Law Commons^™

Enterprise Without Entities, Andrew Verstein

Michigan Law Review

Scholars and practicing lawyers alike consider legal entities to be essential. Who can imagine running a large business without using a business organization, such as a corporation or partnership? This Article challenges conventional wisdom by showing that vast enterprises—with millions of customers paying trillions of dollars—often operate without any meaningful use of entities.

This Article introduces the reciprocal exchange, a type of insurance company that operates without any meaningful use of a legal entity. Instead of obtaining insurance from a common nexus of contract, customers directly insure one another through a dense web of bilateral agreements. While often overlooked or …