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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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Steve Bradford yesterday posted a thoughtful (as is usual for his posts) critique of law reviews. I had drafted a comment, but Steve suggested that I should post links to my prior posts separately, so here goes, along with (what has turned out to be a lot of) additional commentary.

I think Steve has some valid (and compelling) points. As I have written before, though, I can’t go as far as he does.  I won’t rehash all that I have written before on this subject, but one of my earlier posts, Some Thoughts for Law Review Editors and Law Review Authors covers a lot of that ground.  Please click below to read more: 

The Hobby Lobby decision states:

No known understanding of the term “person” includes some but not all corporations. The term “person” sometimes encompasses artificial persons (as the Dictionary Act instructs), and it sometimes is limited to natural persons. But no conceivable definition of the term includes natural persons and nonprofit corporations, but not for-profit corporations. 20 Cf. Clark v. Martinez, 543 U. S. 371 , 378 (2005) (“To give th[e] same words a different meaning for each category would be to invent a statute rather than interpret one”).

The decision continues:

Under the Dictionary Act, “the wor[d] ‘person’ . . . include[s] corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.” Ibid .; see FCC v. AT&T Inc., 562 U.S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 6) (“We have no doubt that ‘person,’ in a legal setting, often refers to artificial entities. The Dictionary Act makes that clear”). Thus, unless there is something about the RFRA context that “indicates otherwise,” the Dictionary Act provides a quick, clear, and affirmative answer to the question whether the companies involved in these cases may be heard. 

Thus, unless otherwise stated, any place a person can recover claims…

For those interested in some empirical research on the new hybrid entities (a/k/a social enterprise):

There are still relatively few of these hybrid entities being formed, but they have definitely started a lot of conversations.  

During the school year before this past one, I had the privilege of serving as the faculty advisor for a law review symposium.  We brought in an excellent group of professors and practitioners and, at least from my point of view, the symposium went quite well.  The planning process, however, was much more involved than I had originally thought.  All professors should go through the conference planning process at least once, if only to gain more respect for those who plan the conferences at which we present and attend.    

While I am certainly not a conference planning expert (and my students did the vast majority of the work for that one symposium), I decided to share some of my thoughts here.  Hopefully, these thoughts are helpful, though there may be nothing new for the seasoned conference goer and planner.  Feel free to leave comments to fill in the gaps I leave or to offer your own opinions.   

Start Planning Early.  We started planning our October symposium in late-February/early-March.  That timing worked well for us.  Professors were finished with (or putting the last touches on) their spring articles, but not quite in exam-scramble mode yet.  Initially, I thought we…

My wife claims that I wasted quite a bit of time watching the Breaking Bad TV series on Netflix over the past few months, but given this recent call for papers, I may claim I was just doing professional development.

The editorial board New Mexico Law Review does not list any business law topics in their areas of particular interest, but I can think of a few.  Accounting fraud and money laundering feature prominently.  The IRS is involved in some episodes.  Magrigal (a global conglomerate), Los Pollos Hermanos (a restaurant chain), and A1A car wash (which becomes a family-owned business) are three businesses that take center stage.  There is a sale of a company (the car wash) in one episode and possible fiduciary duty issues throughout.  I may even see a benefit corporation angle to explore…

This is a fun idea for a special law review issue. 

As the amount written on social enterprise law increases, I thought it might be useful to create a list of journal articles.  That list is now posted on SSRN here. 

The list is limited to law review articles and purposefully excludes student authored articles, except for one LLM thesis.  (I may be persuaded to include some of the better student notes in the future).  I stayed away from general CSR articles and focused on articles regarding the new social enterprise legal forms.  I stuck mainly to legal academics, but included some of the major practitioner authors.

The list is undoubtedly incomplete, and I welcome suggestions for additions. 

Earlier this semester, Belmont undergraduate students competed for a total of $8,000 in a business plan competition.  The first place team, What’s Hubbin’, won $5,000.  Law firm Baker Donelson was one of the sponsors. 

WH

Each competition team was required to provide: (1) an executive summary, (2) a description of the business (including mission and vision), (3) plans for marketing, operating, finances, and growth, and (4) financial statements (historical, if applicable, and projected).  The finalists presented in front of a team of judges, which included local attorneys, investors, and entrepreneurs.  The event also attracted a strong audience of faculty members (myself included), staff, and students. 

Given the evolving legal industry, and the increasing focus on Law & Technology and Law & Entrepreneurship, I could see business plan competitions like this one being a success at law schools (perhaps in coordination with their sister business schools).

One of the three What’s Hubbin’ team members is Makenzie Stokel.  She is also one of my undergraduate business law students.  I asked her if she would mind answering a few, short questions about the competition and about her team’s business, which is one of the competition’s businesses that is already up and running.  My…

Back in August, Bloomberg reported that the legal costs for the six largest U.S. banks since 2008 totaled over $100 billion. (Yes, billion with a “B.”)  Bloomberg included settlement amounts in that huge number, as well as fees to lawyers.

The financial and emotional costs of litigation, not to mention the tremendous amount of time required, amazes me.  Litigation has its place, but the vast majority of disputes eventually settle and many times all parties would have been better off settling earlier using some form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). 

A former colleague recently pointed me to the University of Missouri School of Law’s listserv for ADR educators. 

I know many of our readers only teach business law courses, but adding negotiations to my teaching package has made me see the various intersections between negotiations and business law.  This semester, I set aside some time in my business law classes to discuss a bit of the negotiations literature, and the students seemed to appreciate it.  I just signed up for the listserv, so I cannot speak to its quality yet, but I do think more business law professors should consider exploring the world of ADR.

On March 24, the petition for certiorari was denied in the Strine v. Delaware Coalition For Open Government, Inc. case, ending the Delaware Court of Chancery’s experiment with arbitration by their sitting judges.  (H/T Brian Quinn). 

As far as I know, however, sitting judges on the Delaware Court of Chancery still conduct mediation.  A Chancellor or Vice Chancellor does not mediate his own cases, but rather mediates the cases assigned to one of the other four judges on the court (if the parties agree to submit to mediation). 

More information about the Delaware Court of Chancery’s mediation process is here.  The benefits of the mediation include:

  • Expertise.  You would be hard pressed to find someone more knowledgable about Delaware corporate law and the merits of a Delaware Court of Chancery case than a sitting Delaware Chancellor or Vice Chancellor. 
  • Relatively Inexpensive.  The fee is only $5,000 a day, for cases that are already on the Chancery docket, which is a decent amount of money, but is dwafted by the legal fees spent in almost all of these cases.  For mediation only cases (cases not already on the docket), there is a $10,000 initial fee

…

Washburn University has posted an opening for an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies.

I know not everyone can move to Kansas, but when I was first on the market, I even applied to jobs like this one in Kuwait.  If you really want to be a professor, you can’t let location get in your way.  Granted, I know I would have had to use my best negotiating skills to convince my wife to move to Kuwait (or Kansas).

The details of the Washburn University position can be found after the break.