Conferences

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Thanks to all who have been registering and submitting papers for this year’s National Business Law Scholars Conference, scheduled for June 18-19 at The University of Tennessee College of Law.  I posted on the conference last month.  The conference planning committee, like so many others, is monitoring the COVID-19 situation.  At present, the conference is still a “go,” and we remain excited about it!

The deadline for paper submissions is March 31.  We hope that you are inspired to submit.  The conference website can be found here.  The planning committee understands that many (most?) of us are currently subject to institutionally imposed travel restrictions.  Please know that if you submit a paper and are unable to attend due to travel restrictions, you may withdraw your paper.

Comments can be left here, or feel free to email me or any other planning committee member for more information.  Paper submission questions are best directed to Eric Chaffee.  The planning committee members are listed again below, for your convenience.

Afra Afsharipour (University of California, Davis, School of Law)
Tony Casey (The University of Chicago Law School)
Eric C. Chaffee (The University of Toledo College of Law)
Steven Davidoff Solomon (University…

National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC)

June 18-19, 2020

Call for Papers

The National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC) will be held on Thursday and Friday, June 18-19, 2020, at The University of Tennessee College of Law.

This is the eleventh meeting of the NBLSC, an annual conference that draws legal scholars from across the United States and around the world. We welcome all scholarly submissions relating to business law. Junior scholars and those considering entering the academy are especially encouraged to participate. If you are thinking about entering the academy and would like to receive informal mentoring and learn more about job market dynamics, please let us know when you make your submission.

Please use the conference website to submit an abstract or paper by March 31, 2020.  If you have any questions, concerns, or special requests regarding the schedule, please email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu. We will respond to submissions with notifications of acceptance shortly after the deadline. We anticipate the conference schedule will be circulated in May.

Conference Organizers:

Afra Afsharipour (University of California, Davis, School of Law)
Tony Casey (The University of Chicago Law School)
Eric C. Chaffee (The University of Toledo College…

At this point, we’re a bit past the New Year, but you might still be thinking about the conferences you’ll attend in 2020, right?  Here are some great ideas:   

The Academy of Legal Studies in Business has a great annual conference in early August.  This year it’s in Providence, Rhode Island, August 4-8, 2020.  I’ve never been to Providence, but I hear it’s lovely.  I can’t wait! 

The Academy also has a number of regional conferences.  Check out all the options (if I missed one, send me an email)!

Canadian ALSB Annual Conference April 30-May 2, 2020 (Toronto, Canada)

Great Lakes ALSB, Fall 2020 (Grand Rapids area, Michigan – check back for more info)

Mid-Atlantic Academy of Legal Studies in Business, April 23-25, 2020 (Atlantic City, NJ)

Mid-West Academy of Legal Studies in Business, March 26-27, 2020 (Chicago, Illinois)

North Atlantic Regional Business Law Association Annual Conference, April 4, 2020 (Easton, Massachusetts)

North East Academy of Legal Studies in Business, May 1-3, 2020 (Lakeville, Connecticut)

Pacific Northwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business, April 23-25, 2020 (Vancouver, Canada)

Pacific Southwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business, February 13-16, 2020 (Palm Springs, California)…

 

Emory2020

CALL FOR PROPOSALS AND REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Emory’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice is delighted to announce its seventh biennial conference on the teaching of transactional law and skills.  The conference, entitled “Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight: Transactional Law and Skills Education in the 2020s,” will be held at Emory Law, beginning at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, June 5, 2020, and ending at 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, 2020.

Come together with your colleagues and friends in Atlanta to reflect upon transactional law and skills education and ponder the answers to three vital questions:

  • Where have we been?
  • What have we learned?
  • Where are we going?

Our keynote speaker – to be announced soon – will elaborate on our theme. In addition, conference attendees will participate in a workshop to create a vision for transactional law and skills education in the 2020s (the “Vision Workshop”).  Finally, we will bestow the second Tina L. Stark Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills.  (For information about how to nominate yourself or someone else for this award, please click here.)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

 

We are accepting proposals immediately, but in no event later than 5 p.m. on…

TJLP(InsiderTradingStories2019)

I was thrilled to be with so many wonderful colleagues and students (pictured above) at the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy‘s symposium at UT Law last Friday.  The symposium, “Insider Trading: Stories from the Attorneys,” featured presentations about famous and not-so-famous insider trading cases.  Presenters included Michael Guttentag (Loyola, Los Angeles), me, Jeremy Kidd (Mercer), Ellen Podgor (Stetson), John Anderson (Mississippi College), Eric Chaffee (Toledo), Kevin Douglas (Scalia), and Donna Nagy (Maurer).  The papers presented highlight a variety of salient issues (including observations about the impact of gender and sexual orientation in specific cases or types of cases) involving or touching insider trading regulation.  They are being published in 2020 by the Tennessee Journal of Law & Policy.

The idea for the symposium came from a Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) discussion session convened last summer by John and me.  I described it in this post.  Let me or John know if you are working in the insider trading area and would like to join us for our 2020 SEALS discussion group, “Insider Trading: Is It All about the Money?”  The SEALS conference is scheduled to be held July 30 – August 5, 2020.  The

On November 8, Professor Kristin Johnson of Tulane will host Tulane Law School’s 2019 Gamm Comparative Law and Justice Symposium, focusing on The Implications of Artificial Intelligence for a Just Society. The rise of artificial intelligence introduces efficiencies and new opportunities in finance, employment, education, criminal law enforcement risk assessments, national security and the automation of the various professions, including the development of smart contracts and the automation of various skills associated with the practice of law. Recursive learning and neural networks enable machine learning algorithms to adapt beyond simple instructions and independently assess data in decision-making processes. Early evidence indicates, however, that learning algorithms may operate in a manner that leads to unfair, biased or unethical and in some cases, discriminatory outcomes.

The Gamm Symposium will explore these normative concerns and proposed solutions including proposals demanding algorithmic accountability or, more specifically, proposals encouraging explainability and transparency. Advancing the discussion beyond traditional proposals, the Symposium concludes with a panel exploring the lack of gender balance in the technology industry and capital investment in women-lead technology firms.

The event is free and open to the public, though registration is required.  More information is available here.

Two opportunities for business law profs crossed my desk over the past few days.  One comes from Beate Sjåfjell, and the other from Caprice Roberts.  The topics?  Sustainability and SEALS.

Beate advises that there are a few places left at an upcoming conference on Corporate Sustainability Reforms: Securing Market Actors’ Contribution to Global Sustainability.  The conference will be held in Oslo, Norway on October 24, 2019 and features contributions from around the world and across disciplines. She promotes the conference as follows:

We know that we need the contribution of all market actors: business, citizens, investors, and the public sector to achieve sustainability. However, a number of barriers, gaps and incoherencies that prevents market actors from contributing has been identified by the SMART Project. At this conference we will discuss how to facilitate the transition to sustainability, with the aim of identifying concrete proposals.

The conference is open to students, scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, and journalists. The deadline to register is October 17. There is no registration fee, and a lunch and reception are included for all participants.

Caprice wrote to remind me that the submissions portal, https://www.sealslawschools.org/index.php/conference-submissions/, is open for the Southeastern Association of Law

…

Some of you may remember my post from last year on the American Bar Association’s LLC Institute, an annual program at which I have presented and from which I have benefitted.  This year’s institute is scheduled for November 7 & 8 at the Stetson Tampa Law Center.  The registration deadline is October 25.  The registration site can be found here.

The program agenda is, as usual, amazing.  Baylor Law’s Beth Miller will lead off (with others) in presenting updates on relevant decisional law.  Additional highlights include panels on “LLC Agreements That Went Wrong, and How to Fix Them: Case Studies and War Stories” and “Re-Imagining the Business Trust as a Sustainable Business Form” (the latter featuring friend and Florida Law prof Lee-Ford Tritt) and an ethics program featuring (among others) Bob Keatinge, who is always illuminating and entertaining.  Presentations by other LLC Institute favorites (including Tom Rutledge, whose message to me prompted this post) pepper the program.

On Thursday night, at the annual dinner, Mitchell Hamline School of Law Emeritus Professor Dan Kleinberger will receive the 2019 Martin I. Lubaroff Award.  Most business law profs know Dan, who has (among other things) been a tremendous servant of…

SAVE THE DATE

Emory’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice is excited to announce the date for its seventh biennial conference on the teaching of transactional law and skills.  The conference will be held at Emory Law, on Friday, June 5, 2020, and Saturday, June 6, 2020.

More information will be forthcoming on the Call for Proposals, the Call for Nominations for the Tina L. Stark Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills, open registration, and travel accommodations.  We are looking forward to seeing all of you on June 5 and 6, 2020!

Emory2020(SaveDate)

BLPB2019(MergerPanel)

I want to follow on Colleen’s post from yesterday with my own Business Law Prof Blog Symposium commentary.  But first, I want to thank Colleen, Ben, Josh, Doug, Haskell, and Stefan for participating with me in the symposium this year.  Our continuing legal education attendees, as well as our faculty and students, love this symposium each year.  It always turns out to be a wonderful pot pourri of business law topics that literally connect the threads of what we do as business lawyers and business law educators.

Rather than being a featured presenter this year, I chose to present panel-style with two of my UT Law colleagues.  (That’s us, plus our student commentator, Dixon Babb, in the photo above.  Thanks for capturing that, Haskell!)  The panel was designed to describe different conceptions of mergers based on distinct areas of legal expertise, together with related professional responsibility commentary.  I chose my colleagues Don Leatherman and Tom Plank to join me for this session–Don a tax law practitioner and teacher and Tom a property law practitioner and teacher.  The reason for these choices was simple: the three of us had covered this issue before in an informal conversation, and I had found…