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Haskell Murray

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Professor Murray teaches business law, business ethics, and alternative dispute resolution courses to undergraduate and graduate students. Currently, his research focuses on corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, sports law, and social entrepreneurship law issues.

Professor Murray is the 2018-19 President of the Southeastern Academy of Legal Studies in Business (“SEALSB”) and is a co-editor of the Business Law Professor Blog. His articles have been published in a variety of journals, including the American Business Law Journal, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Harvard Business Law Review, and the Maryland Law Review. Read More

I detest bad legal writing. (I detest bad writing of all kinds, but this is a law blog, so I’ll limit my rant to legal writing.) I don’t like to read it and I hate it when I (sometimes?) write it. I’m not a great writer, but I appreciate lawyers and legal scholars who can write clear, concise prose. Unfortunately, although writing is an essential element of legal practice, many lawyers do not write well.

If you care about legal writing, and you should, the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing recently published a short piece you might want to read: Legal-Writing Myths, by Judge Gerald Lebovits.

I knew after reading the first paragraph that I was going to like Judge Lebovits’s article. His first sentence rejects the prohibition on beginning a sentence with a conjunction. His second sentence rejects the prohibition on ending a sentence with a preposition. And [remember his first sentence?] his third sentence rejects the prohibition on splitting infinitives.

I was not disappointed as I read the rest of the article. In just a few pages, Judge Lebovits artfully rebuts ten myths of legal writing.

My favorite myths:

  • “Writing a lengthy brief is harder and takes

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Regular readers of this blog know that I have chastised the SEC on several occasions for its lengthy delay in adopting rules to implement the exemption for crowdfunded securities offerings. (It has now been 1,268 days since the President signed the bill, 998 days past the statutory rulemaking deadline, and 702 days since the SEC proposed the rules.)

The long wait may soon be over. According to BNA, SEC Chair Mary Jo White said yesterday that the SEC will finish adopt its crowdfunding rules in the “very near term.”

I don’t know exactly what “very near term” means to a government official. Given my luck, it probably means immediately prior to the two crowdfunding presentations I’m scheduled to give in October. Nothing like a little last-minute juggling to keep me on my toes.

The following comes to us from Dorothy Brown, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs & Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law:

We are conducting searches in two areas: health law and business law. We are looking for a senior health law scholar with a national reputation in health care regulation who is interested in helping to build a multidisciplinary health law, policy & management center, in cooperation with other Emory divisions including our School of Medicine, School of Public Health, and the nearby Center for Disease Control. In addition, we are looking for a junior (no more than 2-3 years of teaching experience) in Business law. Please feel free to contact me [at dorothy.brown@emory.edu] if you are interested or know of others who might be interested in being considered.

UPDATE: The deadline for submissions has been extended to July 21.

[The following is a copy of the official workshop announcement.  I have moved the “Guiding Questions” to the top to highlight the business law aspects.  Registration and submission details can be found after the break.]

A Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative Workshop at Emory Law

Guiding Questions:

This workshop will use vulnerability theory to explore the implications of the changing structure of employment and business organizations in the new information age. In considering these changes, we ask:

• What kind of legal subject is the business organization?
• Are there relevant distinctions among business and corporate forms in regard to understanding both vulnerability and resilience?
• What, if any, should be the role of international and transnational organizations in a neoliberal era? What is their role in building both human and institutional resilience?
• Is corporate philanthropy an adequate response to the retraction of state regulation? What forms of resilience should be regulated and which should be left to the ‘free market’?
• How might a conception of the vulnerable subject help our analysis of the changing nature of the firm? What relationships does it bring into relief?
• How have discussions about market vulnerability shifted over time?
• What forms of resilience are available for institutions to respond to new economic realities?
• How are business organizations vulnerable? How does this differ from the family?
• How does the changing structure of employment and business organization affect possibilities for transformation and reform of the family?
• What role should the responsive state take in directing shifting flows of capital and care?
• How does the changing relationship between employment and the family, and particularly the disappearance of the “sole breadwinner,” affect our understanding of the family and its role in caretaking and dependency?
• How does the Supreme Court’s willingness to assign rights to corporate persons (Citizen’s United, Hobby Lobby), affect workers, customers and communities? The relationship between public and private arenas?
• Will Airbnb and Uber be the new model for the employment relationships of the future?

I had planned to write a post about Delaware LLCs and who has standing to request judicial dissolution, but that post is going to wait.  I’m knee deep in Sports Law exam grading, and so sports is on my mind.  The big thing going on right now is, of course, Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for his apparent participation in having footballs deflated to a psi that was not in compliance with league rules.  

The science on the benefits of deflating footballs is not clear, as noted here.  That, of course, is irrelevant to whether the rules were broken.  Some have argued that the air pressure rules are stupid, especially given that the league not long ago change the rules to allow each team to prepare their own footballs for use on offense. Andy Benoit of SI.com explains, 

With football being so much about strategy, the more comfortable the ball is for a quarterback and his receivers, the more entertaining the game becomes.

The NFL already agrees with this. Why do you think officials and ball boys go to such lengths to try to keep a football dry during a rainy game? Or, bringing it back to the

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Over the last few years, book stores and publishers have been evolving in how they offer books. Some textbooks are available electronically, and others are available for rent.  Although I always try to be thoughtful about how students learn throughout the year, I find that I am especially sensitive to such thoughts when it’s time to grade exams and papers.  I obviously can’t speak for all my fellow law professors, but I know a lot of us agree that we really like our students, and we want (and expect) them to succeed.  

The cost of books matters.  This article reports that students often spend $1200 a year on books and supplies, and further revealed:  

Of the students surveyed, 65% said they decided against buying a textbook because of the high cost, and 94% of those students said they were concerned that their decision would hurt their grade in that course. Nearly half of the students surveyed said the cost of textbooks affected which courses they took.

This was not a law-specific survey, and I think (and hope) most law students do buy (or rent) their books. I absolutely support trying to make books more affordable, but it…