Entrepreneurship

Subscribe to Entrepreneurship via RSS

The University of Arkansas School of Law seeks to fill a tenure-track clinical position starting in the 2023-2024 academic year with a focus on economic development, transactions, business, or entrepreneurship. Lateral applicants are encouraged to apply. Clinical professors are expected to teach 6 to 8 students during the fall and spring semesters.

A candidate must have a J.D. degree from an ABA accredited law school and a commitment to teaching in an environment dedicated to excellence in teaching and mentoring of students. The ideal candidate will have at least three (3) years of practice experience in the clinic subject. At least one (1) year of clinical teaching experience is strongly preferred. Must be a licensed attorney and be eligible to become a member of the Arkansas Bar.

We look for innovative faculty with a preference for both practice and teaching experience. Applicants must demonstrate a commitment to service to legal education and to the wider community as well as a desire to engage in the intellectual life of the University. The University of Arkansas School of Law is dedicated to the aims of diversity and strongly encourages applications from women and minorities.

The University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, located in the northwest…

On Friday, I have the honor and pleasure of presenting a continuing legal education session for the Tennessee Bar Association with Dean Matt Lyon from the LMU Duncan School of Law.  Our topic?  Partner freeze-outs–situations in which a co-venturer in a business recognized as a partnership is excluded from the business by their fellow co-venturers.  This exclusion often occurs through or involves the formation of a limited liability entity, typically a corporation or limited liability company, to conduct the operations of the business going forward.  That new business entity does not include one of the initial co-venturers.  We have titled our session "No Partner Left Behind:Organizing a Limited Liability Entity for a Pre-existing Business Venture."

I truly enjoy the judicial opinions in this area.  You probably know some of them.  Holmes v. Lerner may be one of the better known cases in this space.  But there are others.  Some of the claims in these cases, like the claims in Holmes v. Lerner, stem from co-venturers involved in a de facto partnership–a venture recognized under statutory law as a partnership for which there is no express written acknowledgment of partnership.  Entrepreneurs beware!

The partnership freeze-out genre of judicial opinions is…

This just in from friend-of-the-BLPB Sam Thompson at Penn State Law.  Sam hopes we will bring this program to the attention of those "who might be interested in learning more about this very important topic," including law school administrators, faculty, and students.  I know I plan to make others aware.

+++++

Dear Colleagues: This semester I am teaching a course dealing with issues in Minority Business Development, a subject I took as a student literally 50 years ago in my third year at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Because of the importance of this topic, Penn State Law has permitted me to make the course open to anyone who is interested in this very important topic, and recordings of all of the sessions of the course are available on the Penn State Law website here.

The course is divided into the following three segments:

Part I, Introduction and in-Depth Analysis of the Minority-White Gap in Business Ownership,

Part II, The Lawyer’s Essential Tools in Representing a Minority-Owned Small Business, and

Part III, The Big Ideas for Addressing the Minority-White Gap in Business Ownership

Part I was covered over five sessions and ended with a discussion with Professor…

In 2008, my university (Belmont University) was supposedly the first to offer a social entrepreneurship major. Since then, not only have the schools offering majors in social entrepreneurships grown, but many schools have created centers, institutes, or programs dedicated to the area. Below I try to gather these social enterprise centers in universities. The vast majority are in business schools, some are collaborative across campus, and a few are located in other schools such as law, social work, or design. A few have a specifically religious take on business and social good. Happy to update this list with any centers I missed. 

Lewis Institute at Babson https://www.babson.edu/academics/centers-and-institutes/the-lewis-institute/about/# 

Christian Collective for Social Innovation at Baylor https://www.baylor.edu/externalaffairs/compassion/index.php?id=976437

Center for Social Innovation at Boston College https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/ssw/sites/center-for-social-innovation/about.html

Watt Family Innovation Center at Clemson https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/

Center for the Integration of Faith and Work at Dayton https://udayton.edu/business/experiential_learning/centers/cifw/index.php

CASE i3 at Duke https://sites.duke.edu/casei3/

Social Innovation Collaboratory at Fordham https://www.fordham.edu/info/23746/social_innovation_collaboratory

Social Enterprise & Nonprofit Clinic at Georgetown  https://www.law.georgetown.edu/experiential-learning/clinics/social-enterprise-and-nonprofit-clinic/

and Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu

Global Social Entrepreneurship Institute at Indiana https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/centers-institutes/international-business/programs-initiatives/global-social-entrepreneurship-institute.html

Business + Impact at Michigan https://businessimpact.umich.edu

Social Enterprise Institute at Northeastern https://www.northeastern.edu/sei/

Center for Ethics and Religious…

My friend and colleague Prof. Victoria Haneman has shared her paper, Menstrual Capitalism, Period Poverty, and the Role of the B Corporation.  Here is the abstract: 

A menstruation industrial complex has arisen to profit from the monthly clean-up of uterine waste, and it is interesting to consider the way in which period poverty and menstrual capitalism are opposite sides of the same coin. Given that the average woman will dispose of 200 to 300 pounds of “pads, plugs and applicators” in her lifetime and menstruate for an average of thirty-eight years, this is a marketplace with substantial profit to be reaped even from the marginalized poor. As consciousness of issues such as period poverty and structural gender inequality increases, menstrual marketing has evolved and gradually started to “go woke” through messaging that may or may not be genuine. Companies are profit-seeking and the woke-washing of advertising, or messaging designed to appeal to progressively-oriented sentimentality, is a legitimate concern. Authenticity matters to those consumers who would like to distinguish genuine brand activism from appropriating marketing, but few objective approaches are available to assess authentic commitment.

This Essay considers the profit to be made in virtue signaling solely for the

…

Given anti-democratic events at the nation’s Capitol which were made possible by continued structural injustice in the U.S. – I feel obligated as a lawyer and professor to emphasize our responsibilities to address the interlocking systems of subordination that impact every area of the law – with entrepreneurship being no exception. These systems divide us into “haves” and “have nots” based on race, gender, class, and even geography.

We have a moral obligation as lawyers and professors to address these structural barriers in the classroom. Entrepreneurship is often touted as a means for greater economic participation and a vehicle for innovation. Yet many entrepreneurs and small businesses are hobbled by barriers rooted in structural injustice. These obstacles prevent them from raising necessary capital, accessing legal resources, obtaining other technical assistance, and numerous impediments related to operations such as insurance and talent retention. A full accounting of existing barriers, though important, is insufficient. We must examine the legal roots of modern structural barriers to entrepreneurship – interlocking systems of subordination based on race, class, and gender. Sadly, U.S. laws and policies have actively devalued certain populations and entire communities, elevating certain communities while relegating others to the economic margins. For example, redlining influenced decades of public and private investment, decimating both the inner-city as well as rural areas.

Law professors must equip our students to be thoughtful, diligent, competent, compassionate, and ethical lawyers. As part of this education, students must confront, and unpack legal regimes and reckon with their practical impacts. At a minimum, our students will engage with state and local policy as private attorneys, regulators, and even elected officials. Grounding them in a thorough understanding of the impacts of structural barriers and empowering them to create change by demanding legal reforms is a task we must embrace.

This blog post expands on my presentation at the AALS 2021 Annual Meeting, where I outlined methods for introducing this vital and complex topic into the business law classroom. Below, I detail my learning goals, lesson plans, and provide some additional materials that may prove helpful for other business law professors. This class was first designed and implemented during my time as an Associate Professor at West Virginia University’s College of Law. I mention this to emphasize that the demographics of a law school student body or fellow faculty should not deter academics from engaging in these topics. I have also modified this class successfully for my current students at American University’s Washington College of Law. I can attest that the class has resulted in important and rich dialogue in both law school classrooms. (Please click below for more.)

 

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel of Black entrepreneurs sponsored by the Miami Finance Forum, a group of finance, investment management, banking, capital markets, private equity, venture capital, legal, accounting and related professionals. When every company and law firm was posting about Black Lives Matter and donating to various causes, my colleague Richard Montes de Oca, an MFF board member, decided that he wanted to do more than post a generic message. He and the MFF board decided to launch a series of webinars on Black entrepreneurship. The first panel featured Jamarlin Martin, who runs a digital media company and has a podcast; Brian Brackeen, GP of Lightship Capital and founder of Kairos, a facial recognition tech company;  and Raoul Thomas, CEO of CGI Merchant Group, a real estate private equity group.

These panelists aren't the typical Black entrepreneurs. Here are some sobering statistics:

  • Black-owned business get their initial financing through 44% cash; 15% family and friends; 9% line of credit; 7% unsecured loans; and 3% SBA loans;
  • Between February and April 2020, 41% of Black-owned businesses, 33% of Latinx businesses, and 26% of Asian-owned businesses closed while 17% of White-owned business closed;
  • As of 2019,

…

Earlier today, I submitted a book chapter with the same title as this blog post.  The chapter, written for an international management resource on Digital Entrepreneurship and the Sharing Economy, represents part of a project on crowdfunding and poverty that I have been researching and thinking through for a bit over two years now.  My chapter abstract follows:

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and created economic hardship all over the world.  The United States is no exception.  Among other things, the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis deepen pre-existing concerns about financing U.S. businesses formed and promoted by entrepreneurs of modest means.

In May 2016, a U.S. federal registration exemption for crowdfunded securities offerings came into existence (under the CROWDFUND Act) as a means of helping start-ups and small businesses obtain funding.  In theory, this regime was an attempt to fill gaps in U.S. securities law that handicapped entrepreneurs and their promoters from obtaining equity, debt, and other financing through the sale of financial investment instruments over the Internet.  The use of the Internet for business finance is particularly important to U.S. entrepreneurs who may not have access to funding because of their own limited financial and economic positions.…

Call for Papers
AALS Section on Agency, Partnership, LLCs & Unincorporated Associations 

Entrepreneurship and the Entity 

January 5-9, 2021, AALS Annual Meeting 

The AALS Section on Agency, Partnership, LLCs & Unincorporated Associations will sponsor a panel on “Entrepreneurship and the Entity” at the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. This panel will showcase scholarship on subjects relating to business law and entrepreneurship, including entity choice throughout a company’s evolution, financing alternatives, and how legal rules promote and discourage different kinds of entrepreneurship. Scholars are encouraged to interpret the subject of the Call for Papers broadly and creatively. 

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Scholars should send a summary of a work or a work-in-progress of no more than 600 words to Professor Sarah C. Haan at haans@wlu.edu on or before Friday, August 21, 2020. The summary should be a pdf or Word document that has been stripped of information identifying the author; only the cover email should connect the author to the submission. The subject line of the email should read: “Submission—[author name & title].” Papers will be selected through an anonymous review by the Section’s Executive Committee. 

SPECIAL NOTE: Interested parties are encouraged to submit…

COVID-19's effects on financings and M&A, as well as contracts more generally (as covered here, here, and here among many other places), the rapid adoption of the Coronavirus Act, Relief, and Economic Security Act, a/k/a the “CARES Act” (key terms summarized briefly here and elsewhere), and the President's invocation of the Defense Production Act have me feeling like I am drinking business law water out of a fire hose this past week.  Anyone else feeling that way?  Whew!

I am still sorting through it all.  I am sure that I will have more to say on some of this as time passes.  However, earlier today, in the process of reading online resources and watching and listening to others talk about the many legal aspects of the current pandemic, I came across this YouTube video, done by one of my former students, a local attorney who works with entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses.

I have not fact-checked this video.  And he jumps in to correct himself.  But what I like about it is that it represents unvarnished, even humorous, boots-on-the-ground legal public service.  He does not want businesses in the local community to miss out or waste time/money shooting in…