Transactional Law, Skills, and Tech Competency

A reminder that Emory’s 2021 conference on transactional law and skills education is next Friday, June 4, 2021. It is virtual and registration is only $50. Register here.

Today, I'm submitting a guest post by Professor Jen Randolph Reise of Mitchell Hamline School of Law.  On Friday the 11th, I'll post my reflections from the Emory conference. Jen and I have bonded over our mission to bring practical skills into the classroom. Her remarks are  below:

I’m looking forward to hearing from many leaders in transactional legal education, including keynote speakers Joan MacLeod Heminway, Marcia Narine Weldon, and Robert J. Rhee on the theme of “Emerging from the Crisis: Future of Transactional Law and Skills Education.” Marcia will also be talking about her experience launching a transactional program at Miami, joined by three of her adjunct professors.

For my part, I’ll be presenting a Try-This session sharing how I have used exercises that integrate key technological resources and techniques into teaching doctrinal courses. I’ve written in this blog before in praise of practice problems, especially in the asynchronous or flipped classroom. These exercises take that one step farther by creating a self-paced, guided discovery and low-stakes practice of some skills and resources they will need to be transactional lawyers.

Specifically, participants in the Try-This session will be introduced to, and invited to try, three exercises I have created and used in Business Organizations and M&A:

1) a State Filings Exercise, which facilitates student discovery of their state’s business entity statutes and secretary of state filing site (for example, they learn how to form an LLC, and what information on LLCs is publicly accessible);

2) a Public Company Filings Exercise, which guides students through accessing and understanding the structure of public company SEC filings and how to retrieve pertinent information from EDGAR; and

3) a Working with Definitive Agreements Exercise, which introduces M&A students to drafting based on samples and from a term sheet, and requires them to learn to create a redline using Word’s Compare feature.

I’d love to have you attend on Friday and share your experiences and feedback. Or, feel free to contact me at jen.reise@mitchellhamline.edu or on Twitter @JensJourneyOn anytime for copies or to share ideas. As a transactional in-house lawyer, newly come to the academy, I’m passionate about students getting a foothold in the distinct perspective, skills, and technology they need to become successful transactional lawyers.