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Joan Heminway

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Professor Heminway brought nearly 15 years of corporate practice experience to the University of Tennessee College of Law when she joined the faculty in 2000. She practiced transactional business law (working in the areas of public offerings, private placements, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, and restructurings) in the Boston office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP from 1985 through 2000.

She has served as an expert witness and consultant on business entity and finance and federal and state securities law matters and is a frequent academic and continuing legal education presenter on business law issues. Professor Heminway also has represented pro bono clients on political asylum applications, landlord/tenant appeals, social security/disability cases, and not-for-profit incorporations and related business law issues. Read More

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Like my fellow editors here at the BLPB, I enjoyed the first Business Law Prof Blog conference hosted by The University of Tennessee College of Law back in the fall.  They have begun to post their recently published work presented at that event over the past few weeks.  See, e.g., here and here (one of several newly posted Padfield pieces) and here. I am adding mine to the pile: Professional Responsibility in an Age of Alternative Entities, Alternative Finance, and Alternative Facts.  The SSRN abstract reads as follows:

Business lawyers in the United States find little in the way of robust, tailored guidance in most applicable bodies of rules governing their professional conduct. The relative lack of professional responsibility and ethics guidance for these lawyers is particularly troubling in light of two formidable challenges in business law: legal change and complexity. Change and complexity arise from exciting developments in the industry that invite—even entice—the participation of business lawyers.

This essay offers current examples from three different areas of business law practice that involve change and complexity. They are labeled: “Alternative Entities,” “Alternative Finance,” and “Alternative Facts.” Each area is described, together with significant attendant professional responsibility and ethics…

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Mark your calendars!

March 1, 2018 is the deadline for nominations for the inaugural award of the Grunin Prize.

The Grunin Prize has been created to recognize the variety and impact of lawyers’ participation in the ways in which business, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, is increasingly advancing the goals of sustainability and human development.

Lawyers, legal educators, policymakers, in-house counsel, or legal teams that recently have developed innovative, scalable, and social entrepreneurial solutions using existing law, legal education, or the development of new legal structures or metrics are eligible for nomination. And self-nominations are encouraged!

The Grunin Prize will be presented on June 5, 2018 at the IILWG/Grunin Center conference. To learn more about the Grunin Prize and the nomination process, go to http://www.law.nyu.edu/centers/grunin-social-entrepreneurship/grunin-prize.

June 5-6, 2018 are the dates of the Impact Investing Legal Working Group (IILWG)/Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship’s 2018 Conference on “Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing – in the US and Beyond.” This year’s IILWG/Grunin Center’s annual conference will take place at NYU School of Law in New York City.

The themes of this year’s conference include:

· Embedding Impact into Deal Structures and Terms
· Policy and…

Recent (overdue) additions to my SSRN page:

A New Social Contract: Corporate Personality Theory and the Death of the Firm, 101 Minnesota Law Review Headnotes 363 (2017). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3123349

Socio-Economics: Challenging Mainstream Economic Models and Policies, 49 Akron Law Review 539 (2016). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3123817

The Role of Corporate Personality Theory in Opting Out of Shareholder Wealth Maximization, 19 Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law 415 (2017). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3123795

The Inclusive Capitalism Shareholder Proposal, 17 UC Davis Business Law Journal 147 (2017). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3123823

Just a quick post today about a teaching technique I have been using that offers significant opportunities for exploration, especially in small class environments.

I am again teaching Advanced Business Associations this semester.  The course allows students to review and expand their knowledge of business firm management and control issues in various contexts (public corporations, closely held corporations, benefit corporations, and unincorporated business entities), mergers and acquisitions, and corporate and securities litigation.  I have reported on this course in the past, including in this post and this one.

At the conclusion of each unit, I have students locate (go off on a treasure hunt, of sorts) and post on the course management website (I use TWEN) a practice document related to the matters covered in that unit.  Today we concluded our unit on benefit corporations.  Each student (I only have five this semester) was required to, among other things, post the actual corporate charter (not a template or form) of a benefit corporation.  Although the Advanced Business Associations course features training presentations by representatives of Lexis/Nexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg that include locating precedent documents of various kinds, the students have not yet had this training.

In our discussions about…