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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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Join me in sunny Miami on April 26 for this in-person conference featuring outside counsel, inhouse practitioners, and academics. 

Panel topics include:

Change Management: The Legal Department of the Future –  More and more, in-house legal departments are employing new hybrid and remote work models, incorporating artificial intelligence and technology in their workflows, and restructuring and absorbing new teams after mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. This panel discussion will focus on how the in-house legal department can be a champion in leading successful developmental and transformational change by implementing change management best practices to be effective and efficient, remaining client-focused, and being a trusted business advisor.

Remote Work:  Accelerated Adoption and Related Challenges – Which option would you choose: on-site, hybrid, or virtual? We will discuss the pros and cons of remote work arrangements, including the challenges of implementing a remote work policy in Latin America where the legal framework is a complex patchwork of requirements, as well as the strategies for creating culture and building a team in a remote work environment.

Counseling the Board of Directors (the panel I’m on)-  This panel will focus on issues that arise when counseling the board of directors and address important…

2022 Online Symposium – Mainstreet vs. Wallstreet: The Democratization of Investing

I’m thrilled to moderate two panels this Friday and one features our rock star BLPB editor, Ben Edwards. 

                                                                     REGISTER HERE

The University of Miami Business Law Review is hosting its 2022 online symposium on Friday, March 4, 2022. The symposium will run from 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM. The symposium will be conducted via Zoom. Attendees can apply to receive CLE credits for attending this event—3.5 CLE credits have been approved by the Florida Bar. 

The symposium will host two sessions with expert panelists discussing the gamification of trading platforms and the growing popularity of aligning investments with personal values.

The panels will be moderated by Professor Marcia Narine Weldon, who is the director of the Transactional Skills Program, Faculty Coordinator of the Business Compliance & Sustainability Concentration, and a Lecturer in Law at the University of Miami School of Law.

Panel 1: Gamification of Trading 

This panel will focus on the role of

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Between the Winter Olympics and the Superbowl, this weekend is a sports-lover’s dream. But it can also be a nightmare for others. Next week in my Business and Human Rights class, we’ll discuss the business of sports and the role of business in sports. For some very brief background, under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the state has a duty to protect human rights but businesses have a responsibility (not a duty) to “respect” human rights, which means they can’t make things worse. Businesses should also mitigate negative human rights impacts. I say “should” because the UNGPs aren’t binding on businesses and there’s a hodgepodge of due diligence and disclosure regimes that often conflict and overlap. But things are changing and with ESG discussions being all the rage and human rights and labor falling under the “S” factor, businesses need to do more. The EU is also finalizing mandatory human rights due diligence rules and interestingly, some powerful investors and companies are on board, likely so there’s some level of certainty and harmonization of standards. 

I’ve blogged in the past about human rights issues in sports, particularly the Olympics and World Cup in Brazil…

I was thrilled to be one of the invited speakers (one of only 2 law professors) to speak at the How to Contract Conference two weeks ago. Laura Frederick, ex-Tesla, ex-BigLaw lawyer organized the best two days of CLE I’ve had in my thirty years as a lawyer (and not just because I was a speaker). Replays are are available and if you’re a law student, practicing lawyer, professor, or person who deals with contracts regularly, signing up should be a no-brainer.  If you need more convincing, here’s the line up. Sign up today. You won’t regret it. 

My law school classmate is the General Counsel of the Small Business Administration and is looking for a deputy. If I didn’t love my work, I would apply myself.

Here’s how she describes the role:

“I am searching for my next Deputy General Counsel. What’s the job? The right person will be looking to be the managing partner of a mid-sized law practice (125+ persons) in which the sole client has a $1 trillion portfolio and a mission of serving the needs of small businesses throughout the nation.”

If you want the actual official job description, see below. 

This Deputy General Counsel reports to the General Counsel. The incumbent provides legal counsel and services to the Administrator and other Agency officials and is responsible for dispensing legal advice on a myriad of issues involving, among other things, litigation, legislation, procurement, appropriations, employment law, labor relations, and financial law. The incumbent is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Office of General Counsel.

Responsibilities

  • Directs, plans, and executes oversight of the day-to-day operations of the Office of General Counsel.
  • Provides legal interpretation and application of the Small Business Act and all related laws and regulations affecting the programs and operations

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People rarely keep resolutions, much less ones they don’t make for themselves, but here are some you may want to try.

  1. Post information about the law and current events that lay people can understand on social media. You don’t need to be a TikTok lawyer and dance around, but there’s so much misinformation out there by “influencers” that lawyers almost have a responsibility to correct the record.
  2. Embrace legal tech. Change is scary for most lawyers, but we need to get with the times, and you can start off in areas such as legal research, case management, accounting, billing, document automation and storage, document management, E-discovery, practice management, legal chatbots, automaton of legal workflow, contract management, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based applications. Remember, lawyers have an ethical duty of technological competence.
  3. Learn about legal issues related to the metaverse such as data privacy and IP challenges.
  4. Do a data security audit and ensure you understand where your and your clients’ data is and how it’s being transmitted, stored, and destroyed. Lawyers have access to valuable confidential information and hackers know that. Lawyers also have ethical obligations to safeguard that information. Are you communicating with clients on WhatsApp

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I’ve been thinking about environmental, social, and governance issues (“ESG”) for almost twenty years — long before they became mainstream. As an in-house lawyer at a public company prior to joining academia, I had no choice. I teach, research, and consult on these issues now and have a whole lot of thoughts about them, which I’ll share in coming posts. 

I had the honor of presenting on “ESG and India in 2022” yesterday. ESG is a hot topic in India, as it is everywhere – – I have either attended or spoken on half a dozen panels on ESG this year to introduce the topic to lawyers. If you’re not familiar with the term or think it’s completely irrelevant to what you do for a living, here are some common classifications for investors that integrate ESG into their portfolio selection and investment process. 

Environmental: climate change, water, alternative energy, pollution & waste management

Social: human rights, workplace standards, worker health safety, diversity & equal opportunity, labor relations, land grabs

Governance: bribery & corruption, board diversity, corporate political contributions, executive compensation, disclosure & transparency, board independence, tax avoidance

If you’re a transactional lawyer, chances are you or your clients…

Outcomes-header
Apply to be my (across-campus) colleague.

Belmont University is hiring for a tenure track professor position in our Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business. One of the main courses taught would be Entertainment Law and Licensing. I’ve lived in a half-dozen different cities and Nashville is my favorite by far. And Belmont has been a fabulous place to work. I am on the hiring committee, so feel free to reach out to me with questions.  

Details here. 

Indiana University has a top-notch Business Law and Ethics department in their business school. I know a number of their professors and they would be fabulous colleagues.

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The Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington seeks applications for a tenured/tenure-track position or positions in the Department of Business Law and Ethics, effective fall 2022. The candidate(s) selected will join a well-established department of 28 full- time faculty members who teach a variety of courses on legal topics, business ethics, and critical thinking at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is anticipated that the position(s) will be at the assistant professor rank, though appointment at a higher rank could occur if a selected candidate’s record so warrants.

To be qualified, a candidate must have a J.D. degree with an excellent academic record and must demonstrate the potential for outstanding teaching and excellent scholarship in law and/or ethics, as well as the ability to contribute positively to a multicultural campus. Qualified applicants with expertise in any area of law and/or ethics will be considered, and we welcome candidates with teaching interests across a broad range of legal and ethical issues in business, as well as research methods or perspectives,

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