Alexandra Horne on Santa Clara Law, Intellectual Property, and Technology Law Careers

^{Last Updated: September 2026}

For law students interested in intellectual property, technology, privacy, artificial intelligence, and the legal issues surrounding innovation, the relationship between a law school and the industries around it can be particularly important.

Santa Clara University School of Law has long occupied a distinctive position in this area because of its location in Silicon Valley. In an earlier interview with Top-Law-Schools.com, former Assistant Dean Alexandra Horne discussed Santa Clara Law’s development as a center for intellectual property and technology-law education, the importance of experiential learning, and the role that relationships with practitioners and technology companies could play in preparing law students for practice.

Although specific faculty members, programs, internships, and employer relationships mentioned in the original interview reflected the period in which it was conducted, many of Horne’s broader observations remain relevant to students considering a career at the intersection of law and technology.

Today, Santa Clara continues its focus on this field through programs associated with its Datta Center for High Tech Law, including technology-focused certificates and the Tech Edge J.D. Prospective students evaluating Santa Clara can also review the Santa Clara Law profile on Top-Law-Schools.com while considering factors such as cost, employment outcomes, geographic preferences, and career goals.

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally conducted in 2006. The article has been rewritten and expanded to provide evergreen context for prospective law students. Statements about particular employers, faculty members, internships, rankings, and programs in the original interview describe circumstances at that time and should not be interpreted as guarantees about current opportunities.

Alexandra Horne’s Connection to Santa Clara Law and Intellectual Property

Alexandra Horne’s connection with Santa Clara’s technology-law program began well before she became an administrator at the law school.

When Horne chose Santa Clara as a law student, she was already interested in becoming an intellectual property attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area. Santa Clara’s developing strength in intellectual property helped influence her decision.

Her experience illustrates an important principle for prospective students: choosing a law school can involve more than comparing overall rankings. Students with well-defined career interests may also want to examine the depth of relevant courses, access to practitioners, experiential opportunities, geographic placement, alumni networks, and connections to industries in which they hope to practice.

Students making this decision can benefit from examining multiple factors rather than focusing on a single ranking or specialty designation. The broader Top-Law-Schools.com resources for evaluating law schools can help applicants compare schools from admissions, academic, employment, and financial perspectives.

How Santa Clara Developed Its Focus on Technology and Intellectual Property Law

Horne described Santa Clara’s intellectual property curriculum as an important part of the school even during her own years as a student.

Courses covering areas such as patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and unfair competition gave students opportunities to study the legal rules governing innovation and commercial intellectual property.

Over time, Santa Clara expanded the institutional structure surrounding those subjects. What began as a significant collection of IP and technology courses developed into broader programs devoted to the intersection of law, business, intellectual property, and technological innovation.

That evolution has continued.

Santa Clara today operates the Datta Center for High Tech Law, which focuses on educating lawyers to address intellectual property and technology-related legal problems. The law school also offers its High Tech Law Certificate and Tech Edge J.D., among other technology-related educational opportunities.

In 2026, Santa Clara further expanded its High Tech Law Certificate by announcing a specialization in Artificial Intelligence Law. The development reflects how significantly the definition of “technology law” has broadened since Horne’s original interview.

A student considering the field today may encounter issues involving:

Intellectual property
Artificial intelligence
Data privacy
Cybersecurity
Technology transactions
Software licensing
Digital platforms
Trade secrets
Internet law
Biotechnology
Technology regulation
Corporate transactions involving technology companies

For students considering whether this field matches their interests, LawCrossing’s overview of careers in intellectual property law provides additional insight into the types of work IP lawyers may perform.

Why Location in Silicon Valley Matters

One of the recurring themes in Horne’s discussion was Santa Clara Law’s location.

A law school’s geography does not by itself guarantee employment, but location can influence the professional environment available to students. Santa Clara sits within Silicon Valley, where technology companies, startups, venture investors, law firms, entrepreneurs, engineers, and other participants in the innovation economy routinely encounter complex legal problems.

For a law student interested in technology, proximity to an industry can potentially provide opportunities to hear directly from practitioners, attend professional events, build relationships, pursue experiential learning, and better understand the business problems lawyers are asked to solve.

Horne emphasized that practicing attorneys from technology-focused law firms and companies could contribute perspectives that complemented traditional academic instruction.

That concept remains relevant well beyond Santa Clara. Prospective law students should investigate how effectively any school connects classroom education with the legal market surrounding it.

Questions worth asking include:

Which employers recruit from the school?
Where do graduates actually work?
What externships and clinics are available?
Are practicing attorneys involved in courses or programs?
What student organizations are active in the intended practice area?
How extensive is the alumni network in the desired market?
Does the school offer meaningful opportunities to gain practical experience?

These considerations are particularly important for students choosing schools because of a specialized practice interest.

Internships and Experiential Learning in Technology Law

Experiential learning was another major theme of Horne’s original discussion.

At the time of the interview, she described relationships through which Santa Clara students obtained internships with technology companies and law firms. Some specific companies and arrangements mentioned in the historical interview may no longer operate in the same form, but the broader lesson remains highly relevant.

Students interested in IP and technology law should seek opportunities to apply legal principles outside the classroom.

Internships, externships, clinics, research opportunities, part-time legal positions, moot court programs, journals, and supervised projects can expose students to how technology-related legal problems are handled in practice.

Law students should not assume that merely completing specialized coursework will make them competitive for specialized legal positions. Employers may also evaluate writing ability, analytical skills, technical understanding where relevant, business judgment, academic performance, demonstrated interest in the field, and practical experience.

LawCrossing’s guide on how law students should approach internships offers additional guidance on identifying and pursuing practical legal experience.

The Importance of Networking with Lawyers and Industry Professionals

Horne also emphasized the value of bringing practicing lawyers into contact with students.

During the period discussed in the original interview, Santa Clara hosted conferences, lectures, symposia, and recurring opportunities for students to meet lawyers working on technology-related legal matters.

These interactions matter because specialized legal careers are not built through coursework alone.

Students can learn a great deal by speaking with lawyers about questions such as:

What does the attorney actually do each day?
Which legal skills are most important in the practice?
Which courses proved useful after graduation?
How did the attorney enter the field?
What technical or business knowledge is helpful?
What do employers expect from entry-level lawyers?
Which emerging areas are generating new legal work?

Professional relationships developed during law school can also expose students to practice areas they did not previously know existed.

For students preparing for a legal profession increasingly influenced by emerging technologies, LawCrossing’s article on law students and legal innovation explores how technological literacy, interdisciplinary knowledge, and adaptability are becoming more important.

Intellectual Property Is Broader Than Patent Law

Students sometimes use “intellectual property law” and “patent law” interchangeably, but the field is much broader.

Intellectual property can encompass several distinct areas of legal practice, including patents, trademarks, copyright, trade secrets, licensing, IP transactions, and litigation.

Patent prosecution has particularly specific qualification requirements, while many other forms of intellectual property and technology practice do not require lawyers to have engineering or science degrees.

This distinction is important for students without technical undergraduate backgrounds who nevertheless have an interest in technology companies or innovation.

Lawyers working with technology businesses may handle matters involving contracts, corporate transactions, privacy, cybersecurity, employment issues, licensing, regulatory compliance, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, venture financing, and many other subjects.

For a more detailed explanation of the different areas within the practice, students can review LawCrossing’s guide to intellectual property law.

Technology Law Has Expanded Dramatically

Technology law in the 2020s covers issues that were far less developed when the original interview with Horne took place.

Artificial intelligence is one obvious example.

Lawyers are increasingly being asked to understand questions involving the development, deployment, contracting, governance, privacy, intellectual property, risk management, and regulation of AI systems.

Cybersecurity and privacy have likewise become significant areas of legal practice.

Technology transactions attorneys may advise companies on software licenses, cloud services, data arrangements, outsourcing contracts, intellectual property rights, and commercial agreements.

Corporate lawyers working with technology businesses may encounter venture capital transactions, startup financing, acquisitions, governance questions, and technology-related due diligence.

Litigators may handle trade secret disputes, patent litigation, privacy disputes, online platform issues, and other technology-related conflicts.

This expansion helps explain why technology-law education should not be viewed solely as preparation for becoming a patent attorney.

LawCrossing’s article on the role of technology in shaping law student career opportunities examines several of the emerging opportunities created by this broader transformation of legal practice.

Santa Clara Law’s Technology Programs Today

The institutional names and details have evolved since Horne’s interview, but technology remains an identifiable component of Santa Clara Law’s academic offerings.

The law school’s Datta Center for High Tech Law currently focuses on intellectual property and technology issues and supports opportunities involving education, professional engagement, and emerging areas of technology practice.

Santa Clara’s High Tech Law Certificate provides students with a structured way to pursue technology-focused coursework. The certificate has developed beyond traditional IP subjects and now encompasses areas such as corporate, international, and artificial intelligence law within the broader high-tech curriculum.

Santa Clara also offers the Tech Edge J.D., which combines law, business, technology, skills development, and mentoring. The program reflects an increasingly important idea in legal education: lawyers advising technology clients benefit from understanding not only legal doctrine but also the business and technology environments in which their clients operate.

Prospective students should always consult Santa Clara Law directly for current course offerings, certificate requirements, faculty, application procedures, and experiential opportunities because these details can change from year to year.

What Prospective Law Students Can Learn from Alexandra Horne’s Experience

Perhaps the most enduring lesson from Horne’s interview is that students should think carefully about the relationship between their legal education and the career they hope to build.

A specialized program can be valuable, but it should be evaluated as one part of a much larger law-school decision.

Students considering Santa Clara—or any school because of a particular specialty—should examine:

Employment outcomes. Determine where graduates actually work and what kinds of positions they obtain.
Geographic placement. Consider whether graduates commonly practice in the market where you hope to build your career.
Cost and debt. Compare tuition, scholarships, living expenses, scholarship conditions, and anticipated borrowing.
Academic opportunities. Look beyond marketing descriptions and review actual courses, clinics, certificates, journals, and faculty.
Experiential opportunities. Determine whether students can gain meaningful practical experience.
Employer access. Research recruiting programs, externships, alumni relationships, and connections to local employers.
Professional community. Consider whether the school's location and programs provide access to lawyers working in your desired field.
Career flexibility. Remember that career interests can change during law school, so evaluate the school's broader employment opportunities as well.

The underlying question should not simply be, “Does this law school have a strong specialty?”

A better question is, “Will the complete educational, financial, geographic, and professional package help me pursue the kind of career I want?”

Building a Career at the Intersection of Law and Technology

The legal profession surrounding technology will continue to evolve.

Specific technologies change. Companies rise and fall. New regulations appear. Practice areas expand, merge, and become more specialized.

The fundamental skills lawyers need, however, remain remarkably durable: clear writing, careful analysis, sound judgment, communication, research, adaptability, and the ability to understand clients and their objectives.

Students interested in technology law should therefore pursue both specialization and strong general legal training.

Learning about AI or privacy can be valuable. So can becoming an excellent writer.

Studying intellectual property can be valuable. So can understanding contracts, corporations, civil procedure, evidence, and professional responsibility.

Technical knowledge can distinguish a lawyer, but it works best when combined with the fundamental skills required to solve sophisticated legal problems.

Students interested in how technological change may affect their careers can also read LawCrossing’s discussion of how to future-proof a legal career in a rapidly changing market.

Frequently Asked Questions About Santa Clara Law and Technology Law

Is Santa Clara Law Known for Technology and Intellectual Property Law?

Santa Clara has a long history of offering education focused on intellectual property and technology. Its location in Silicon Valley and current Datta Center for High Tech Law continue to make technology-related legal education an identifiable part of the school.

Students should nevertheless evaluate the entire law school—including cost, employment outcomes, geographic placement, and personal career objectives—rather than selecting a school solely because of one specialty.

What Areas Can Technology Lawyers Practice In?

Technology-related legal careers may involve intellectual property, patents, trademarks, copyright, privacy, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, technology transactions, venture capital, corporate law, licensing, regulatory matters, trade secrets, litigation, and many other areas.

Do Students Need a Science or Engineering Degree to Practice Technology Law?

Not necessarily.

Certain patent-related careers have specific technical eligibility requirements, but many areas of intellectual property and technology law do not require an engineering or science degree. Students interested in privacy, licensing, copyright, trademarks, technology transactions, AI governance, corporate work, or technology litigation may follow different educational paths.

How Important Are Internships for Technology-Law Students?

Practical experience can be extremely valuable. Internships and externships allow students to observe how lawyers work with real clients and legal problems while helping them develop professional relationships and explore different practice areas.

Students can also build experience through clinics, journals, research positions, competitions, student organizations, part-time legal work, and other experiential opportunities.

Should Students Choose a Law School Because of Its Intellectual Property Ranking?

A specialty ranking can provide one source of information, but it should not determine the decision by itself.

Prospective students should also examine total cost, scholarships, employment outcomes, bar passage, geographic placement, academic offerings, faculty, practical opportunities, alumni networks, and whether the school provides realistic access to the legal market where they want to work.

Final Takeaway

Alexandra Horne’s earlier discussion of Santa Clara Law captures an important period in the development of technology-focused legal education. Although particular programs and employer relationships have changed over time, the central ideas remain relevant.

Students preparing for careers involving technology should seek more than specialized course titles. They should look for opportunities to develop strong legal fundamentals, gain practical experience, understand the businesses and industries they hope to serve, meet practicing lawyers, and build professional relationships.

Santa Clara’s position in Silicon Valley and its continuing investment in technology-focused legal education make it an important school for prospective students interested in this field to investigate. At the same time, applicants should evaluate Santa Clara using the same rigorous financial, employment, academic, and geographic analysis they would apply to any law school.

The best law school choice is ultimately one that aligns specialized interests with realistic career opportunities and an acceptable financial investment.

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