July 2022

DePaul University College of Law invites applications from entry-level candidates for a tenure-track position expected to begin July 1, 2023. We have particular interest in the areas of Business Law, Contracts, Tax, Commercial Law, and Antitrust. 

DePaul Law is committed to improving society by educating purpose-driven lawyers who will serve their clients, the legal profession, and the broader community in ways that enhance access to justice and promote equitable policies and processes. We enthusiastically encourage applicants who would enrich the diversity of our community to apply. To learn more about us, please visit https://law.depaul.edu/Pages/default.aspx. 

Required Qualifications:

All candidates must hold a J.D. or equivalent degree, possess excellent academic credentials, and demonstrate potential to be an outstanding scholar and teacher.

Special Instructions to Applicants:

Interested candidates should apply online. Required materials include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, list of references, research statement, diverse learning environment statement, and writing sample. Please direct any questions about the position to mhelvest@depaul.edu.

I’m currently working on a piece on anti-ESG legislation for our upcoming BLPB Symposium. According to The Heartland Institute (here), as of April 5, 2022, twenty-eight states have initiated some form of “anti-ESG action.” So, recent news of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pushing for further action in this area caught my eye. Here is an excerpt from relevant coverage by WFSU (go read the full piece here):

DeSantis plans to have the State Board of Administration, which oversees investments, direct pension-fund managers against “using political factors when investing the state’s money.” So-called ESG policies have drawn criticism from Republicans across the country…. Renner, who will become House speaker after the November elections, called the corporate practices a national-security issue and a pocketbook issue. “What we have is these large corporations and banks that are pursuing a woke agenda that is artificially driving up our costs in energy,” Renner said. “There’s a reason why we haven’t built new refineries. There’s a reason why we’re not drilling for oil even though we have more reserves in this country than any other place in the world, it’s because the banks and this woke agenda is choking off their ability to

…

As the world watches this unfold, I figured I’d blog this week to make a point I’ve expressed in other spaces (Twitter, etc), but I haven’t articulated here.

Where we are in this saga:  Musk sent a letter to Twitter on July 8, publicly filed with the SEC, purporting to terminate the merger agreement due to what he claimed were three contract breaches by Twitter.  First, Twitter falsely represented the amount of spam/bots on the platform; second, Twitter failed to provide information to Musk that was necessary to consummate the transaction (i.e., information about the amount of spam on the platform); third, Twitter failed to operate in the ordinary course by instituting a hiring freeze and laying off some employees. 

Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk on July 12 seeking specific performance, arguing that it had not breached the agreement and that Musk, himself, was in breach, by failing to use his best efforts to consummate the deal as he promised to do.  (Links to case filings, by the way, are taken from this handy archive set up by Andrew Jennings.)

Musk filed an answer with counterclaims yesterday, but it’s under seal, so we’ll have to wait for a…

Millions of law school graduates around the US just took the bar exam. Others are preparing to enter colleges and graduates schools in a few weeks. How will these respective groups do? While a lot depends on how much and how well they study, a large part of their success or failure may depend on how they’ve been taught. I recently posted about how adults learn and what the research says we should do differently. In this post, I’ll show how I used some of the best practices in the last ten days when I taught forty foreign lawyers from around the world  and thirty college students in separate summer courses offered by the University of Miami as well as nine Latin American lawyers who were taking courses in business law from a Panamanian school. I taught these disparate groups about ESG, disclosures, and human rights. With each of the cohorts, I conducted a simulation where I divided them into groups to prioritize issues based on whether they were a CEO, an investor, a consumer, the head of an NGO, and for the US college students, I added the roles of a member of Congress or influencer. In a…

A vanishingly small cadre of investor protection clinics now exist at law schools across the United States.  Most are on the east coast with the greatest concentration of clinics in and around New York City.  Pace’s Jill Gross wrote the leading history of the rise and possible extinction of these clinics. The major problem has always been funding.  I ran one at Michigan State before taking my first tenure-track teaching post.  We recovered hundreds of thousands for ordinary people.  It closed after I left for lack of funding.

In 2018, the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee formally recommended financial support for investor clinics.  Four years later, help sits just over the horizon.  Earlier today, Nevada’s Senator Cortez Masto introduced legislation to create a sustainable funding mechanism for investor protection clinics.  Similar legislation has also been introduced in the House by Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley.

The proposed legislation would allow the SEC to administer grants roughly similar to what the IRS already does for tax clinics.  This would create sustainable support for these clinics and ensure that services remain available.

A few years back, I ran an investor clinic at UNLV.  We had some notable successes, including this $40,000 win over Wells…

The University of Kansas School of Law invites applications for two tenure-track, associate professor positions to begin fall 2023.  We invite entry-level and junior-lateral candidates in the areas of business, corporate, finance, and transactional law for the first position and entry-level candidates from all subject areas for the second position.  Qualified candidates who will contribute to the diversity of our law school community, including a diversity of scholarly approaches, are especially encouraged to apply.
 
Applicants must possess a J.D. from an accredited U.S. law school or equivalent degree, and must demonstrate strong scholarly potential and a commitment to excellence in teaching.  The School actively seeks applications from members of groups that are underrepresented in higher education.

Review of applications begins August 25 and will continue until the positions are filled. Initial interviews will be conducted via Zoom. We will review candidate materials posted in the AALS Faculty Appointments Register (FAR), and also invite applications from candidates not participating in the FAR. Applications must be submitted online:  

and should include a cover letter, a CV/resume, a detailed statement of research interests/future plans, a statement related to diversity, a writing sample, and the names of three references.

POSITION: TENURE-TRACK PROFESSOR OF LAW

STETSON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW seeks to fill at least three entry-level tenure-track positions.  While our needs are flexible, we are particularly focused on Contracts, Torts, and Legal Research and Writing, as well as the areas of the Uniform Commercial Code, Professional Responsibility, Intellectual Property (emphasis on Patent Law), and Health Law. We may also have a need for Spring 2023 visitors in Legal Research and Writing and Torts. Other doctrinal areas may be considered depending on our developing institutional needs.

Located in Florida’s Tampa Bay area, the nation’s nineteenth largest metro area, Stetson was established in 1900 and is Florida’s oldest law school. Our main campus is in Gulfport, just outside St. Petersburg. We also have a part-time program with classes on both the main campus and our satellite campus in downtown Tampa. Stetson has earned a national reputation for its advocacy program, which is ranked #3 in U.S. News and World Report, and its elder law and higher education programs, with Centers for Excellence in Advocacy, Elder Law, and Higher Education Law and Policy. Stetson also has achieved a national reputation in legal writing, with its legal writing program also ranked #3…

INSTITUTE FOR LAW & ECONOMICS (ILE)
AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA CAREY LAW SCHOOL

INAUGURAL JUNIOR FACULTY BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL LAW WORKSHOP

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Institute for Law & Economics (ILE) at The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is pleased to announce its inaugural Junior Faculty Business and Financial Law Workshop. The Workshop will be held in person on December 8, 2022 at Penn Law School, unless pandemic protocols require otherwise.

The Workshop supports and recognizes the work of untenured legal scholars in accounting, banking, bankruptcy, corporations, economics, finance and securities regulation and litigation, while promoting interaction among them and selected tenured faculty and practitioners. By providing a forum for the exchange of creative ideas in these areas, ILE also aims to encourage new and innovative scholarship in the business and financial arena.

Approximately 6-8 papers will be chosen from those submitted for presentation at the Workshop pursuant to this Call for Papers. At the Workshop, one or more senior scholars and practitioners will provide comments , followed by a general discussion of each paper among all participants. The Workshop audience will include invited untenured academics, faculty from Penn Law School, Penn’s Wharton School and other institutions, practitioners…

A while back, I posted about the SEC’s proposal to adopt new rules on private investment funds.  Among other things, the SEC expressed concern about “side letters,” namely, tailored agreements with specific investors in particular funds, giving those investors preferential terms regarding information, redemption rights, and similar matters, as compared to other investors in the same fund.

Which is why it’s very timely that two new papers have been posted to SSRN conducting empirical analyses of what these side letters contain.

The first, Side Letter Governance, by Elisabeth de Fontenay and Yaron Nili and forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review, finds that side letters rarely offer financial preferences; instead, fund sponsors favor particular investors by other means, such as separate accounts and co-investment opportunities.  They do, however, find that side letters have become overly complex and difficult to negotiate, in part because each investor wants to make sure that it is not placed at a disadvantage relative to other investors in the fund.  They recommend, among other things, that all side letters be disclosed to other fund investors, and that certain provisions – concerning investors’ tax and regulatory concerns – be standardized across different investor types.

The…