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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Robert E. Scott, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Robert E. Scott, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
The phenomenon of “sticky boilerplate” causing inefficient contract terms to persist exists across a variety of commercial contract types. One explanation for this failure to revise suboptimal terms is that the key agents on these transactions, including attorneys and investment bankers, are short sighted; their incentives are to get the deal done rather than ensure that they are using the best terms possible for their clients. Moreover, these agents face a first mover disadvantage that deters unilateral revisions to inefficient terms. If agency costs are indeed driving the stickiness phenomenon, we expect that the pace of revision will vary across …
Fossil Fortunes: Regulating Commercial Paleontology & Incentivizing Fossil Discovery, Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner
Fossil Fortunes: Regulating Commercial Paleontology & Incentivizing Fossil Discovery, Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
The shrinking middle class and the widening gap between the rich and the poor constitute significant threats to social and financial stability. One of the main impediments to upward mobility is the inability of economically disadvantaged people to use their property — in which they sometimes hold only de facto, not de jure, rights — as collateral to obtain credit. This Article argues that commercial law should recognize those de facto rights, enabling the poor to borrow to start businesses or otherwise create wealth. Recognition not only would provide benefits that exceed its costs; it also would be consistent with, …
To Make Or To Buy: In-House Lawyering And Value Creation, Steven L. Schwarcz
To Make Or To Buy: In-House Lawyering And Value Creation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
In recent years, companies have been shifting much of their transactional legal work from outside law firms to in-house lawyers, and some large companies now staff transactions almost exclusively in-house. Although this transformation redefines the very nature of the business lawyer, scholars have largely ignored it. This article seeks to remedy that omission, using empirical evidence as well as economic theory to help explain why in-house lawyers are taking over, and whether they are likely to continue to take over, these functions and roles of outside lawyers. The findings are surprising, suggesting that in-house lawyers may now be performing as …
Explaining The Value Of Transactional Lawyering, Steven L. Schwarcz
Explaining The Value Of Transactional Lawyering, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
This article attempts to explain empirically the value that lawyers add when acting as counsel to parties in business transactions. Contrary to existing scholarship, which is based mostly on theory, this article shows that transactional lawyers add value primarily by reducing regulatory costs, thereby challenging the reigning models of transactional lawyers as "transaction cost engineers" and "reputational intermediaries." This new model not only helps inform contract theory but also reveals a profoundly different vision than those of existing models for the future of legal education and the profession.
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs
Faculty Scholarship
Modern advocates of corporate self-regulation have drawn unlikely inspiration from the Middle Ages. On the traditional view of history, medieval merchants who wandered from fair to fair were not governed by domestic laws, but by their own lex mercatoria, or "law merchant. " This law, which uniformly regulated commerce across Europe, was supposedly produced by an autonomous merchant class, interpreted in private courts, and enforced through private sanctions rather than state coercion. Contemporary writers have treated global corporations as descendants of these itinerant traders, urging them to replace conflicting national laws with a transnational law of their own creation. The …
Book Review, Paul D. Carrington
Book Review, Paul D. Carrington
Faculty Scholarship
Reviewing John Honnold and E. Allan Farnsworth, Cases and Materials on Commercial Law (1965)