Can I install Snow Leopard on a new partition on a Macbook Pro (Late 2011)?

I need to get Pro Tools 9 up and running again after I migrated from PC to Mac, but I know that Pro Tools 9 doesnt work with Lion.. I dont have the money to upgrade to PT10 so my thought was to go downgrade to Snow Leopard to get it working. But I dont want to leave Lion, so my question is if I can make a new partition and install Snow Leopard on the new partition and have both OSs bootable?
The guy in the store I bought my mac from said Snow Leopard probably wouldnt play nice with the mac since its adapted to Lion but I dont trust people that get money for preaching about the constant need for "the latest". So I thought I'd ask the experts instead, so here I am! What do you guys think?

theoretically, it should work - but the guy at the Apple Store is correct....computers that ship with the latest operating system do not support being downgraded.
You might not get past the spinning beach ball & gray screen if you try to boot from the Snow Leopard install disc.
It's worth a shot though if you want to try it. Just don't try to 'downgrade' the current Lion installation back to Snow Leopard. Try instead to create a new partition specifically for Snow Leopard. Disk Utility - select the top HD (probably reads Hitachi something)...select it, click on the Partition tab. Select the top partition, and you should then be able to see the + so you can add a new partition. I would probably make it about 20GB give or take depending on how much space you think you will need - but i believe the Snow Leopard installation by itself takes up around 8-10GB.
Once this partition is created, insert your Snow Leopard installation disc, restart the computer and hold the C key down to start from the install disc. When it walks you through the steps for installation, select the newly created Snow Leopard partition. Install. Be sure to go through all the Software Updates (numerous times) after the installation is done.
You can select which startup disc you want to boot from by holding the Option button down at startup until you see the gray startup manager that shows your Lion partition, Recovery Disc partiton, and your Snow Leopard partition.
If for whatever reason this doesn't work, simply just erase the partition. It likely will not work but you should be able to just erase that newly created partition without any other problems.

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