolving legal needs. We will bring NYLS’s tradition of experiential learning to this field, and students in the program will be able to gain hands-on legal experience working with top fashion brands.”
NYLS is one of just a few law schools with fashion-law programming—and its program is distinctly focused on the technology that is changing how retailers sell their products, how designers create products from clothing to fitness trackers, and how fashion law attorneys serve their clients.
“The Fashion Law Initiative is an exciting step forward in NYLS's thoroughly modern take on legal education," said Ari Ezra Waldman, Director of the Innovation Center and Associate Professor of Law. “Our graduates have been representing designers, brands, and fashion houses for years, but this Initiative is uniquely focused on training fashion lawyers to adapt to a world of new technologies, from facial recognition and RFID tags to online platforms that sell knock-off designs. Brands are tracking their customers online and in stores; they are collecting vast amounts of data and targeting customers with advertisements. Our Initiative prepares students to address these vanguard tech-law issues from Day 1.”
The Fashion Law Initiative is housed within New York Law School’s Innovation Center for Law and Technology, an interdisciplinary program at the center of law, technology, and society. Fashion law crosses disciplines as well, demanding expertise in intellectual property, real estate, contracts, and international trade. Students in the program will benefit from specialized coursework, clinical and experiential learning opportunities, networking, lectures by industry professionals, and fashion-industry externships.
Founded in 1891, New York Law School (NYLS) is an independent law school located in the heart of New York City’s legal, government, financial, and emerging tech centers. Known as “New York’s law school,” NYLS embraces the city as its classroom by complementing a rigorous legal education with an innovative and diverse set of “uniquely New York” experiential learning opportunities. Since NYLS opened its doors 125 years ago, its graduates have gone on to hold high elected and appointed office in the City, lead large and small firms, and gain broad recognition as captains of business and industry. Our renowned faculty of prolific scholars has built the School’s strength in such areas as constitutional law, civil and human rights, business and finance law, media and information law, tax law, real estate, and a number of interdisciplinary fields. NYLS has more than 18,000 graduates and currently enrolls approximately 900 students in its full-time, part-time, and Two-Year Honors J.D. programs. The Law School also offers an advanced-degree program in Tax Law. NYLS has been ranked among the top law schools for clinical and experiential learning in New York State and nationally by the National Jurist for the past two years. It also received the highest available rating of “A” for its Intellectual Property and Technology Law programs in the Winter 2016 edition of National Jurist’s preLaw magazine. Readers of the New York Law Journal have ranked NYLS No. 1 for its Graduate Tax Program six years in a row. www.nyls.edu
