Business Law

Skills – 2 units. This seminar will introduce students to the theory and practice of negotiation, mediation, and other forms of consensual dispute resolution, with a special emphasis on cross-cultural negotiation and mediation related to international business transactions. Theoretical content will be provided through course readings, occasional lectures, and guest presentations from non-U.S. lawyers, mediators, and business professionals. But a primary focus of the class will be simulated negotiation and mediation exercises in small groups.

Law 202 Contracts is recommended.

Discussion - 2 units. This is an introductory course into the role of governance, risk management and compliance in business organizations. It will provide a foundational understanding of this increasingly growing and complex area, and of the common legal and regulatory frameworks underpinning effective corporate risk and compliance programs.

Discussion – 1 unit. This course is designed to give students an introduction to the tools and research strategies needed for the practice of transactional law. Students will learn the methods, databases, and specialized materials available for transactional law research. Topics include company research and industry data, corporate formation and organization, SEC filings, regulatory research, contract drafting tools, precedent documents, and specialized practice tools.

Seminar – 2 units. As both an area of academic inquiry and legal practice, business law routinely undergoes rapid evolution and change. That dynamism has seen punctuated acceleration in recent years. Many of the fundamental precepts of business law have been critically interrogated, questioned, and litigated. This seminar seeks to expose students to these recent development in business law with a focus on modern issues in corporate law, securities, and antitrust.

Seminar – 3 units. The course will cover the fundamentals of the corporate governance theory, discussing the most important topics on a worldwide perspective focusing on the 2023 version of the “G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance”. We will discuss the challenges in the implementation of such principles depending on the characteristics of the region and other relevant factors. In this sense, students will assess some cases of countries where these difficulties are higher than others, as well as examples of good practices that have been implemented with success.

Seminar – 3 hours. An increasingly popular trend in legal scholarship is the use of quantitative data to inform legal theories and socio-political debates. Indeed, it is rare today to come across a law review article or Supreme Court opinion that does not reference or rely upon some analysis of data to make a legal argument. Therefore, being able to be a critical consumer of empirical legal analysis is a skill that every lawyer should have. In this class, you will learn to be *both* a critical consumer and producer of empirical legal scholarship.

Lecture - Society’s expectations of companies are changing and companies are responding. Many companies go beyond compliance with the law to address environmental and social issues, from climate change to diversity. This new articulation of corporate purpose raises complex legal, ethical, and business questions. This class uses the case study method to examine this paradigm shift in the business and investment community. Each week we will analyze a particular company or business trend.

Lecture - 4 hours. This class is an introduction to the federal income taxation of business entities including corporations and partnerships. This course will examine the federal income tax relationship between corporations and their owners and will cover the transfer of funds into a corporation on formation and the re-transfer of money and property from the corporation to its shareholders.

Skills - This skills-based course introduces students to practical application of legal concepts in client counseling and drafting of effective business documents. Students will engage with each other in real-life problem solving, drafting, and textual analysis in the context of a multiple rounds of review and redlining. The emphasis is on dynamic commercial negotiations and expectations of lawyers common in the tech industry, but the core skills are transferrable to other areas of practice.

Skills - 2 hours. Drafting a Solar Farm Bill is a practicum in which the class acts as an advisory law firm for its client, a solar farm bill solution and its facilitator, the educational non-profit Climate Solutions Advocacy Institute (CSAI). The class objective is to provide the client with a white paper that can advise CSAI in its development of a massive solar farm bill, financed by green bonds.