Our friend and colleague Dan Kleinberger sent the following request along to me a few days ago on behalf of the LLCs, Partnerships and Unincorporated Entities Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association:

At the Spring meeting of the ABA Business Law Section in Vancouver, on Thursday, March 28, 2019 from 2:30pm – 4:30pm, the LLCPUE Committee is sponsoring a panel entitled, “Lessons from the Trenches for Transactional Lawyers.” Here is a brief description:

Avoiding errors in transactional documents — insights from attorneys who have seen errors play out in litigation: two litigators (including one who defends attorney malpractice claims), a transactional lawyer who often plays clean up, and an expert witness who frequently testifies in cases arising from problematic language in deal documents.

If you have some examples of problematic language, favorite (or disfavored) cases, or “occasions of sin” to share in, the panel would be grateful. The presentation will not be merely war stories. Instead, the panelists will present various categories of errors and occasions for error, as well as practical suggestions for avoiding error. However, the more examples the panel has from which to work, the more useful the categorizations will be.

Redact

ComplianceNet2 Conference Invitation Announcement: Early Bird Registration Deadline is THIS FRIDAY, January 25th!

The second-annual ComplianceNet conference will take place on June 3-4, 2019. Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law and its Girard-diCarlo Center for Ethics, Integrity and Compliance will host the conference. Like the highly successful inaugural conference at UC Irvine in 2018, this conference will allow scholars from across disciplines and different legal and regulatory topics to exchange research and explore connections for collaboration.

The timing of this year’s conference is designed to follow on the heels of the Law & Society meeting in nearby Washington, D.C. If you are already headed to Law & Society, Villanova is a short train-ride away and easily accessible by public transportation. Regardless of whether you will be attending Law & Society, Villanova is in a beautiful location right outside Philadelphia, easily serviced by major international airports (Philadelphia (PHL), Newark (EWR), Baltimore (BWI), two more in NYC, and two more in DC); 90 minutes from NYC; and two hours from D.C.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Business Ethics”, although we welcome additional papers discussing compliance across diverse settings. This year’s theme seeks to engage the question of how to

My frequent academic partner and friend John Anderson and I organized and moderated a discussion session on insider trading in the blockchain transactional environment at this year’s AALS annual meeting. The session, entitled “Insider Trading and Cryptoassests: The Future of Regulation in the Blockchain Era,” featured teacher-scholar participants from academic backgrounds in white collar crime, corporate law, securities regulation, intellectual property, cyberlaw, and ethics/compliance. The program description is as follows:

As the cryptoasset ecosystem shows signs of emerging from its “Wild West” phase, insider trading has become a principal concern for trading platforms, investors, and regulators. Insider trading cases concerning cryptoassets present challenges, however, because the legal understanding of both cryptoassets and the markets in which they are generated, bought, and sold has been significantly outpaced by their development, expansion, and innovation. In the United States, market professionals, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and others debate whether virtual currencies are securities, contracts, currencies, commodities, or something else. Both the SEC and CFTC assert jurisdiction over cryptoassets, but (at this writing) neither has precisely defined the scope or nature of its purported regulatory oversight. This commercial and regulatory uncertainty leaves a number of

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CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS

Institute for Law Teaching and Learning Summer Conference
“Teaching Today’s Law Students”
June 3-5, 2019
Washburn University School of Law
Topeka, Kansas

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning invites proposals for conference workshops addressing the many ways that law professors and administrators are reaching today’s law students.   With the ever-changing and heterogeneous nature of law students, this topic has taken on increased urgency for professors thinking about effective teaching strategies. 

The conference theme is intentionally broad and is designed to encompass a wide variety of topics – neuroscientific approaches to effective teaching; generational research about current law students; effective use of technology in the classroom; teaching first-generation college students; classroom behavior in the current political climate; academic approaches to less prepared students; fostering qualities such as growth mindset, resilience, and emotional intelligence in students; or techniques for providing effective formative feedback to students.

Accordingly, the Institute invites proposals for 60-minute workshops consistent with a broad interpretation of the conference theme. Each workshop should include materials that participants can use during the workshop and when they return to their campuses. Presenters should model effective teaching methods by actively engaging the workshop participants.  The Institute Co-Directors are glad

The following comes from our friend Saule Omarova at Cornell Law.  I hope that many can arrange to attend one or both events to honor Lynn’s life and work.

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Please join us on February 1-2, 2019, in New York City, for a special two-part event celebrating the life and work of our colleague and friend, Professor Lynn Stout.

On February 1, 2019, Cornell University Law School will hold the Lynn Stout Memorial Conference, honoring Professor Stout’s scholarly work and significant impact in corporate governance. The conference will feature a series of cutting-edge paper presentations and discussion panels; the conference celebrates Professor Stout’s scholarship and highlights the lasting impact of her ideas and writings on the present and future trajectory of legal research in corporate law, securities and derivatives regulation, law and economics, and law and ethics. 

The conference will take place at the Cornell Club in New York City (6 East 44th Street, New York, NY 10017).

On February 2, 2019, at 10 a.m., an informal memorial service will be held at St. Paul’s Chapel of Trinity Church Wall Street (209 Broadway, New York, NY 10007).

The agenda

Haskell Murray, this one’s for you (and many others who work with B corporations and benefit corporations)!

Friend of the BLPB Tamara Belinfanti recently sent me a link to an article in which she was quoted.  The premise of the article is clear from its title: To B or not to B? That’s the question for companies who seek to “balance profit and purpose.”  Familiar proposition; great article title.  It’s certainly worth a quick read, even if it says nothing new.  (Although it does seem to imply that Justice Strine is no longer the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court . . . .)

In the article, various folks (including Justice Strine) comment about whether B corporation certification and/or benefit corporations are “needed” for social enterprise firms.  This is a question that I love to think about (especially if it can keep me from grading papers for a bit . . . ).  Some of you may remember my post on this topic from a few years ago.  It also is an issue that I have approached at times in pieces of my academic writing, including in the article featured in this post.

Next summer, at the

A number of years ago, I attended the Biennial Conference on Applied Legal Storytelling.  It was a super event.  I came out of the conference with amazing ideas for teaching and scholarship.  I am thinking of taking my spring research project (on friends and family insider trading) to the conference in 2019.  Will you come join me?

Typically, the conference principally attracts legal writing instructors and clinicians. But more of us should be jumping on this bandwagon.   Storytelling and narrative more generally—which are (of course) a part of all advocacy and dispute resolution—also are used in transaction-building and negotiation.  Accordingly, I am hoping that some of you will consider attending the conference with me this coming summer.  Here are the details from the call for proposals.

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Call for Proposals

Seventh Biennial Conference on Applied Legal Storytelling

Boulder, Colorado, July 9–11 2019

Hosted by the University of Colorado School of Law,
University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and University of Wyoming School of Law, and coordinated by the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Scholarship Group

This is the call for proposals for the seventh biennial conference on Applied Legal Storytelling. We are offering two deadlines for submitting proposals: January 21, 2019 (priority deadline) and March 11, 2019 (extended deadline).

About the Conference

The Applied Legal Storytelling Conference brings together academics, judges, andpractitioners. The conference has previously convened in 2007 (London), 2009 (Portland),2011 (Denver), 2013 (London), Seattle (2015), and Washington D.C. (2017). We are veryexcited to bring it back to the Mountain West (Boulder) in July 2019.

Applied Legal Storytelling (AppLS) examines the use of stories—and of storytelling or narrative elements—in law practice, legal education, and the law.

This definition is intentionally broad in order to allow people creativity in the way theythink and present on the topic. Such topics may include: the ways in which fiction-writing techniques or narrative theory can inform legal storytelling; stories in the law, or law as stories; legal storytelling and metaphor; client story advocacy; legal storytelling and cognitive science; and ethical considerations in legal storytelling.

In an effort to continue the storytelling conversation for this seventh conference, and to welcome new attendees, we are providing resources for those interested in submitting a proposal and who wish to generate ideas or respond to others’. The first is a list of topicsfrom past conferences, available athttps://www.lwionline.org/sites/default/files/TopicsfrompastAppLSconferences.pdf. The second is a link to a bibliography on AppLS, including articles that have emerged from previous storytelling conferences, available at http://www.alwd.org/wp-contentuploads20151108-rideout_article2015-pdf/. We are also happy to answer questions and offer you suggestions—if you are a newcomer and interested in becoming involved, please reach out.

In January 2018, Larry Fink of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, shocked skeptics like me when he told CEOs:

In the current environment, these stakeholders are demanding that companies exercise leadership on a broader range of issues. And they are right to: a company’s ability to manage environmental, social, and governance matters demonstrates the leadership and good governance that is so essential to sustainable growth, which is why we are increasingly integrating these issues into our investment process. Companies must ask themselves: What role do we play in the community? How are we managing our impact on the environment? Are we working to create a diverse workforce? Are we adapting to technological change? Are we providing the retraining and opportunities that our employees and our business will need to adjust to an increasingly automated world? Are we using behavioral finance and other tools to prepare workers for retirement, so that they invest in a way that will help them achieve their goals?

In October 2018, Blackrock declared, “sustainable investing is becoming mainstream investing.” The firm bundled six existing ESG EFT funds and launched six similar funds in Europe and looked like the model corporate citisen.

So does Blackrock

It seems like it’s “Call for Papers Week” for me.  Here’s one near and dear to my heart, as you all must know . . . .

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National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC)
June 20-21, 2019
Call for Papers

The National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC) will be held on Thursday and Friday, June 20-21, 2019, at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

This is the tenth 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.

To submit a presentation, email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu with an abstract or paper by February 15, 2019. Please title the email “NBLSC Submission – {Your Name}.” If you would like to attend, but not present, email Professor Chaffee with an email entitled

From our friend and colleague, Djamchid Assadi at the Burgundy School of Business in Dijon, France:

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SIG 03 – ENT – Entrepreneurship

With our theme Exploring the Future of Management: Facts, Fashion and Fado, we invite you to participate in the debate about how to explore the future of management.

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

T03_08 – Entrepreneurship in the sharing economy: P2P strategies, models, and innovation paradigms

Proponents:

Djamchid Assadi, Burgundy School of Business BSB; Asmae DIANI, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco; Urvashi Makkar, G.L. Bajaj Institute of Management and Research (GLBIMR), Greater Noida; Julienne Brabet, Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC); Arvind ASHTA, Arvind, CEREN, EA 7477, Burgundy School of Business – Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France

Short description:

Sharing of funds, files, accommodations, and other utilities and properties has become a vital part of the emerging social life and economy.

The traditional dyadic firm-to-customer transactions has given place to the depositional triadic of P2P platforms game changers which facilitate exchange between peer providers and peer recipients. As these P2P platforms disrupt conventional transactions, for example, P2P home exchange platforms like Airbnb thoroughly disorder the hotel industry, it is crucial that researchers consider conceptual refinement and empirical grounding for providing insights.

This track aims to bring together