Law School

Subscribe to Law School via RSS

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, PAUL M. HEBERT LAW CENTER seeks to hire a tenure-track or tenured faculty member in business and commercial law, with particular attention in corporate, partnership, and other areas of tax law. We may consider applications from persons who specialize in other areas as additional needs arise. Applicants should have superior academic credentials and publications or promise of productivity in legal scholarship, as well as a commitment to outstanding teaching. The Paul M. Hebert Law Center of LSU is an Equal Opportunity/Equal Access Employer and is committed to building a culturally diverse faculty. We particularly welcome and encourage applications from female and minority candidates.

Applications should include a letter of application, resume, references, and teaching evaluations (if available) to:

Melissa T. Lonegrass
Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee
c/o Pam Hancock (or by email to phancock@lsu.edu)
Paul M. Hebert Law Center
Louisiana State University
1 East Campus Drive
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803-0106

Greetings from Atlanta, Georgia, site of the Emory Transactional Law & Skills Conference. After only a few hours of presentations, I’m already inspired to make some changes in my new transactional lawyering class. I will write about some of the lessons learned next week. Today, I want to share some of Tina Stark’s remarks from the conference dinner that ended moments ago. Although she initially teased the audience by stating that she would make “subversive” statements, nothing that she said would scandalize most law students or surprise practicing lawyers.

Her “radical” proposal entailed having transactional skills education be a part of every law student’s curriculum. In support, she cited ABA Standard 301(a), which states:

OBJECTIVES OF PROGRAM OF LEGAL EDUCATION (a) A law school shall maintain a rigorous program of legal education that prepares its students, upon graduation, for admission to the bar and for effective, ethical, and responsible participation as members of the legal profession.

She argued that for the academy to meet this standard, schools must go beyond a narrow reading of ABA rules and provide every student with the foundation to practice transactional law, particularly because half of graduates will practice in that area even if they don’t know…

Earlier today, I received this call for submissions from the American Business Law Journal (“ABLJ”). I published with the ABLJ in 2017 and had a fabulous experience. The manuscripts are blind/peer-reviewed, something we need more of in the legal academy, in my opinion. I found the substantive comments to be of a much higher quality than one gets from a typical law review, and, unlike the practice of some peer-reviewed journals, the ABLJ published my manuscript in a timely manner. 

———-

The American Business Law Journal is seeking submissions of manuscripts that advance the scholarly literature by comprehensively exploring and analyzing legal and ethical issues affecting businesses within the United States or the world. Manuscripts analyzing international business law topics are welcome but must include a comprehensive comparative analysis, especially with U.S. law.

 As most of you know, the ABLJ is a triple-blind, peer-reviewed law journal published by the Academy. The ABLJ is available on Westlaw and Lexis, and ranks in the top 6% of all publications in the Washington & Lee Submissions and Ranking list by Impact Factor (2016) and in the top 1% of all peer-edited or refereed by Impact Factor (2016).  The Washington & Lee list ranks…

I learned earlier this afternoon that Lynn Stout, author of The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations and the Public (2012), lost her battle with cancer today.  Appropriate words are hard to come by.  She was among the nation’s scholarly leaders in the legal aspects of corporate governance.  Regardless of whether you agree with her on the substance, you would likely find her work enlightening and her presence powerful.  She was persistent in argument, yet generous with mentoring and other professional support.

I know we each will miss her in our own way.  She and I had a bit of an unfinished conversation last June at the National Business Law Scholars Conference about my Washington & Lee Law Review article, “Shareholder Wealth Maximization as a Function of Statutes, Decisional Law, and Organic Documents.”  I am sorry we never completed that chat.

Her vast body of work is among her great legacies.  I have my Advanced Business Associations students read “A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law” (coauthored with Margaret Blair) every year.  Other articles that I have enjoyed and used in teaching or research include: “Why We Should Stop…

I love teaching courses that develop practical skills. This summer, I am teaching a 2-credit transactional drafting course for the first time. In the past, I have taught 2-credit skills courses that had a drafting element, but the students enrolled in those courses typically had taken business associations, and therefore we could do entity selection exercises, portions of bylaws, operating agreements,  asset purchase agreements, NDAs, and employment agreement clauses. This time, BA will not be a prerequisite, and I am likely to have a number of rising 2Ls enroll.

I have a pile of proposed textbooks that I’m looking to for inspiration (and to select for the course), but I’m specifically seeking tips and best practices for teaching these skills to students who are fresh off of their 1L year. I plan to have a number of practicing lawyers speak to the students about common pitfalls in negotiating and drafting because I have the luxury of one three-hour block of time per week. At a minimum, students will draft, edit, and redline (where appropriate) a retainer letter, time sheets, a nondisclosure agreement, an independent contractor or employment agreement, and a license or settlement agreement. The goal is to have them draft…

Law Teaching for Adjunct Faculty and New Professors Conference

Law Teaching for Adjunct Faculty and New Professors is a one-day conference for new and experienced adjunct faculty, new full-time professors, and others who are interested in developing and supporting those colleagues. The conference will take place on Saturday, April 28, 2018, at Texas A&M University School of Law, Fort Worth, Texas, and is co-sponsored by the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning and Texas A&M University School of Law.

Sessions will include:

  • Course Design and Learning Outcomes – Michael Hunter Schwartz

  • Assessment – Sandra Simpson

  • Active Learning – Sophie Sparrow

  • Team-based Learning – Lindsey Gustafson

  • Technology and Teaching – Anastasia Boles

Details are here. 

CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS

Institute for Law Teaching and Learning—Summer 2018 Conference Exploring the Use of Technology in the Law School Classroom June 18-20
Gonzaga University School of Law
Spokane, Washington

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning invites proposals for conference workshops addressing the many ways that law teachers are utilizing technology in their classrooms across the curriculum. With the rising demands for teachers who are educated on active learning techniques and with technology changing so rapidly, this topic has taken on increased urgency

…

One of the things I have noticed in raising two young children is how both my son and my daughter are much more likely to do what I do than they are to do what I say.

For example, I’ve always encouraged my children to be active, but it wasn’t until I started running that they really started being interested in running themselves. Now, they stage mock races, love their “running shoes,” and ask which foods will make them fast. On the less positive side, when they see me looking at my phone or eating sweets, they want to do the same thing, regardless of what I say is best for them.

Similarly, I had a professor in law school who insisted that we be on-time to class. He explained all the reasons why a habit of punctuality would benefit us in our careers, but then proceeded to be late a number of times himself. He attempted to explain this away, telling us “the partners in the law firm may be late, but that doesn’t excuse lateness from you.” Nevertheless, the students did not seem to respect the professor’s cautionary tale about being late because of the own actions…

2014-06-19_222029521_F7EB2_iOS

About five months ago, on June 18, 2017, my paternal grandmother, Septima “Buddy” Holmes Porcher Murray, passed away at age 91. At the time, she was my last living grandparent.

Relevant to this blog, she also provided me a place to live during my second and third years of law school, as she transitioned, slowly on my account, from Atlanta to Charleston. 

Buddy was one of the most positive and generous people I knew. On this Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for the time I had with Buddy, and that she was able to meet and interact with her great-grandchildren a number of times.

While I am still processing her death, I have decided to post something I wrote shortly after hearing the news and also read at her funeral. These thoughts on Buddy and her life are posted below the break. Buddy’s formal obituary is posted here. 

I have had the pleasure to work with a diverse and impressive group of people on the law faculties upon which I have had the privilege to serve.  One of those people is  David C. Hardesty, Jr., President Emeritus of West Virginia University and Professor of Law at the WVU College of Law. President Hardesty holds degrees from West Virginia University, Oxford University (which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, but more impressive is the time he spends mentoring students and faculty.  He remains committed to the college, university, and state, and we are fortunate he continues to share his time with us.  

President Hardesty teaches a course on leadership, called Lawyers as Leaders, which would be highly relevant at any law school, but it especially important at a school like ours where we are the only law school in the state.  In addition to serving clients big and small, our students consistently go on to hold public office, advise legislators and regulators, and run large companies in the state.  President Hardesty recently wrote an article for the West Virginia Law Review Online that explains part of how he helps prepares lawyers to be leaders.  The article…

Quietly, just over two months ago, we got our Lady Vols back.  As you may recall, back in 2014, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville decided to consolidate its athletic branding behind the ubiquitous orange “Power T.” The women’s basketball team was exempted from the brand consolidation and retained the Lady Vol name and old-school logo in honor of our beloved departed coach, Pat Head Summitt. (See here.)

Many can be credited with the revival of the Lady Vols brand (and I do consider it to be an accomplishment), although perhaps these five heroic women are owed the largest debt of gratitude for the achievement.  I guess my earlier envisioned dreams of profiting from the abandonment of the trademarked Lady Vols logo will not soon be realized . . . .

There are lingering lessons in this affair for businesses and their management–and universities (as well as their athletic departments) are, among other things, businesses.  Knoxville’s former Mayor weighed in with comments on the matter in a recent local news column, advising “you need to be sensitive to what the customer likes.” He concludes (bracketed text added by me):

People will speculate for a long time on how UT…