Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law recently published the proceedings of the 2023 Business Law Prof Blog symposium, held at UT Law in Knoxville back in October.  The proceedings can be found here.  As is customary, the issue includes articles written by the principal presenters—bloggers from here at the BLPB—and related commentary from UT Law faculty and students.

My contribution to the symposium was a piece called Business Lawyer Leadership: Valuing Relationships.  The abstract is set forth below.

Business lawyers are surrounded by relationships because of the nature of their work. Businesses are relational; business associations law is relational; business lawyering is relational. Business lawyering, in all its manifestations, is a practice steeped in the lawyer’s awareness and management of, as well as their participation in, the layered sets of relationships found in businesses and business associations law.

This article recognizes these important connections between business law practice and relationships. It approaches each of them in turn. The substantial take-away is that a business lawyer can best lead by understanding the inherent value of relationships to business lawyering and leveraging that understanding through focused effort that includes the employment of, among other things, relationship management skills. Relationship management—together with the other components of emotional intelligence and other relational traits, skills, and practices—affords business lawyers important tools for building and sustaining healthy relationships.

Those who know me well will recognize a lot of "me" in this piece.  Relationship building and relationship management are high priorities for me.  Through this article, I attempt to unravel some of the reasons why all business lawyers may want to place a premium on relationship building and management.  Relationships truly are deeply connected to business, business law, and business law practice in ways that make relational leadership skills valuable.