Nevada’s Commission to Study the Adjudication of Business Law Cases held its second meeting on Friday, last week. As I covered in prior posts, the Commission has deep expertise in Nevada court practice with a significant number of seasoned Nevada litigators. For the Commission’s second meeting, I pulled together a roster of speakers to brief the Commission on a range of relevant issues.

The Commission heard from eight different speakers. I opened us with a quick introduction and review of recent reincorporation data for public companies. You can find the slides I used for that briefing here. I drew from Andrew Verstein’s recent work, The Corporate Census. He recently shared the updated draft in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

Anthony Rickey of Margrave Law spoke next about the strengths undergirding Delaware’s longstanding dominance. Although he did not use any slides, he covered the core reasons why Delaware’s Chancery Courts are the envy of the world. He also explained that it’s more than just the expert and hard-working Chancellors–it’s an entire ecosystem of court reporters, litigation support services, and others that allows Delaware to hum along at its prodigious pace. Notably, Anthony also served as one of Nevada’s lawyers when it filed an amicus brief in the TripAdvisor case.

Eric Talley and Dorothy S. Lund of Columbia Law School also spoke, drawing from their recent paper Should Corporate Law Go Private? A PDF of their slides is available here. They explained how states offering differentiated products in corporate law will likely want to avoid simply copying each other’s offerings but still work to ensure the state’s law is applied in a predictable manner. They framed the issue not as a race to the top or the bottom but states offering different governance arrangements that may be better fits for some companies than others.

Megan Wischmeier Shaner of The University of Oklahoma College of Law spoke about business courts nationally and Oklahoma’s recent failed attempt to create its own business court. Professor Shaner published a guest post here on Oklahoma’s experience last month. She has been studying business courts closely and also serves as a member of the Corporate Laws Committee of the American Bar Association and on the National Business Law Scholars Conference Board. You can find her presentation materials here.

Jessica M. Erickson of the University of Richmond School of Law spoke about court systems and data collection. You can find a copy of her presentation materials here. She has done empirical work on litigation for some time and recently released a significant paper with Adam Pritchard and Stephen Choi on Delaware fee awards entitled Is Delaware Different? Stockholder Lawyering in the Court of Chancery. She also serves as a member of the Corporate Laws Committee of the American Bar Association.

Christopher Babock of Foley and Lardner discussed the Texas approach to business courts facilitating business generally. His presentation materials are here. I’d seen him shine on panels discussing Texas before. He also served as one of Coinbase’s counsel when it shifted its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.

Jai Ramaswamy of a16z Capital Management spoke about the venture capital ecosystem, a16z’s decision to organize under Nevada law and the importance of courts to long-term bets on companies.

David Berger of Wilson Sonsini spoke about advising public companies about differences between jurisdictions and what companies value when making these decisions.

The goal behind the briefing was to provide the Commission with access to perspectives and information from a range of speakers. I’m glad that they were able to hear from a diverse panel with a range of different views on corporate law topics. Our speakers will not agree on every issue and did not speak on behalf of their clients or institutions.

From my perspective, I’m glad that Nevada is proceeding in a deliberate and thoughtful way to think about how to continually improve our infrastructure as a state. This should help position the Commission to make recommendations to foster confidence in Nevada’s institutions and also to provide excellent service to Nevadans.

If you’re interested in following the Commission’s work or providing written comments, this is the Commission’s webpage.