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Marcia Narine Weldon

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Professor Narine Weldon is the director of the Transactional Skills Program, Faculty Coordinator of the Business Compliance & Sustainability Concentration, Transactional Law Concentration, and a Lecturer in Law.

She earned her law degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and her undergraduate degree, cum laude, in political science and psychology from Columbia University. After graduating, she worked as a law clerk to former Justice Marie Garibaldi of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, a commercial litigator with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton in New York, an employment lawyer with Morgan, Lewis and Bockius in Miami, and as a Deputy General Counsel, VP of Global Compliance and Business Standards, and Chief Privacy Officer of Ryder, a Fortune 500 Company. In addition to her academic position, she serves as the general counsel of a startup and a nonprofit.  Read More

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So, I’m on vacation, which is not something I do very often, at least unrelated to work.  It’s been great, and we’re lucky to be able to do this (and to vacation as all). It’s ungodly hot, but hey, that’s the beach. I guess. Like I said, we don’t do it like this very often.

Anyway, I recently read a piece that talked about freedom in way that really resonated for me.  It is applicable personally, and it is applicable professionally.  Law schools, collectively, could stand to pay attention, as well. We have choices, we just have to recognize it. I’m no philosopher, but here’s the gist of the post that resonated with me, from Rapitude.com:

Sartre believed that we have much more freedom than we tend to acknowledge. We habitually deny it to protect ourselves from the horror of accepting full responsibility for our lives. In every instant, we are free to behave however we like, but we often act as though circumstances have reduced our options down to one or two ways to move forward. 

This is bad faith: when we convince ourselves that we’re less free than we really are, so that we don’t have

…

Last week I posted the first of three posts regarding doing business in Cuba. In my initial post I discussed some concerns that observers have regarding Cuba’s readiness for investors, the lack of infrastructure, and the rule of law issues, particularly as it relates to Cuba’s respect for contracts and debts. Indeed today, Congress heard testimony on the future of property rights in Cuba and the claims for US parties who have had billions in property confiscated by the Castro government- a sticking point for lifting the embargo. (In 1959, Americans and US businesses owned or controlled an estimated 75-80% of Cuban land and resources). Clearly there is quite a bit to be done before US businesses can rush back in, even if the embargo were lifted tomorrow. This evening, PBS speculated about what life would be like post-embargo for both countries. Today I will briefly discuss the Cuban legal system and then focus the potential compliance and ethical challenges for companies considering doing business on the island.

Cuba, like many countries, does not have a jury system. Cuba’s court system has a number of levels but they have both professional judges with legal training, and non-professional judges who are…

Public opinion polls often make news, but they don’t necessarily improve discourse or policy decisions.  This is true in business and politics, at least where the polls are created primarily for news purposes. Not all polls are bad, of course, and groups like Pew and some others can offer useful starting points for policy discussions. Still we should be skeptical of public opinion polls. 

A new poll released today provides a good example of how unhelpful polls can be. Robert Morris University (RMU) today issued a press release (about a new poll) that says Pennsylvanians “expressed both overwhelming support and strong environmental misgivings, about” hydraulic fracturing (fracking). This framing of the poll does not seem to reveal any inherent inconsistencies. It would be entirely reasonable for people to recognize the potential value fracking for oil and gas can have, while at the same time being worried about the environmental risks that come with fracking (or any other industrial process).  

In fact, I have argued that this is the proper way to consider risks and benefits to help ensure oil and gas operations are as environmentally sound as possible to ensure sustainable development. Unfortunately, the poll indicates some internal inconsistencies among…

Cuba has been in the news a lot lately. I’ve just returned from ten days in Havana so I could see it first hand both as a person who writes on business and human rights and as an attorney who consults occasionally on corporate issues. The first part of the trip was with the International Law Section of the Florida Bar. The second was with a group of art lovers. I plan to write two or three blog posts about the prospects of doing business in Cuba if and when the embargo is lifted. Because I do some consulting work, I want to make clear that these views are my own as an academic and should not be attributed to anyone else.

In this post I will just briefly list some basic facts about Cuba and foreign investment. Next week I will talk a bit more about investment, introduce the Cuban legal system, and talk about some of the business and compliance challenges. That’s the subject of my research this summer. The following week I will address human rights in Cuba and how various governments and businesses are addressing those issues, the subject of another article I am…

Exam time has come and gone and grades are filed. I have never had any trouble, as far as a I know, with cheating in my exams.  My expectation is that most problems arise from plagiarism in writing assignments.   There may be people trying to cheat on my exams, I suppose, but I am not sure it would prove helpful.   I change my exams and take steps to try to make the exam as fair possible, so that cheaters, should there be any, can’t get much of an advantage.  

I was interested to see the report that China took proctoring to new heights this week, according to a news report in The Guardian, China deploys drones to stamp out cheating in college entrance exams:

Authorities in China are employing surveillance drones in an effort to stamp out cheating in college entrance exams.

But this year officials have unleashed a six-propeller drone, flown over two testing centres in

…

NPR recently posted a story titled, Nonacademic Skills Are Key To Success. But What Should We Call Them? The story, by Anya Kamenetz, is about labeling non-cognitive skills (or skill areas) that are important — I would argue essential — to success.  The listed areas are as follows: (1) character, (2) non-cognitive traits and habits, (3) social and emotional skills, (4) growth mindset, (5) 21st Century skills, (6) soft skills, and (7) grit.  

Ms. Kamenetz explains:

More and more people in education agree on the importance of learning stuff other than academics.

But no one agrees on what to call that “stuff”.

There are least seven major overlapping terms in play. New ones are being coined all the time. This bagginess bugs me, as a member of the education media. It bugs researchers and policymakers too.

“Basically we’re trying to explain student success educationally or in the labor market with skills not directly measured by standardized tests,” says Martin West, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “The problem is, you go to meetings and everyone spends the first two hours complaining and arguing about semantics.”

Whatever you call it, it matters.  

Beyond the semantics, it…

Last month, Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino, and Michael I. Norton of  Harvard Business School posted Humblebragging: A Distinct – And Ineffective – Self-Presentation Strategy to SSRN (available here).  

Here is the full article abstract: 

Humblebragging – bragging masked by a complaint – is a distinct and, given the rise of social media, increasingly ubiquitous form of self-promotion. We show that although people often choose to humblebrag when motivated to make a good impression, it is an ineffective self-promotional strategy. Five studies offer both correlational and causal evidence that humblebragging has both global costs – reducing liking and perceived sincerity – and specific costs: it is even ineffective in signaling the specific trait that that a person wants to promote. Moreover, humblebragging is less effective than simply complaining, because complainers are at least seen as sincere. Despite people’s belief that combining bragging and complaining confers the benefits of both self-promotion strategies, humblebragging fails to pay off.

Although the authors accurately explain that humblebragging is “bragging masked by a complaint,”  I am partial to the Urban Dictionary definition:

Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or “woe is me” gloss.

…

Vice Chancellor Laster recently issued an opinion in In re Carlisle Etcetera, LLC (available here), that has the potential to encourage (or at least fail to punish) sloppy practices and unnecessarily expands equitable standing for judicial dissolution.  In doing so, the case increases litigation risk for LLCs. 

The case involves an LLC made up of two member parties that formed Carlisle Etcetera, LLC. (Carlisle): WU Parent and Tom James Co. (James). The LLC agreement called for a manager-managed board, that would serve as sole manager.  WU Parent appointed two board designees, as did James.  Board decisions required “unanimous approval.”  At some point, for tax reasons, WU Parent assigned its membership interest to WU Sub. Thereafter, Carlisle identified WU Sub as a 50% member interest in tax filings and the LLC’s accountants referred to WU Sub as “an equal member” of the LLC.  The parties discussed an updated LLC agreement that would have made clear that an initial member of the LLC could transfer ownership to a wholly owned affiliate that would retain membership status, though that agreement was never finalized.  

[Please click below to read more.]

I am delighted to introduce Marcos Antonio Mendoza as an additional BLPB guest blogger for this month.  He plans to do several posts here over the next few weeks.  I look forward to his contributions.

Marcos is a graduate of Washburn University School of Law (J.D.) and the University of Connecticut School of Law (LL.M.), with Honors.  His recent article in the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal, “Reinsurance as Governance: Governmental Risk Management Pools as a Case Study in the Governance Role Played by Reinsurance Institutions,”  is a continuance of “insurance as governance” scholarship through the empirical examination of reinsurer relationships.  With more than 25 years in the insurance and self-funded pooling industries, he currently is an assistant director with the third party administrator for one of the largest public-entity risk management funds in the U.S., based in Austin, Texas.

Marcos is a regular reader of–and sometimes-commenter on–the BLPB.  His perspectives have been quite valuable to me.  I hope that you will find his insights helpful to your work.

Emory’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice cordially invites you to attend its fifth biennial conference on the teaching of transactional law and skills. The conference, entitled “Method in the Madness: The Art and Science of Teaching Transactional Law and Skills,” will be held at Emory Law, beginning at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, June 10, 2016, and ending at 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, June 11, 2016.

The registration fee for the conference is $189 and includes:

 Pre-conference lunch and snacks
 A pre-dinner reception on June 10
 Breakfast, lunch and snacks on June 11

We are planning an optional dinner for attendees on Friday evening, June 10, at an additional cost. Attendees are responsible for their own hotel accommodations and travel arrangements. Additional information on the optional dinner and accommodations to come.

A request for proposals will be distributed in the fall.

We look forward to seeing you in June of 2016!

Sue Payne
Executive Director and Professor in the Practice of Law
Center for Transactional Law and Practice
Emory University School of Law
sue.payne@emory.edu