August 2017

Business leaders probably didn’t think the honeymoon would be over so fast. A CEO as President, a deregulation czar, billionaires in the cabinet- what could possibly go wrong?

When Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck, resigned from one of the President’s business advisory councils because he didn’t believe that President Trump had responded appropriately to the tragic events in Charlottesville, I really didn’t think it would have much of an impact. I had originally planned to blog about How (Not) To Teach a Class on Startups, and I will next week (unless there is other breaking news). But yesterday, I decided to blog about Frazier, and to connect his actions to a talk I gave to UM law students at orientation last week about how CEOs talk about corporate responsibility but it doesn’t always make a difference. I started drafting this post questioning how many people would actually run to their doctors asking to switch their medications to or from Merck products because of Frazier’s stance on Charlottesville. Then I thought perhaps, Frazier’s stance would have a bigger impact on the millennial employees who will make up almost 50% of the employee base in the next few years. Maybe he would…

From an e-mail I received earlier today: 

————

FACULTY POSITION IN BUSINESS AND LAW 

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a tenure-track position at any level (Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor) in its Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics.  Applicants must have a J.D., a J.S.D./S.J.D., a Ph.D. in law, or an equivalent law degree from an accredited institution. An additional graduate degree in a relevant field is desirable but not required. For applicants in a doctoral program, an expected degree completion date of no later than July 1, 2019 is acceptable.

Applicants must have a demonstrated research interest in an area of law relevant to the Wharton School’s business education and research missions. Examples of such fields include, without limitation, corporate law, employment and labor law, financial regulation, securities regulation, and global trade and investment law.

The Wharton School has one of the largest and most widely published business school faculties in the world, with ten academic departments and over twenty research centers. Legal scholars in its Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department publish their research in leading law reviews and journals in the United States and abroad. The Department’s faculty teach…

Earlier this week, Professor Bainbridge posted California court completely bollixes up business law nomenclature, discussing Keith Paul Bishop’s post on Curci Investments, LLC v. Baldwin, Cal. Ct. App. Case No. G052764 (Aug. 10, 2017).  The good professor, noting (with approval) what he calls my possibly “Ahabian” obsession with courts and their LLC references, says that “misusing terminology leads to misapplied doctrine.”  Darn right.

To illustrate his point, let’s discuss a 2016 Colorado case that manages to highlight how both Colorado and Utah have it wrong. As is so often the case, the decision turns on incorrectly merging doctrine from one entity type (the corporation) into another (the LLC) without acknowledging or explaining why that makes sense.  To the court’s credit, they got the choice of law right, applying the internal affairs doctrine to use Utah law for veil piercing a Utah LLC, even though the case was in a Colorado court. 

After correctly deciding to use Utah law, the court then went down a doctrinally weak path.  Here we go:

Marquis is a Utah LLC. (ECF No. 1 ¶ 7.) Utah courts apply traditional corporate veil-piercing principles to LLCs. See, e.g., Lodges at Bear Hollow Condo. Homeowners Ass’n, Inc.

…

Former BLPB editor Steve Bradford has posted a new paper adding to his wonderful series of articles on crowdfunding (on which I and so many others rely in our crowdfunding work).  This article, entitled “Online Arbitration as a Remedy for Crowdfunding Fraud” (and forthcoming in the Florida State University Law Review), focuses on a hot topic in many areas of lawyering–online dispute resolution, or ODR.  Steve brings the discussion to bear on his crowdfunding work.  Specifically, he suggests online arbitration as an efficacious way of resolving allegations of fraud in crowdfunding.  Here’s the abstract:

It is now legal to see securities to the general public in unregistered, crowdfunded offerings. But offerings pursuant to the new federal crowdfunding exemption pose a serious risk of fraud. The buyers will be mostly small, unsophisticated investors, the issuers will be mostly small startups about whom little is known, and crowdfunded offerings lack some of the protections available in registered offerings. Some of the requirements of the exemption may reduce the incidence of fraud, but there will undoubtedly be fraudulent offerings.

An effective antifraud remedy is needed to compensate investors and help deter wrongdoers. But, because of the small dollar amounts…

Whenever new corporate governance terms are developed that function to diminish shareholder power – like arbitration provisions, or forum selection, or loser-pays – concern develops among (at least some) investors that these terms will become the norm.  It’s not about one company that does or doesn’t adopt the term; it’s about the fear that several companies will adopt them, and eventually it will become standard, so that shareholders will not be able to exert discipline by avoiding companies with the disfavored provision.

In other words, companies will behave as though they’re in a cartel when selecting these terms, and they’ll be able to do it because they can easily coordinate with each other.  There are a limited set of underwriters and white shoe law firms that will advise them, and those entities will propagate the new development throughout the system.  Cf. Elisabeth de Fontenay, Law Firm Selection and the Value of Transactional Lawyering, 41 J. Corp. Law 393 (2015) (explaining the value-added by elite law firms – knowledge of the latest in deal technology); Roberta Romano & Sarath Sanga, The Private Ordering Solution to Multiforum Shareholder Litigation  (finding that law firm advice is behind the adoption of forum-selection clauses…

In this post I will compiled legal studies professor positions (mostly in business schools) and law school positions that indicate a business law preference. I will not be listing adjunct positions. Please feel free to e-mail me with any additions. I will update the list from time to time.

Updated Sept. 21, 2017

Legal Studies Positions (Mostly Business Schools)

Law School Positions (Expressed Interest in Business Law)

From an e-mail I received this week:

———-

The UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA COLLEGE OF LAW invites applications for lateral candidates for a tenured faculty position to hold the Clayton K. Yeutter Chair at the College of Law. This chaired faculty position will be one of four faculty members to form the core of the newly-formed, interdisciplinary Clayton K. Yeutter Institute for International Trade and Finance. The Institute also will include the Duane Acklie Chair at the College of Business, the Michael Yanney Chair at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the Haggart/Works Professorship for International Trade at the College of Law. The Yeutter Chair, along with the other three professors, will be expected to support the work and objectives and ensure the success of the Yeutter Institute. The Yeutter Chair will teach courses at the College of Law, including International Finance. Other courses may include Corporate Finance and/or other classes related to business and finance. More on the Yeutter Institute can be found at http://news.unl.edu/free-tags/clayton-k-yeutter-institute-of-international-trade-and-finance/.

Minimum Required Qualifications: J.D Degree or Equivalent; Superior Academic Record; Outstanding Record of Scholarship in International Finance and/or other areas related to international business; and Receipt of Tenure at an Accredited Law School.