LAW-2986 Transactional Skills
Transactional lawyers need to be able to apply their substantive knowledge and expertise to the real-world transactional deals of their clients. This course is intended to help students prepare for the practice of law by providing foundational skills for commercial and transactional law practice. Students will learn about the role of transactional lawyers, while focusing on the basic skills of translating the business deal into contract concepts, drafting commercial agreements, and analyzing contract terms. Most lawyers will need to work with contracts during their careers and, therefore, this course holds interest for all students and not just those interested in corporate or transactional practice. The course will use using a variety of contract problems because not every contract is of interest to all. Topics to be addressed include: - Role of transactional lawyer and ethics - The context of the contract and deal timeline - The deal lawyer's analytical skill: determining which contract concept best expresses the business deal - Basic techniques for drafting terms - Layout of a contract - How to avoid ambiguity and unintentional vagueness - plain English - Boilerplate - Use of technology in contracts Students are expected to come to class prepared, participate, and satisfactorily complete all assignments by the deadlines. Course grades will be based on the following: - Class participation - 30% - Non-graded assignments and excercises - 20% - Graded assignments - 50%
Prerequisite
LAW-151 or LAW-452 (Recommended). LAW-2136 and LAW-2508 or LAW-2022 (Recommended)