Concentration in Business Transactions

There are three capstone courses for the concentration, Representing Enterprises, Transactional Tax Planning, and Estate Planning Seminar. Those courses are offered as instructors are available. You must take at least one of the capstone courses and you may take all three if they are offered and your schedule allows. Alternative, Semester in Residence may be approved to satisfy the capstone requirement.

Representing Enterprises (3 to 5 credit hours) This course, taught in a series of modules, by full-time faculty and adjunct professors, integrates prior course work in simulations of business transactions. The transactions vary from year to year, and have included formation of a new business, acquisition of a new business, obtaining a working capital loan, negotiating and documenting a shopping center lease, securitization of receivables, and confirming a chapter 11 plan of reorganization. This course is taken in the spring of your third year. It is usually taught in small sections of no more than 14 students (Prerequisites: all other courses in the concentration; satisfies Planning and Drafting requirement; up to two of the prerequisites can be taken concurrently with Representing Enterprises as co-requisites.)

Transactional Tax Planning (3 credit hours) Advanced study of taxation of business organizations, including tax treatment of business acquisitions, tax planning for financially troubled entities, and the review of recent transactions that involve cutting-edge planning and have shaped changes in the law. Limited enrollment. This course is taken, when offered, in the fall of your third year. (Prerequisites: 818 Fundamental Concepts of Income Taxation and 972 Income Taxation of Business Organizations; satisfies Planning and Drafting requirement.)

Estate Planning Seminar (2 credit hours) After a brief consideration of the ethical conflicts that can occur in the estate planning process, the course focuses on drafting two legal documents commonly used in planning for clients with taxable estates, the life insurance trust and the will (the latter employing the Federal Estate and Gift Tax Unified Credit and marital deduction). Class time will be spent on understanding the provisions of these instruments, including the possible interaction of certain clauses. Students are then required to assemble the articles and clauses studied in class into a finished work product and to draft letters to the client and fiduciaries explaining the legal documents. The course seeks to simulate the production of legal documents as is typically expected of a beginning lawyer in an established trusts and estates practice, with emphasis on a polished work product, including appropriate communications with clients.  This course is taken, when offered, in the spring of your third year. Limited enrollment. (Prerequisite: Wills and Trusts (935). Recommended: Fundamental Concepts of Income Taxation (818); satisfies Planning and Drafting requirement.)

Semester in Residence (subject to the student receiving approval from the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Law; contact the Director with a description of the Semester in Residence and its planned components so that it can be evaluated for this purpose.)