Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Teaching and Supporting Small Business and Innovation
As you may know or recall, I am teaching an advanced business law course that leverages the characters and transactions featured in HBO Max's Succession. I reported on the course here back in November. The inspiration for the course came in part from the work some of us did to produce a series of educational sessions as the Waystar Royco School of Law last year. I posted on that lecture series here on the BLPB, too, including here.
From that series of Zoomcasts, a publication opportunity, some press inquiries, and a few new friendships followed, as well as the idea for my Succession course. We are only a few classes in so far, but we had the pleasure of hosting friend-of-the-BLPB Ben Means in class today. As you may know, Ben directs South Carolina's innovative Family and Small Business Program. He also participated int he Waystar Royco School of Law (ad)venture and was a super guest. We covered a lot of ground on family businesses, big and small, in our 75 minutes together this morning. Thank you, Ben.
This class meeting and my Securities Regulation teaching today had me thinking about small businesses and innovation. That reminded me that I keep forgetting to blog about a nifty small business that I was introduced to last year. The business is The Grain Free Baker. I learned about the business from one of my fellow BLPB editors, Colleen Baker. It is her sister's business. As a cook, a foodie, and a business lawyer supportive of entrepreneurship, it was fun to learn about the business--founded by a Baker who is a baker! You can read about it here.
It is the need to bring money into businesses like this that helps drive me to teach a new generation of law students to be corporate finance lawyers. It is essential that lawyers understand, I argued earlier today, what a security is and what the legal implications of offering and selling securities are if they are to use their law degrees to support start-ups and small businesses. Although many entrepreneurs will seek out commercial loans to finance their businesses, corporate finance transactions are desired or needed by others.
I hope those of you who are instructors also can find passion projects that inspire your teaching. They can be so helpful in motivating instruction at downtimes during the semester. That has been true for me. And what's not to like about financing businesses that produce amazing products like the mix that made these cookies?!
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