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Following up on my December 6 post, I include below an update from AALS Section on Business Associations Chair (and friend-of-the-BLPB) Jessica Erickson relating to the upcoming AALS annual meeting elections for the Section on Business Associations.  I am impressed by the slate and know our section leadership will remain in capable hands!  I hope to see many of you on Zoom at one or more of the section programs, including the main program (described in my December 6 post) at which the voting for next year’s leadership will take place.  

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Dear members of the AALS Business Associations Section:

I am emailing to update you on the proposed slate for the AALS Business Associations Section’s Executive Committee. We have a great list of people who will be joining the section’s leadership. I am rotating off as chair at the end of the annual meeting, and Jim Park (our chair-elect) will automatically become the new chair. Mira Ganor has agreed to serve as next year’s chair-elect. Thanks to both Jim and Mira for their service to our section!

We also have three members rotating off the Executive Committee – Matt Jennejohn, Dana Brakman Reiser, and Andrew Verstein. We…

From friend-of-the-BLPB Megan Shaner:

  • The Transactional Law & Skills Section main program, “Transactional Lawyering at the Intersection of Business and Societal Well-Being,” will be held Friday, January 7th at 11am-12:15 EST.

    Description:

    * Presenters from Call for Papers:

    Michael Blasie, Penn State Dickinson Law, “The Rise of Plain Language Laws”
    George Georgiev, Emory University School of Law, “The Law and Economics of Materiality”

    * Moderator: Eric Chaffee, University of Toledo College of Law

    * Invited Speakers
    Praveen Kosuri, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

    Amelia Miazad, UC Berkeley School of Law

    Jennie Morawetz, Kirkland & Ellis (strategy and operations partner for Kirkland’s ESG and Impact practice)

    Faith Stevelman, New York Law School

    *Moderator: Megan Shaner, University of Oklahoma College of Law

  • At the end of the program we will hold a brief business meeting to elect the membership of next year’s executive committee. If you would like to nominate yourself or another member, please email me at mshaner@ou.edu by December 13, 2020.

This in from friend-of-the-BLPB Jessica Erickson:

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Dear AALS Business Association Section Members,

I hope the end of your semester is going well! I’m writing with programming details for the January 2022 AALS Annual Meeting and to invite you to nominate yourself or others for Executive Committee positions next year.

January 2022 Annual Meeting

1. Registration is still open, and you can register here https://aals.secure-platform.com/a/organizations/main/submissions/details/7094 . As you may know, most law schools have paid school-wide registration fees again this year, which makes registration simpler, but you still have to register to attend any of the sessions.

2. The Business Associations Section main program, “Race and Teaching Business Associations,” will be held Friday, January 7th at 12:35 to 1:50 EST. Many thanks to James Park, the section’s chair-elect, for organizing this panel!

Description: Business Associations classes taught in most law schools spend little if any time on issues relating to racial discrimination and inequity. But as important social institutions, businesses have long had a significant impact on racial equity. The increasing scrutiny of the lack of diversity on public company boards is one of several fronts where businesses are facing both legal and social pressure to address racial inequity. Students…

I was recently honored to be invited to join a panel at the 16th Annual Meeting of the American College of Business Court Judges (ABCBJ), which was held in Jackson, Mississippi, on October 27-29. The meeting was hosted by Chancellor Denise Owens (the current president of the ACBCJ) in association with the Law & Economics Center (LEC) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law.

Chancellor Owens kicked off the event and introduced the keynote speaker, Haley Barbour (former Governor of Mississippi). Governor Barbour gave an excellent talk about the ways in which Mississippi’s musical traditions have helped to improve race relations over the past century.

The meeting panels covered a broad array of topics, including:

  • Ownership, Transfer and Trading of Intellecual Property Rights.
  • The Cost of Truth, Can You Afford It?
  • Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Algorithms: Studies in Law, Economics, and Racial Bias
  • Thriving Post Pandemic – Private Practice and Expanding Regulatory Authority After COVID-19.

I joined Professors Todd Zywicki and Donald Kochan on a panel moderated by Judge Elihu Berle (Los Angeles Superior Court). The panel was entitled, Shareholder Wealth Maximization versus ESG and the Business Roundtable: The Growing Debate Over Corporate Purpose. I…

Last week, I posted about the first of my two published commentaries from the 2020 Business Law Prof Blog Symposium, Connecting the Threads IV.  That earlier post related to my comments on an article written by BLPB co-blogger Stefan Padfield.  The subject?  Public company shareholder proposals–specifically, viewpoint diversity shareholder proposals.

This week, I am posting on the second commentary, History, Hope, and Healthy Skepticism, 22 TRANSACTIONS: TENN. J. BUS. L. 223 (2021).  This commentary offers my observations on co-blogger J. Haskell Murray’s, The History and Hope of Social Enterprise Forms, 22 TRANSACTIONS: TENN. J. BUS. L. 207 (2021).  The main body of the abstract follows.

In this comment, I play the role of the two-year-old in the room. Two-year-old children are well known to ask “why,” and that is what I do here. Specifically, this comment asks “why” in two aspects. First, I ask why we do (or should) care about making modifications to existing social enterprise practices and laws, the subject of Professor Murray’s essay. Second, assuming we do (or should) care, I ask why the changes Professor Murray suggests make sense. My commentary is largely restricted to the benefit corporation form because corporate forms…

Earlier this year, Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law, published papers presented at the 2020 Connecting the Threads IV symposium, held on Zoom just about a year ago.  Back in July, I wrote about my coauthored piece from the 2020 symposium.  That was my primary contribution to the event and the published output.

However, I also had the privilege of commenting on two papers at the symposium last year, and my comments were published in the Transactions symposium volume. I have been wanting to post about those published commentaries for a number of months, but other news just seemed more important.  Given the recent completion of this year’s Connecting the Threads V symposium, it seems like a good time to make those posts.  I start with the first of the two here.

This post covers my commentary on Stefan Padfield’s paper, An Introduction to Viewpoint Diversity Shareholder Proposals.  It was a fascinating read for me.  I was unaware of this genre of shareholder proposal before I picked up Stefan’s draft.  If you also are in the dark about these shareholder proposals, his article offers a great introduction.  Essentially, viewpoint diversity shareholder proposals are shareholder-initiated matters…

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With my bum shoulder and a lot of work on our dean search cramping my style over the past few weeks, I have been remiss in posting about the 2021 Business Law Prof Blog Symposium, Connecting the Threads V.  The idea behind the name (and Doug Moll likes to riff on it–so have at it, Doug!) is that our bloggers here at the BLPB connect the many threads of business law in what we do–here on the blog and elsewhere.

Anyhoo (as Ann would say), as always, my BLPB co-bloggers did not disappoint in their presentations.  I know our students look forward to publishing many of the articles and the related commentaries in the spring book of our business law journal, Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law.  I also am always so proud of, and interested to hear, the commentary of my colleagues and students.  This year was no exception.

In the future, I will post more about the article that I presented.  But I will offer a teaser here, accompanied by the above screen shot from the symposium.  (It was “Big Orange Friday” on our campus.  The orange had to be worn.  Go Vols!)

The title…

I’m so excited to present later this morning at the University of Tennessee College of Law Connecting the Threads Conference today at 10:45 EST. Here’s the abstract from my presentation. In future posts, I will dive more deeply into some of these issues. These aren’t the only ethical traps, of course, but there’s only so many things you can talk about in a 45-minute slot. 

All lawyers strive to be ethical, but they don’t always know what they don’t know, and this ignorance can lead to ethical lapses or violations. This presentation will discuss ethical pitfalls related to conflicts of interest with individual and organizational clients; investing with clients; dealing with unsophisticated clients and opposing counsel; competence and new technologies; the ever-changing social media landscape; confidentiality; privilege issues for in-house counsel; and cross-border issues. Although any of the topics listed above could constitute an entire CLE session, this program will provide a high-level overview and review of the ethical issues that business lawyers face.

Specifically, this interactive session will discuss issues related to ABA Model Rules 1.5 (fees), 1.6 (confidentiality), 1.7 (conflicts of interest), 1.8 (prohibited transactions with a client), 1.10 (imputed conflicts of interest), 1.13 (organizational clients), 4.3 (dealing…

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Although we had hoped to be together again in person this year, our annual gathering of bloggers from the BLPB is back on Zoom again this year.  [sigh]  The good news for all of you readers is that you do not have to travel to Knoxville, TN to “see” and hear us!  This year’s edition of “Connecting the Threads” will be held tomorrow (Friday) from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, Eastern time.  The full schedule is available here and this is the Zoom connection for the entire day.

Here is the basic schedule, so you can get a quick lay of the land:

Schedule of Events

  • Registration / 9 – 9:30 a.m.
     
  • Introduction / 9:30 – 9:45 a.m.

    Interim Dean Doug Blaze

  • Panel I – Insider Trading in Response to Expressive Trading / 9:45 – 10:30 a.m.

    John Anderson

  • Panel II – Ten Ethics Traps for Business Lawyers / 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.

    Marcia Narine Weldon

  • Break / 11:30 – 11:45 a.m.
  • Panel III – Paying for Energy Peaks: Learning from Texas’ February 2021 Power Crisis / 11:45 – 12:30 p.m.

    Colleen Baker and James Coleman

  • Lunch / 12:30 – 1 p.m.
     
  • Keynote Speaker – Securities Regulation and

…

The Section on Transactional Law & Skills has extended its deadline for paper proposals for its program at the 2022 Annual Meeting to Friday, September 17. Submissions can be sent directly to Megan Shaner at mshaner@ou.edu. I cribbed the following from a message she wrote to the section membership last week.  (Thanks, Megan!)

The topic of the section’s program this year is “Transactional Lawyering at the Intersection of Business and Societal Well-Being” and, according to the preliminary program for the conference, the program is tentatively scheduled for 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Friday, January 7, 2022. The first part of the program focuses on how to incorporate ESG issues and impact topics across the transactional curriculum, including in clinics and other experiential courses, as well as in doctrinal courses. The second part of the program consists of scholarly presentations to be selected from the Call for Papers set forth below. If you incorporate ESG, corporate social responsibility, impact investing or governance, or related topics into your scholarship in any way, you should consider submitting your paper in response to the Call for Papers.

CALL FOR PAPERS
AALS SECTION ON TRANSACTIONAL LAW AND SKILLS
Transactional Lawyering at the…