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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

Next week, I will write about my focus group experience with Brooks Running.

Last week, on Global Running Day, Brooks announced “the biggest athlete endorsement deal in sports history” saying that they want to endorse everyone who runs….with $1 and a chance to win Brooks running gear.

This would have made a decent April Fools Day joke, but as a serious attempt at building brand value, it is pretty weak.

Brooks would have done much better to follow the lead of Oiselle, a women’s athletic apparel company that I have spoken and written about before in regard to their multi-level team of professional, semi-pro, and recreational athletes. The main differences between Brooks and Oiselle is that Oiselle provides value to the team members and creates shared experiences. Oiselle athletes get team gear (even though the recreational runners pay for the gear), and they get invited to numerous group events. Oiselle has state team leaders and helps connect the team members for training and races. The “birds”, as they call themselves, really seem to support each other.

Now, the Oiselle method is definitely more complicated, and it probably comes with various legal risks. For example, what if one the team leaders turns violent or what if a team member gets hit by a car on a run led by a team leader or what if someone gets a bit out of control at one of their camps or parties? (I am sure Oiselle has everyone sign waivers, but as we know, waivers don’t always prevent costly litigation and liability). There is also a fair bit temporal and financial costs involved in creating the team singlet, sending out newsletters, updating social media, planning events, etc. But building real community and brand value is almost never easy. (And Oiselle is far from perfect and has its critics, but I applaud Oiselle’s effort. That said, if they are still requiring the recreational athletes to both pay and only post photos of themselves on social media in Oiselle gear, that seems overly restrictive. If they are going for authentic, they should provide suggestions instead of mandates. With sponsored athletes, I better understand the restrictions, though even with sponsored athletes you can usually tell a difference between organic and forced marketing posts.)

Sadly, Brooks’ “endorsement” isn’t about building community, rather it is a pretty transparent attempt to buy your e-mail address and lure potential customers for $1. (Also, I uncovered in the fine print that they limited the $1 payment to the first 20,000; they have over twice that many signed up already).

As I will write next week, I was impressed with the people running the Brooks focus group, but they didn’t ask us about this “endorsement” idea, and if they asked others about it, I think they got bad advice. Brooks might get a bit of press, and they will probably even get a fair number of email addresses from curious people, but I doubt they will get much of lasting value. 

[I wonder how many people who signed up read the fine print. For example, there is a Code of Conduct that will be sent to participants. Also, see the clause below the break seemed incredibly broad.]

In August, 2015, Chinese conglomerate, Wanda Group, acquired IRONMAN (primarily known for its long distance triathlon races) from a private equity group for $650 million. 

Last Friday, IRONMAN/Wanda acquired Competitor Group (primarily known for the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon and Half-Marathon series) for an undisclosed amount. 

To start, I had no idea organizing endurance sports had become such big business, but given the increasing popularity and the increasing entry fees, perhaps I should have known. 

Personally, I have mixed feelings about big corporations dominating endurance sports, which, previously, had been much less commercial. On one hand, because of their scale, larger corporations like Competitor Group can conduct their events in a very professional manner, produce slick event shirts, measure the courses precisely, host impressive expos before the races and impressive after-parties, maintain plenty of insurance, take proper precautions, and market effectively to bring new participants into the events.

On the other hand, the big corporations often seem focused on a single, financial line. They raise entry fees as high as they can and often seem to spend an incredible amount on marketing. The races organized by big corporations often lack the individual touch of local races. That said…

One of the most striking lines in Provost Jeff Van Duzer’s talk at the Nashville Institute of Faith and Work a few months ago was his statement that “even bank robbers can tithe.”

See a somewhat similar version of that talk here.

Jeff Van Duzer’s point seemed to be that you cannot be a truly socially responsible company simply by giving some money to good causes. I think he was exactly right. He went on to explain that socially responsible businesses should focus on creating good products and good jobs. 

This week I was thinking about Jeff Van Duzer’s talk when I considered, for about the one hundredth time, how to define social enterprises.

Think about Ben & Jerry’s, a company that comes up at almost every social enterprise conference. While I can think of some good that ice cream does, I wonder if Ben & Jerry’s main products are, on the whole, socially beneficial. We have a serious, deadly obesity problem in the country, and Ben & Jerry’s products seem to be contributing to this problem. Perhaps Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is more healthy than most options or uses more natural ingredients (I am unsure if this is true), but are Ben…

Logo

Last Friday, The New York Times ran a story on possible performance enhancing drug use inside the Nike Oregon Project.

The Nike Oregon Project is coached by running legend Alberto Salazar, who, by all accounts, is both incredibly competitive and dedicated to his work.

Among the athletes who are or have been associated with the Nike Oregon Project (and coached by Salazar )are gold medalist (in the 5000 & 10,000m in 2012 and 2016) Sir Mo Farah, gold medalist (in the 2016 1500m) Matt Centrowitz Jr., and silver medalist (in the 10,000m in 2012 and in the marathon in 2016) Galen Rupp. These three athletes have been the most dominant male distance runners for the U.S. over the last two Olympic cycles. 

Allegations of doping is nothing new for the Nike Oregon project coach and athletes. For example, Kara Goucher, U.S. Olympian and former member of the Nike Oregon Project herself, has been extremely vocal with allegations against the group for years. The Times of London published some of the same allegations against the Nike Oregon Project a few months before The New York Times. FloTrack has released what it thinks is the full report from USADA…

In last week’s post, I mentioned Dr. Steven Garber. Recently, I finished his 2014 book Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good. This book is among a handful of  books in the faith & work area that I have read over the past few months.

Visions of Vocation is beautifully written, lyrical and rich. Garber’s weaves philosophy, literature, and personal stories throughout the book’s 255 pages.

Garber’s thesis in this talk, which echoes in much of his work, is that “vocation is integral, not incidental to the Missio Dei (mission of God).” Garber says the book Visions of Vocation grew out of these questions: Can you know the world and still love the world? & What will you do with what you know? The first question hits home, as the flaws of jobs and people often become more vivid over time.  After the second question, Garber shows how stoicism and cynicism are unsatisfying responses.  

Garber offers no easy answers, which is, perhaps, on purpose. These are difficult questions in a difficult area, and easy answers may not exist. I finished the book still hoping for some clear principles for integrating faith and work, but…

From a Facebook post by Dr. Steven Garber, I recently learned of the mutuality in business project by Mars Corporation and University of Oxford.

Quoting from the website:

A collaborative project with the Mars Corporation exploring mutuality as a new principle for organising business. Mutuality – a principle that emphasises the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of a firm’s activities – is seen as a promising new organising value with the potential to strengthen relationships and improve sustainability.

“Mutuality in business” seems to be yet another term for social responsibility in business. We already have so many terms for the social business concept – blended value, business for good, CSR, creative capitalism, multi-stakeholder governance, natural capitalism, shared value capitalism, social entrepreneurship, social enterprise, social innovation, sustainability, triple bottom line. Many people are trying to create, differentiate, and mark their corner in this social business space.

Despite the addition of yet another social business term, the information at the website is interesting, especially the research projects. 

Job description

Carson-Newman University is a leading Christian Liberal Arts institution, recently ranked Best Undergraduate Teaching in the South by U.S. News & World Report and received the President’s Award for Community Service. Carson-Newman emphasizes academic excellence through innovative teaching, advising, mentoring of students, and service learning. The campus is located at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and is surrounded by beautiful lakes. More information is available from the University website, www.cn.edu.

Carson-Newman University invites applicants for an Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of Business Law, Management, and/or Finance in the Department of Business. The position is a full-time, 9-month, tenure-track position, to begin August 2017, or January 2018.

Candidates for the position must have a minimum of a Juris Doctorate or a terminal degree in a related business field with at least 18 graduate semester hours in law. Candidates with business and/or teaching experience are preferred.

Carson-Newman employs faculty and staff who are actively supportive, through a local church, of its aim as a university with a Christian commitment.

Candidates for the position of Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor will teach, advise, and mentor students, participate in the campus community through committee work, conduct appropriate research, and…

We are in the middle of the final exam period, so this post will be short.

A friend of mine recently told me about a situation where he had been cheated out of a few thousand dollars. A clear contract was involved, and based on the facts I was told, the other party seems obviously in the wrong.

These situations, even if clear from the legal side, are often not worth pursuing through litigation in our current U.S. system. As most readers surely know, in the U.S. parties generally have to pay their own lawyers regardless of the outcome. In some situations, the lawyers may take the case on contingency, but most lawyers I know will not take a contingency case where the maximum recovery is a few thousand dollars. Maybe small claims court would be appropriate, but the learning and time costs involved may outweigh the potential recovery.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Perhaps we want parties to settle these smaller disputes outside the courts.

But, especially when the party in the wrong is much larger, and especially when the wrong is quite clear, it seems like we might want the courts involved to prevent this type of bad action…

COLLECTIVE BOOK ON LEGAL INNOVATION

Call for submissions

The program « Law & Management » developed by the European Center of Law and Economics (known as CEDE in French) of ESSEC Business School, is an innovative and pioneering research program which aims to study the use of law as a competitive factor.

In this regard, the members of the research program « Law & Management » have decided to publish a collective book focusing on legal innovation. This book, co-edited by A. Masson (ESSEC) and D. Orozco (Florida State University), will analyze, by crossing the points of view of lawyers and creative specialists, the concept and life cycle of legal innovations, techniques and services, whether they are related to legislation, legal engineering, legal services, legal strategies…, as well as the role of law as a source of creativity and interdisciplinary teamwork. All the techniques that could facilitate legal innovations from the perspective of design thinking to predictive design, through the customer experience will be analyzed.

The program Board is now opening the call for proposals. Papers proposals (consisting in a brief summary in English) of a maximum length of 1000 words, should be sent to …

As a business lawyer in private practice, I found it very frustrating when the principals of business entity clients acted in contravention of my advice.  This didn’t happen too often in my 15 years of practice.  But when it did, I always wondered whether I could have stopped the madness by doing something differently in my representation of the client.

Thanks to friend and Wayne State University Law School law professor Peter Henning, who often writes on insider trading and other white collar crime issues for the New York Times DealBook (see, e.g., this recent piece), I had the opportunity to revisit this issue through my research and present that research at a symposium at Wayne Law back in the fall of 2015.  The law review recently published the resulting short article, which I have posted to SSRN.  The abstract is set forth below.

Sometimes, business entity clients and their principals do not seek, accept, or heed the advice of their lawyers. In fact, sometimes, they expressly disregard a lawyer’s instructions on how to proceed. In certain cases, the client expressly rejects the lawyer’s advice. However, some business constituents who take action contrary to the advice of legal counsel…