In-House Counsel in Mod Corps

Catalog description

Enrollment Limit: 16 Course Requirement: final project Satisfies Experiential Learning requirement This business law concentration, three credit skills course, will explore the unique legal and practical challenges that face counsel working in a classic corporate law department. Throughout this course, students will engage with a fictional client for which the legal issues will be addressed by the student as a member of the company's law department. Students will come to understand the use of the legal function as a tool which is critical to innovation and furthering business objectives. Themes addressed will include addressing client service, driving business objectives through the legal function, and the assessing the independent duties owed by a corporate attorney to the corporation, as well as, where tensions arise between those themes. These themes will be examined through topics such as selecting and managing outside counsel and expense, selecting and disseminating legal technology, and applying practical and effective principles to reduce litigation risk, each as distinct from the responsibilities of outside counsel. The awareness of legal knowledge versus application of legal intelligence, and the operation of the attorney-client privilege specific to the in-house context. This course emphasizes experiential learning to develop lawyers who are effective in innovative, non-standard, and non-traditional modes. Students will thematically examine that innovation in the legal practice is often driven by the client demands of the in-house counsel (to address their own business clients' needs), such as the use of technology platforms, and the increasing need to act as a predictive, forward-looking counselor, as well as, the preparing and disseminating such critical communications to and for the client company. In addition to legal issues, students will build…