[S]upporting under-resourced entrepreneurs, and low-income entrepreneurs is still vital, but it cannot be the only solution to promoting economic justice. The fact that entrepreneurship will not resolve the disparities in opportunity leftover from Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery should
The Passing of a Transactional Law Legend: In Memory of Tina L. Stark
Transactional lawyering and the education of transactional lawyers has been transformed by Tina L. Stark (Weisenfeld). You may have known her for her wonderful books–Drafting Contracts: How & Why Lawyers Do What They Do and Negotiating and Drafting Contract Boilerplate are on my bookshelves and those of so many others. You may have heard her speak at a conference or symposium.
Yet, many of us also knew Tina on a more personal level. Some of us had her as an instructor or as a colleague. Long a consultant and advisor to law schools, bar associations, and legal employers on transactional legal education and training, Tina also held full-time administrative and teaching appointments at Emory University School of Law and Boston University School of Law and was a visitor at Fordham University School of Law. Earlier in her career, she was an adjunct law professor at Fordham Law and the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University.
Tina passed away earlier this week. But her presence will continue to be felt in so many ways. She and I initially bonded over our not only our love of teaching plainly
Hawai’i Law Seeks Business Law Faculty
The William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in Business Law to begin in Fall 2026. We seek candidates with a demonstrated record or strong potential for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.
We welcome applicants whose research and teaching interests include business associations, corporate law, commercial law, securities regulation, entrepreneurship, or related areas. The successful candidate will join a collegial and interdisciplinary faculty committed to teaching excellence, community engagement, and advancing justice in Hawaiʻi and beyond.
Applications must be submitted through the University of Hawaiʻi’s official Work at UH portal.
For full consideration, please apply by November 12, 2025.
For inquiries, please contact Professor Alina Ng Boyte at aboyte@hawaii.edu.
Cornell Law – Transactional Clinic Co-Director
In deleting old email messages, I found one on this job opening unopened from last month. Sorry for the delay in posting!
We’re delighted to share that Cornell is hiring a transactional clinician to be based in Ithaca in the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic and the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law.
David Reiss recently joined Cornell’s faculty to launch a new section of the ELC at the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, establishing Cornell’s first New York City-based law clinic in January 2025. Our search this year is for a co-director based in Ithaca. The new hire will have full-time teaching responsibility in the ELC, working alongside David. The appointment will be to the long-term, presumptively renewable, contract track for permanent clinical faculty at Cornell Law School, with voting rights and academic leave rights consistent with the other permanent clinicians.
The full job posting is linked and attached.
The application deadline is September 30, but we encourage candidates to apply early. If you have any questions, feel free to contact David (david.reiss@cornell.edu) and Beth (mbl235@cornell.edu).
Alabama Law – Seeking Clinical Assistant Professor/Director of the Entrepreneurship Clinic
From Mirit Eyal:
The University of Alabama School of Law is seeking a Clinical Assistant Professor in Business Law to serve as Director of the Entrepreneurship Clinic.
We are looking for candidates with significant practice experience in areas directly related to entrepreneurship, startups, or small business law. We will also consider those with adjacent practice experience (including tax law) that can effectively transfer into the clinic setting. Candidates with a business or tax related LLM and direct experience in formal entrepreneurship, startups, and small business practice will be strongly preferred.
The position announcement and application details can be found here: careers.ua.edu/jobs/…
Some Good Personal/Professional News for the Weekend
Earlier this week, The University of Tennessee Frank Winston College of Law (yes, a new name, with a great story behind it!) announced my appointment as the incoming director of the Clayton Center for Entrepreneurial Law. You can find the full story here. I posted the news on social media earlier in the week. Thanks to those of you who commented and contacted me in response to those posts.
As I said there and have told many of you, I am truly excited to take on this new role for the academic program in which I have worked for 25 years–the program that brought me to Tennessee and the College of Law in 2000 after nearly 15 years of practice up in Boston, Massachusetts. I assume the directorship on August 1. I am grateful to the center’s interim director, Brian Krumm, who has ably managed the center since the 2024 retirement of longtime director George Kuney.
The Clayton Center is rooted in entrepreneurship, being the namesake of James L. Clayton, a 1964 graduate of the Winston College of Law who is the founder of Knoxville-based Clayton Homes, Inc., now a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Elon Musk and the Presidential Election
I was quoted earlier this week (Monday) in a Business Insider article, “Elon Musk has a lot to gain if Trump wins. A Harris presidency is more uncertain.” The article is behind a paywall (sorry!), but at the time this is being posted, an aol.com version is available. In any event, this post offers my two quotes with some context.
On the potential for bias against Elon Musk in a Harris administration:
“One would hope that governmental units would be immune to political pressures,” Joan MacLeod Heminway, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, told BI. “But people in those units are humans and may inadvertently scrutinize proposals coming from entities owned or controlled by Elon Musk.”
In response to a question about the inclusion of Elon Musk in a Trump administration:
“There are ethical rules mandating compliance with various types of obligations, including conflict-of-interest reporting, for certain types of government positions,” Heminway said. “Elon Musk may not want to take on these obligations.”
Now, we will wait and see what actually transpires. The article notes that “Trump has already incorporated some of Musk’s policy proposals into his campaign, with plans to establish a government efficiency commission
Tennessee Law Welcomes the SEC Division of Corporation Finance!
We are excited to welcome our colleague Erik Gerding, the Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Corporation Finance, together with members of his staff, to The University of Tennessee College of Law a week from today. Information about the visit is included below. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by!
Suffolk Law is Seeking a Clinical Professor to Lead its Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic!
Suffolk University Law School’s nationally ranked Clinical Programs, expects to conduct a search for a tenured or tenure-track Clinical Professor to lead our Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic (IPEC), to begin in the 2024-25 school year. IPEC is a full-year in-house clinic, one of Suffolk’s 12 in-house clinics, and an important part of Suffolk Law’s outstanding Clinical Programs. Suffolk’s Clinical Programs have been ranked among the top 20 such programs in U.S. News & World Report for more than a decade. Our Clinical Professors have full tenure and are wholly integrated into our faculty, including having equity in terms of faculty rights, perquisites, and responsibilities. IPEC is also integrated into Suffolk’s recently launched Intellectual Property Center and its Intellectual Property Concentration, which includes a number of highly regarded faculty. Suffolk Law’s intellectual property program is regularly ranked among the nation’s best and was most recently ranked number 31 in the country.
We seek candidates with a commitment to excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Candidates must have at least five years of relevant experience in one or more areas
Trust in Business Associations: Fiduciary Duties
The University of Tennessee College of Law’s business law journal, Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law, recently published my essay, “The Fiduciary-ness of Business Associations.” You can find the essay here. This essay–or parts of it, anyway–has been rattling around in my brain for a bit. It is nice on a project like this to be able to get the words out on a page and release all that tension building up inside as you fashion your approach.
The abstract for the essay is included below.
This essay offers a window and perspective on recent fiduciary-related legislative developments in business entity law and identifies and reflects in limited part on related professional responsibility questions impacting lawyers advising business entities and their equity owners. In addition—and perhaps more pointedly—the essay offers commentary on legal change and the legislative process for state law business associations amendments in and outside the realm of fiduciary duties. To accomplish these purposes, the essay first provides a short description of the position of fiduciary duties in U.S. statutory business entity law and offers a brief account of 21st century business entity legislation that weakens the historically central role of fiduciary duties in unincorporated