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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

New job posting here; information below.

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How to Apply

A cover letter is required for consideration for this position and should be attached as the first page of your resume. The cover letter should address your specific interest in the position and outline skills and experience that directly relate to this position.

Applicants are required to submit their applications electronically by visiting the website: http://www.bus.umich.edu/FacultyRecruiting and uploading the following:1. Evidence of teaching experience and competence (if any)2. A curriculum vitae that includes three references

Please contact Jen Mason, Area Administrator, via email with questions at masonlj@umich.edu

Job Summary

The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan is a diverse learning community grounded in the principle that business can be an extraordinary vehicle for positive change in today’s dynamic global economy. The Ross School of Business mission is to develop leaders who make a positive difference in the world. Through thought and action, members of the Ross community drive change and innovation that improves business and society.Ross is consistently ranked among the world’s leading business schools. Academic degree programs include the BBA, MBA, Part-time MBA (Evening and Weekend formats), Executive MBA, Global MBA, Master of…

Laureate Education recently became the first standalone publicly traded benefit corporation. They are organized under Delaware’s public benefit corporation (PBC) law, are also a certified B corporation, and will be trading as LAUR on NASDAQ.  

Plum Organics, also a Delaware PBC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of publicly-traded Campbell Soup Company. And Etsy is a publicly traded certified-B corporation, but is organized under traditional Delaware corporation law.

Whether the for-profit educator Laureate will hurt or help the popularity of benefit corporations remains to be seen, but some for-profit educators have not been getting good press lately.

Inside Higher Ed reports on Laureate Education’s IPO as a benefit corporation below:

The largest U.S.-based for-profit college chain became the first benefit corporation to go public Wednesday morning.

Laureate Education, which has more than a million students at 71 institutions across 25 countries, had been privately traded since 2007. Several major for-profit higher education companies have over the last decade bounced back and forth between publicly and privately held status; also yesterday, by coincidence, the Apollo Group, owner of the University of Phoenix, formally went back into private hands….In its public debut, the company raised $490 million….

Becker

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A few months ago, J.D. Vance, Yale Law School graduate and author of New York Times Best Seller Hillbilly Elegy, talked about “America’s forgotten working class.”

With the rise of Donald Trump, Vance’s book and the book’s topic have been much discussed.

I, however, want to focus on Vance’s discussion after the 10 minute mark where he thanks various mentors for helping him overcome family financial, and community-based problems. Without a stable immediate family, Vance found guidance from his grandparents, the military, and his professors.

Raised in a predominately individualistic culture, I believed, for a long time, that hard work was the primary driver of success. I still think individual dedication is important, but looking back, I am also incredibly thankful for the many people who provided a helping hand along the way.

While most schools do not specifically reward it, I think professors are particularly well situated to mentor students. We can also be incredibly helpful to our more junior colleagues. Recognizing the value of the mentors in my own life, I do hope to “pay it forward” and become increasingly involved in the mentorship process.

Conference information from an e-mail I recently received. 

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The second annual Susilo Symposium of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy will be held on June 15-17, 2017 at Boston University Questrom School of Business.

The event will feature distinguished and varied speakers, including Professor Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, and site visits at Aeronaut Brewing, Bright Horizons, and Fenway Park, among other exciting area companies.

The Susilo Symposium will be part of a new Global Business Ethics week, which begins at Bentley University from June 12-15 for the Global Business Ethics Symposium and teaching workshop, and then will move to BU for June 15-17.

The event promises an audience of both scholars and practitioners from around the world. All seek to explore and exchange ideas in a unique and interactive forum about the role of ethics in the global economy.

This year’s Susilo Symposium follows the inaugural symposium, which was held in May 2016 in Surabaya, Indonesia. Featuring foremost business, academic, and political leaders, it reflected on “Global Business Ethics – East Meets West.”

What to Expect

The program is directed specifically toward both academics and practitioners. Our hope is that attendees will learn…

Many, if not most, law professors teach their students the IRAC framework — Issue – Rule – Analysis – Conclusion — to use in addressing legal issues and answering exam essays.

I even teach my undergraduate students the IRAC framework, and find it useful in teaching critical thinking skills.

However, like many of my former law professors, I usually underemphasize the importance of the conclusion. Of course you have to get the issue and rule correct to start, but the meat of the answer is in the fact and rule-based analysis. The conclusion, I often say, can often go either way, especially on the thorny exam issues.

Since I started hearing the term “post truth,” I have been rethinking the way I teach IRAC and the underemphasized conclusion. While it is still clearly important to teach and test analysis, I am starting to realize the value of identifying the strongest and best conclusion. This may prove difficult to test, as law exams often focus on unsettled areas of law, but perhaps I will include a few more settled portions to see if students can identify legal issues with a clearer correct answer.  

The Belmont Health Law Journal is hosting its first symposium tomorrow, January 27th.

The theme of the symposium will be What’s Next? The Movement from Volume to Value-based Healthcare Delivery, and will feature Congressman Jim Cooper as keynote speaker. 

Information is available here.

Registration is from 8:30am to 9:00am. Speakers will present from 9:00 am until noon. CLE credit and lunch provided.

If you were at the SEALS Conference panel on crowdfunding last summer, you heard me talk a bit about women’s athletic apparel company Oiselle and the interesting running team part of their business.

In addition to building a team of amateur runners, Oiselle sponsors a number of professional athletes. Kate Grace was the first of the sponsored athletes, signing with Oiselle in 2012. Last year Kate won the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 800m, and she made the Olympic finals in the same distance.

Kate Grace’s sponsorship contract with Oiselle expired at the end of 2016, and Oiselle recently posted a classy goodbye.

A 2011 Yale University graduate, and now an Olympian, Kate Grace is talented, promising, and instantly likeable. She has already accomplished a great deal in the running world, but she is likely to accomplish even more. Kate Grace is on record as praising Oiselle as incredibly supportive of her and full of people with whom she has strong relationships.

So why didn’t Kate Grace and Oiselle sign a sponsorship contract for 2017 and beyond? This is a question I may pose to my negotiation classes.

To be clear, everything below is pure…

Mike.schuster

Professor Mike Schuster of Oklahoma State University, Spears School of Business, will be guest blogging at BLPB for the next 4 weeks. Prior to joining Oklahoma State’s faculty, Professor Schuster was at attorney at Vinson & Elkins LLP in Houston, Texas. His research is primarily in the intellectual property space, which, as we all know, is quite important to businesses.

Professor Schuster’s most recent academic article, “Invalidity Assertion Entities and Inter Partes Review: Rent Seeking as a Tool to Discourage Patent Trolls” is forthcoming in the Wake Forest Law Review and his SSRN page is available here.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Mike Schuster to BLPB. 

Over at the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, Rick Alexander has a post on benefit corporations. I plan to post some comments on Rick’s post next week, when I have a bit more time, but for now, I will just bring our readers’ attention to the post and include a small portion of his post below:

Benefit corporations dovetail with the movement to require corporations to act more sustainably. However, the sustainability movement often treats the symptom (irresponsible behavior), not the root cause—the focus on individual corporate financial performance. Proponents of corporate responsibility often emphasize “responsible” actions that increase share value, by protecting reputation or decreasing costs. Enlightened self-interest is an excellent idea, but it is not enough. As long as investment managers and corporate executives are rewarded for maximizing the share value of individual companies, they will have incentives to impose costs and risks on everyone else.

RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS

Law and Ethics of Big Data

Hosted and Sponsored by:

The Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Co-Hosted by:

Virginia Tech Center for Business Intelligence Analytics

The Department of Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business

Washington & Lee Law School

April 21st and 22nd 2017

at the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 24, 2017

We are pleased to announce the research colloquium, “Law and Ethics of Big Data,” at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, co-hosted by Professor Philip M. Nichols, Assistant Professor Angie Raymond of Indiana University and Professor Janine Hiller of Virginia Tech.

Due to the success of this multi-year event that is in its fourth year, the colloquium will be expanded and we seek broad participation from multiple disciplines; please consider submitting research that is ready for the discussion stage. Each paper will be given detailed constructive critique. We are targeting cross-discipline opportunities for colloquium participants, and the Wharton community has expressed interest in sharing in these dialogues.

A non-inclusive list of topics that are appropriate …