Persons trained in corporate law help to create, finance, and operate the business enterprises that account for the vast bulk of the world's economic activity. They bring corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, and other enterprises into being. They structure the stock and bond offerings and the bank and insurance company loans that provide the enterprises with capital. They effect the joint ventures, licensing arrangements, mergers, acquisitions, and the myriad of other transactions entered into by the enterprises. All this is done amidst constraints arising from market forces, varying notions of social responsibility, and state, federal, and international law and regulation. Corporate work is challenging and rewarding.
Faculty
Carson, R. Hamilton, Hu, Lebowitz, Sokolow.
Courses
The Law School has a large and diverse set of relevant course offerings. Both the four unit and five unit versions of the Business Associations course deal with organizational alternatives and their respective managerial and financial implications. Full-time faculty members regularly teach advanced offerings such as Bankruptcy, Corporate Finance, Corporate and International Finance, Insurance, Law and Economics, Payment Systems, Real Estate Finance, Secured Credit, Securities Regulation, and Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders.
Students at the Law School benefit directly from the scholarly research engaged in by the faculty. In the corporate area, such matters as the headline flaws in corporate governance, the derivatives revolution in the financial markets, and the recent stock market bubble raise fundamental, often complex, issues. Faculty research on such matters can filter through to the ideas discussed in class. It can enrich and keep the educational experience at the cutting edge. The Law School also offers many specialized courses, some of which are taught by distinguished professors from foreign universities and lawyers practicing in major Texas law firms. Offerings pertaining to battles for corporate control, business rehabilitation under the Bankruptcy Code, and patent litigation help keep students abreast of important, fluid areas in the law. Students interested in international work consider offerings in corporate and international finance, international business litigation, international business transactions, international energy transactions, and Eastern European, and Mexican law.
Extracurricular Opportunities
There are many opportunities for our law students to learn about corporate law outside the formal curriculum. From time to time, faculty members and leading practitioners give talks on pertinent topics that are open to students. Student publications at the Law School, such as the Texas Journal of Business Law regularly publish articles in the corporate area. Students also learn about corporate work during summer clerkships. As with other leading law schools, hundreds of corporate-oriented national law firms routinely send recruiters to the Law School. The Law School has also responded to students interested in careers with corporations rather than law firms. Professor (now Dean) William C. Powers, Jr., for instance, initiated an annual Corporate Counsel Day during which attorneys from major publicly held corporations meet with students in a variety of formal and informal settings.