What they do not teach you in grad school

The past month I have had couple of requests for an inhibitor molecule that I discovered when I was a grad student. Not many bothered me about it for these past 20 years or so but ever since we published a paper showing its effectiveness against triple negative breast cancer cell line there has been increased demand for the molecule.  And it dawned on me (my advisor pointed it out to me actually as I am still naive about these matters) that I better get Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) signed before supplying the molecule.  As I do not work in the lab anymore and it is my students who make it, I have to protect their interests. Therefore, I wrote a letter to the VC (after all he has been tom-toming about how we should foster interaction between the industry and the academia) asking for legal help.  It snaked its way through the Registrar, the academic branch and finally the legal cell who sent it to the lawyer for advise. Finally, the paper came back to me. Yes, I need a MTA and I should the needful.  I stared at it blankly and then I called up the legal cell. Very politely they told me that I should draft the MTA and send it to them through the VC.  They will go through it and let me know whether it is okay or not.  I was about to tell them that I am not a lawyer when it dawned on me that I am a lawyer, an accountant, a manager, a teacher, a researcher, a scientist, an editor, a writer....In addition, it is also my responsibility to get money in for research.  Unfortunately, the graduate school does not prepare you to be anything except being a scientist. The rest of the skills you have to develop yourselves and if you are in an Indian University, with no help from the administration.
As it happened, I googled, picked up few MTA available on the internet, and put my own version of MTA together.  The legal cell approved it.