Instructors: Ira Marcus & Yuliya Guseva
Two (2) Credit Skills Course
Schedule: Monday, 3:55 PM – 5:50 PM
Rutgers Law School is organizing its first Transactional Competition Course. The conventional law school curriculum has traditionally emphasized appellate litigation. Yet, today, it is important to prepare our students not only to argue cases and predict how judges will decide cases, but also to counsel clients engaged in buying and selling businesses and help them manage transactional risks, and to structure and draft agreements. In brief, transactional practice calls for new skills, which cannot be gleaned from casebooks.
This innovative Competition was originally developed by Cornell Law School. The Transactional Competition Course consists of two parts. In the first part, students will be taught the basic concepts used in structuring, negotiating and closing deals, including transaction costs, information, and incentives. There will be nine lectures including guest presentations where speakers (including a prominent investment banker, a business valuation expert and a former general counsel of a public company) will share their experience with the students.
The second part is the Transactional Competition itself. It will be held at Rutgers Law School on April 7 and 8, 2017. During the Competition, students will work in deal teams. Each team will represent either the Buyer or the Seller in an asset acquisition and will markup an agreement that will be used in buyer-seller negotiations. Judges, experienced practicing attorneys from prominent NY and NJ firms, will review the markups and negotiations, score student performance, and provide feedback to the student-attorneys.
The final grades will include two components. The first component (30% of the final grade) is the grade received by the teams during the Competition. The second part of the final grade (70%) will be based on a 48-hour take-home exam, which will be similar to the transactional documents covered during the Competition. Exams will be available starting on April 10, 2017. All exams are due by April 17, 2017.
The course will be taught by, and the competition managed by, Ira Marcus a member of the law firm Saiber LLC, Yulia Guseva, Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School.