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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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This post started off as a comment to co-blogger Haskell Murray‘s post Modifying the Law Review Submission and Review Process, and is perhaps overkill, but at least a few of us, thanks in part to Steve Bradford’s post, are finding the conversation fruitful, so here we go:

In response to my suspicion that widespread law review changes could impact promotion and tenure (P&T) processes, Haskell writes: “I am not sure why the expectations for P&T would have to change if law reviews instituted blind review.  It seems that all blind review would do is make the selection process more fair.”  

Maybe he is right, but here’s my thinking: I  believe expectations for P&T would change because I believe that widespread blind review would increase the (already long) turnaround time for getting pieces accepted for publication.  If I am right (an open question) that it would increase the review time, it would make it harder for some faculty to get their pieces accepted, which is often required for it to “count” in the review process. Perhaps this would be a good thing, but I would see it as a potentially significant change. 

This could also impact higher ranked schools…

As someone who teaches and researches both business law and energy law, I often focus on the overlap of the two areas, which I find to be significant.  One of my most recent projects has been to write a new casebook, Energy Law: A Context and Practice Casebook, which will be available for courses taught this fall. I wrote a detailed description of the book in a guest post at the Energy Law Professor blog, but here I wanted to highlight the business aspects of the book. 

The second chapter of my book is titled The Business of Energy Law.  That chapter begins with some key vocabulary, and I then provide students with a client issue to frame the reading for the chapter. The issue: 

Your firm has just taken on a new client who is a large shareholder in many companies. She is particularly concerned about her holdings in Energex, Inc., a publicly traded energy company. Energex was founded in 1977 by a oil and gas man from Louisiana who is still the CEO and a member of the board of directors. The client is concerned that the CEO is taking opportunities for himself that she thinks

…

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.