LAW COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

LAW-2986 Transactional Skills and Contract Drafting Prof. Steven Ferrey, Prof. Christopher Gibson, 3 credits day; 3 credits evening.

Students using this course to fulfill the experiential learning requirement may not also use this same course to meet the legal writing requirement.

Transactional lawyers need to be able to apply their substantive knowledge and expertise to the real-world transactional deals of their clients. This course is intended to help students prepare for the practice of law by providing foundational skills for commercial and transactional law practice. Students will learn about the role of transactional lawyers, while focusing on the basic skills of translating the business deal into contract concepts, drafting commercial agreements, and analyzing contract terms. Most lawyers will need to work with contracts during their careers and, therefore, this course holds interest for all students and not just those interested in corporate or transactional practice. The course will use using a variety of contract problems because not every contract is of interest to all. Topics to be addressed include: - Role of transactional lawyer and ethics - The context of the contract and deal timeline - The deal lawyer’s analytical skill: determining which contract concept best expresses the business deal - Basic techniques for drafting terms - Layout of a contract - How to avoid ambiguity and unintentional vagueness – plain English - Boilerplate - Use of technology in contracts Students are expected to come to class prepared, participate, and satisfactorily complete all assignments by the deadlines. Course grades will be based on the following: - Class participation - 30% - Non-graded assignments and exercises - 20% - Graded assignments - 50%

Prerequisite: Contracts; Suggested: Corporations or LLC, Partnership and Agency

Enrollment is limited: 15

Elective Course

Meets Skills Menu Requirement

Meets Financial Services Concentration Requirements

Meets Experiential Learning Requirement

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