The centerpiece of the Concentration in Business and Entrepreneurship Law is the Concentration’s curriculum. By pursuing the Concentration, students are offered the opportunity to complete a series of courses that have been designed to provide both a depth of substantive knowledge and a breadth of experience with practice skills and business law practice settings. The goal of the curriculum is to enable students to enter the profession with a higher level of readiness to practice while possessing that combination of theoretical insights and practical perspective that support a career-long life of self-reflection and learning.

In addition to traditional core courses such as Business Organizations, Enterprise Taxation, Securities Regulation, Secured Transactions and Bankruptcy, the Concentration will offer a series of upper-level elective courses that reflect the unique focus of the Earle Mack School of Law on entrepreneurship and technology. These classes will include Private Equity & Venture Capital Law, Biotechnology and the Law and various intellectual property courses. Several of these courses are taught by leaders in the profession. In addition, students at the Earle Mack School of Law will have the opportunity to take courses offered at the LeBow College of Business, such as “Measuring and Maximizing Financial Performance,” an MBA-level course that introduces students to the principles of financial accounting. In all of the courses, students will be exposed to both law and skills, practice and theory, through a classroom method that incorporates simulation, drafting exercises and other non-traditional teaching techniques.

The unique character of the Concentration is highlighted by two courses:

Law and Finance of Transactional Lawyering. This course is offered each Spring and is designed for second year students who have completed the basic coursework in Business Organizations (required) and Enterprise Taxation (recommended). The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the paradigmatic transactions that form the building blocks of all transactional lawyering. These will include employment/agency agreements, borrowings, equity financings, partnerships, shareholder agreements and similar governance arrangements, joint venture, licensing and similar arrangements and purchase and sale agreements. Students will be exposed to the economic and financial underpinnings of these paradigmatic transactions. The course will be taught through a mixture of lecture, case study, problem sets, drafting exercises and role-playing or other simulation. The goal of the course is to provide students with a theoretical foundation for approaching all transactional situations, a preliminary experience with transactional documentation, and an appreciation for the dynamics of transactional lawyering.

Practicum in Entrepreneurial Business Lawyering. Offered over the Winter and Spring quarters each year for students in their third year, this is the capstone course in the Business and Entrepreneurship Concentration. Under the supervision of the instructor who will act as a “senior partner”, students form teams to provide “advice” to entrepreneurial business “clients.” Clients will include MBA teams who are participating in the Annual Business Plan Competition at the Baiada Entrepreneurship Center, start-up businesses that are participating in the Center’s business incubator and projects being supported by the University’s Office of Technology Commercialization. Each client project will be tailored to fit within the constraints of a classroom exercise but will require students to engage in “real world” activities such as client meetings and presentations, legal research, document review and drafting and negotiation. These activities will be supplemented with classroom discussion of relevant doctrine, skills and ethical issues and ongoing supervision and coaching by the instructor and frequent guest practitioners.