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Workshop focuses on minority recruitment efforts
Professors meet here to share theoretical insights for effectively teaching corporate law
The nation’s leading corporate law scholars will share tools of the trade with their peers during
a two-day conference aimed at better preparing law students for the realities of corporate practice Oct. 15-16 at the School of Law. The conference is the brainchild of Charles R.T. O’Kelley, who joined the law school in 1997 as the first Martin E. Kilpatrick Professor of Corporate and Securities Law. Before joining the UGA faculty, he concurrently served as dean of the University of Oregon Law School and as founding director of its Law and Entrepreneurship Center. O’Kelley took a break from conference planning to discuss the event with Columns.Columns: What makes the “Teaching Corporate Law” conference unique?
O’Kelley: Several things. First, this conference focuses on teaching instead of other applications of legal research. All good teachers know that theoretical scholarship is essential to successful teaching. The insights a professor gains from her own research are essential to being an effective teacher. Likewise, all good teachers seek to embrace the lessons that can be learned from the seminal discoveries of other legal scholars. Nonetheless, this is the first significant conference that directly focuses on the application of theoretical insights to teaching.
Columns: So I take it that colleagues have been receptive to the conference and its organizing theme?
O’Kelley: The response has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Most of the participants are excited to come because they haven’t had an opportunity to talk or write about their theoretical insights as they directly relate to teaching. And they’re excited not only because they’ll be presenting their own ideas, but because they know that so many leaders in the field are going to be doing the same. There are perhaps 200 professors who devote their scholarship and teaching exclusively to the field of corporate law, and about half of them are coming to Athens at the end of this week.
Columns: How have you organized the conference?
O’Kelley: We’ll have 10 one-to-two hour tracks on Friday and Saturday, led by some of the top experts in the field: professors from Cornell, Georgetown, Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Texas, Virginia and UCLA. The sessions will be highly interactive, addressing topics like corporate finance, Delaware law, fiduciary duty, accounting, corporate social responsibility, how to train corporate lawyers as problem solvers, the uses of history and cognitive psychology and the role of empirical research. The subject area of corporations is so incredibly wide-ranging that it can embrace everything from the smallest two-person partnership to the largest multi-national public company and include such new integrations as derivative securities and high-tech mergers. The conference will be chock full of substantive insights into how to address these matters during the limited confines of the classroom and semester.
Columns: What was the primary impetus for calling such a renowned group together, aside from the fact that it had never been done before?
O’Kelley: A few years ago, the American Bar Association released a controversial report--the MacCrate Report--which called upon law schools to do a better job of preparing students to make the transition to actual practice. This conference responds directly to that challenge.
Columns: Does the conference attempt to answer a lingering question--the perception that we are training too many lawyers?
O’Kelley [laughing]: Well, that’s pretty ambitious. But in a way it does. Good lawyers clearly create value. It’s bad laws, not lawyers, that impose unnecessary costs on society. Those of us who teach corporate law are dedicated to training our students so that they understand how to assist entrepreneurs in creating value. So you could say that the whole conference focuses on how corporate-law teachers can turn out the most creative problem solvers for the 21st century economy.
Columns: Are there plans to share the conference proceedings with a broader group?
O’Kelley: Oh, yes. While the conference will be a sophisticated interactive discussion, most of the lead participants will not be able to present their insights as fully or coherently as they might like.
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