Law Commons^™

The Ethics Of Representing Founders, Paul R. Tremblay

William & Mary Business Law Review

Lawyers assisting entrepreneurial startups frequently work with individual founders before any formal organizational client materializes. In advising founders about such legal matters as whether to establish an entity, and if so, which entity best fits the needs of the enterprise, as well as how to arrange the owners’ relationships within the business, the lawyer necessarily has an attorney-client relationship with someone. The prevailing scholarship about startup representation pays surprisingly little attention to the posture of the lawyer and her founder-clients in the pre-organization context. This Article investigates the lawyer’s responsibilities and commitments in depth.

A lawyer working with a solo …

Who Needs Contracts? Generalized Exchange Within Investment Accelerators, Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article investigates why an expert volunteers on behalf of startups that participate in a novel type of small venture capital (“VC”) fund known as a mentor-driven investment accelerator (“MDIA”). A MDIA organizes a pool of seasoned individuals – called “mentors” – to help new companies. An obvi- ous organizational strategy would be to contract with mentors. Mentors in- stead voluntarily assist. Legal studies of norm-based exchanges do not explain what this Article calls the “mentorship conundrum”—i.e., the puzzling moti- vation of a mentor to volunteer within otherwise for-profit environments. This Article is the first to bridge the insights of …

To Fund Or Not To Fund: Deficiencies In The Wisconsin Crowdfunding Act That Hamper The Viaiblity Of Intrastate Crowdfunding, Andrew S. Hovestol

Marquette Law Review

"Crowdfunding," which is described as "the practice of . . . soliciting [financial] contributions from a large number of people especially from the online community," has recently taken the financial world by storm through the advent of websites like "Kickstarter," "Fundable," "IndieGogo," "Razoo," and "Appbackr." Such websites provide a marketplace whereby companies, small businesses, and entrepreneurs looking for startup capital can solicit funding from individual investors. The concept is relatively straightforward: project creators initiate a profile that includes informative bits like short videos, a brief synopsis of the project, and images to further showcase the project. Each project has a …

Regulatory Entrepreneurship, Elizabeth Pollman, Jordan M. Barry

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines what we term “regulatory entrepreneurship” — pursuing a line of business in which changing the law is a significant part of the business plan. Regulatory entrepreneurship is not new, but it has become increasingly salient in recent years as companies from Airbnb to Tesla, and from DraftKings to Uber, have become agents of legal change. We document the tactics that companies have employed, including operating in legal gray areas, growing “too big to ban,” and mobilizing users for political support. Further, we theorize the business and law-related factors that foster regulatory entrepreneurship. Well-funded, scalable, and highly connected …