19th Annual Transactional Clinical Conference
Pivots into Practice – Learning, Doing and Innovating in the Pandemic’s Wake
June 9-10, 2023
Boston, Massachusetts
The 19th annual Transactional Clinical Conference (TCC) will take place at Northeastern University School of Law on Saturday, June 10, 2023 (with a welcome reception on Friday, June 9, 2023).
The 2023 TCC Planning Committee invites proposals for panels, workshops and posters centered around the following:
The global pandemic and its aftermath created challenges for transactional lawyers, notably those working in underinvested and under-resourced communities particularly black, brown and immigrant communities. Challenge creates opportunity and at the same clears the way for innovation. We saw that innovation in clinical pedagogy and in transactional spaces. In turn, transactional practitioners pivoted in representation strategies, practices and targets. Please submit proposals to TCC Planning Committee member Brenda Smith of American University at transactionalconference@gmail.com.
Important: The TCC is securing blocks of rooms at multiple hotel in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. As in prior years, the TCC plans to cover the costs of a number of participant hotel rooms.
Conference Schedule
| Friday, June 9, 2023 | |
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Suffolk University Law School
120 Tremont Street
Boston, Massachusetts
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| 5:00 - 7:00 PM |
Break Hosted by Suffolk University Law School |
| 7:00 PM |
Informal Dinners Throughout Boston |
| Saturday, June 10, 2023 | |
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Northeastern University School of Law
Dockser Hall
65 Forsyth Street, Boston, Massachusetts
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| 7:30 - 8:30 AM |
Breakfast and Networking |
| 8:30 - 8:45 AM |
Welcome Hemanth Gundavaram TCC Planning Committee
Sponsoring Schools |
| 8:45 - 9:45 AM |
Morning Plenary Massachusetts State Senator |
| 9:45 - 10:00 AM |
Break |
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10:00 - 10:45 AM |
Concurrent Sessions
Pivots in Our Perspectives
Incorporating Social Impact, Economic Justice and Racial Equity Into Transactional Clinics
220 Dockser Presenters:
Susan Jones Professor of Clinical Law, The George Washington University Law School Deborah Burand Professor of Clinical Law; Co-Director, Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship, NYU Law
Description:
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted longstanding social, economic and racial inequities and the need for equitable treatment of underserved, underrepresented and underestimated communities, and communities of color, in the U.S. Indeed, transformation and change in the post-pandemic moment requires intentionality and is aligned with the fast-growing field of impact investing, defined as investments made into companies, organizations and funds, with the intention to generate measurable and beneficial environmental, social and governance (ESG) results alongside financial returns. This panel draws from a new book published by the American Bar Association Business Law Section, Investing for Social Impact, Economic Justice, and Racial Equity (edited by Dorcas R. Gilmore, Lisa Green Hall, and Susan R. Jones, and including a chapter by Deborah Burand and Chintan Panchal) which educates lawyers on diverse community-driven investment strategies, community stakeholders’ needs and lawyers’ roles in impact investing deals. Impact strategies include community capital raising for social enterprises, philanthropic place-based community investment and placed-based cooperative finance.
This panel will explore why it is important to teach about the rapidly growing business law field of impact investing and how to do that through the lens of community economic development in diverse impact sectors—small business, health and wellness, microfinance and financial inclusion, sustainable consumer protection and fair trade.
In addition, teaching about impact investing, economic justice, and racial equity aligns with the 2022 amendments of the ABA Accreditation Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools Standard 303, which requires law schools to provide substantial opportunities for students to develop professional identity, to provide education on bias, cross-cultural competency, and to experience the role of the profession in eliminating bias, discrimination and racism individually and systemically.
Pivots in Our Teaching
Using Legislative Advocacy as a Tool for Change in Transactional Clinics
230 Dockser Presenters: Beth Kregor
Clinic Director, Institute of Justice Catherine Gryczan Lecturer in Law; Assistant Director, Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship, University of Chicago Law School Description: As transactional clinicians, we train our students on how to deliver bad news, including the news that some applicable laws are burdensome, outdated, prohibitive or arbitrary. We train them to think creatively and try to give clients workarounds or solutions wherever possible. We can also train them how to try to change those laws, from grassroots organizing, to legislative drafting, to lobbying. In this panel, you will hear about one clinic's incorporation of legislative advocacy into its program and get a chance to discuss the lessons learned, both by the students and the clinicians. We will cover how to source projects, how to navigate lobbying in different levels of government, and how to involve students in a process that is often all about who you know. Pivots on the Horizon
The Corporate Transparency Act – How Should Transactional
Clinics React?
250 Dockser Presenters: Eric Amarante Associate Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee College of Law Associate Clinical Professor of Law; Bluhm-Helfand Director of the Innovation Clinic, University of Chicago Law School
Clinical Associate Professor; Director of the Startup Law Clinic, Boston University School of Law
Description:
The effective date of the Corporate Transparency Act is now January 1, 2024, and the disclosure obligations extend well beyond what attorneys and clients – including law clinics -- have experienced before. Is your clinic ready? This program will discuss the final regulations, remaining open questions and strategies for compliance, and include time for participants to discuss possible best practices in the clinical environment. |
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10:45 - 11:00 AM |
Break |
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11:00 - 11:45 AM |
Concurrent Sessions
Pivots in Our Perspectives
Teaching Trauma-Informed Lawyering in a Transactional Practice - Continuing the Discussion
220 Dockser Presenters:
Susan Felstiner Clinical Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School Susan Jones Professor of Clinical Law, The George Washington University Law School Sandy Tarrant Associate Clinical Professor, Boston College Law School Description:
Transactional lawyers often focus on the transaction and overlook the human experiences that motivate or influence the transaction. In doing so, the lawyers miss opportunities to better advise their clients. Additionally, given the prevalence of trauma in our society, teaching trauma-informed lawyering in a transactional clinic is good pedagogy. This session will continue the discussion begun at the AALS Clinical Conference and explore ways of creating space in a transactional clinic for discussions of trauma-informed lawyering. The session’s objective is for participants to walk away with ideas for how to incorporate trauma-informed lawyering into their teaching. We invite participants to come to the session with an experience where the trauma of a client or student was a factor and how they handled it (or wish they had handled it). If a participant would like a resource list on trauma-informed lawyering, please email Susan Felstiner at sfelstiner@lclark.edu. Pivots in Our Teaching
Beyond the Clinical Classroom: Teaching Students to Engage with Community
230 Dockser Presenters: Mike Murphy
Clinical Professor of Law; Supervising Attorney, Start-Up Ventures Clinic, Duke Law School Paige Wilson Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Kristen Wolff Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School Description:
Transactional clinical students can easily get trapped behind their keyboards communicating with their clients solely via emails, phone calls and video meetings. While this method of working certainly reflects to an extent the reality of transactional law practice, it works against a key pedagogical goal of transactional clinics in teaching and providing community impact. Without in-person contact, students can end up feeling disconnected from the people and communities they serve. The pandemic has only exacerbated this reality, reducing opportunities for in-person interaction and shifting norms to prioritize remote communication. This session explores how supervisors can prompt and encourage transactional clinic students to connect with the ecosystems in which they work. A few tried-and-true methods include (i) arranging in-person client interviews, meetings, or presentations such as lunch-and-learns or office hours; (ii) asking students to attend networking events or field trips to local startups; and (iii) bringing in outside guest speakers. However, there are many ways to usher students out into the community and many ways to reflect these efforts in our course planning. Ultimately, of course, our hope is that students will internalize some of these approaches and employ them in practice after graduation, using their skills to reduce the barriers to entrepreneurship that so many small business owners face.
The session will be structured as follows:
Pivots on the Horizon
ChatGPT and Transactional Legal Clinics: Should We Care?
250 Dockser
Presenters: Nathan Hammons
Clinical Associate Professor; Director, Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic, Marquette University Law School Linsey Krolik Senior Clinical Fellow, Santa Clara University School of Law Mark Need Clinical Professor of Law; Director, Elmore Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, Indiana University Maurer School of Law Description:
This panel will take a close look at ChatGPT and related artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, and how such technologies might be incorporated into curricula and/or the practice of transactional legal clinics. Specifically, this panel will examine (i) what generative AI is and how it works; (ii) using ChatGPT in transactional law drafting; (iii) using ChatGPT as an educational tool; (iv) ethical issues that can arise with ChatGPT and the practice of law; and (v) the impact of ChatGPT on the legal profession, including where humans add unique value. |
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11:45 AM - 1:00 PM |
Lunch sponsored by Bloomberg Law
Location: Egan Research Center, 120 Forsyth Street, Boston, MA 02115
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1:00 - 2:00 PM |
Teaching Innovation Roundtables Sponsored by The United Church of Christ Church Building and Loan Fund
Exploring Skills and Pedagogy for Faith-Based Development in Transactional Clinics
230 Dockser Presenters: Brenda V. Smith, Rev. Dr. Patrick Duggan, Rev. Joseph Williams Description:
Churches and faith based organizations have become major players – willingly and unwillingly – in the transactional space. As commercial development of cities has increased, land has become increasingly scarce and valuable as has affordable housing. Churches are at the epicenter of these trends often situated in prime locations with shrinking congregations and strong and well defined missions to serve and preserve their communities. At the same time, many students and faculty have little familiarity with operating in faith communities. Yet these projects provide important opportunities for students and faculty to learn and use skills in tax, finance, business associations, contracts and drafting. These matters also are perfect laboratories for our core skills of interviewing, counseling and negotiations. Importantly, they introduce students, faculty and faith based organizations to new partnerships that have the potential to create enhanced opportunities for pedagogy, scholarship and representation. Teaching and Doing Patent Work Ethically and Effectively in Transactional Clinics
220 Dockser Presenters: Kristen Wolfe, Anne Choike, Jeffrey Glazer, Edward Yee, Victoria Phillips Description: A strong need exists among startup clients for pro bono patent work. The need is particularly great for startup ventures founded by entrepreneurs from historically marginalized communities. The client need for patent services is matched by demand among students and employers for students to gain practical patent skills. To respond to these needs and demands, an increasing number of law schools offer IP and technology law clinics. At other schools, entrepreneurship clinics have added patent work to the menu of transactional services they provide. While adding patent work to an existing entrepreneurship clinic saves law schools the cost of creating a new clinic, there are numerous pedagogical challenges in offering patent services in entrepreneurship clinics. We hope to foster a lively discussion exploring approaches for structuring a transactional clinic to ethically and effectively take on patent work. This discussion will be relevant to clinicians: in IP and tech clinics, in entrepreneurship clinics with existing patent practices, and at schools contemplating the addition of such an offering. Do-It-Yourself Legal Tools for Entrepreneurs
240 Dockser Presenters:
Praveen Kosuri and Bernice Grant Description: “DIY” is a popular problem-solving approach in everything from home remodeling to car maintenance. Its rise in solving legal challenges is likely not surprising, but something worth discussing due to the detrimental impacts if these tools are used incorrectly. This session will engage the audience in a conversation about how these tools (everything from law firm tools like CooleyGo to low fee tools like Legal Zoom), affect your teaching and pedagogy. Do you use these tools? What guidance do you give their students about them? How do you respond to clients who use them? Though we’ll paint the landscape for folks, our hope is that this would be a very interactive session. Excellent Writing, Good Writing, Passable Writing 250 Dockser Presenter:
Paul Tremblay Description:
For whatever reason, often students entering the transactional space are on the run from writing briefs or persuasive documents. They enter transactional clinics, heaving a sigh of relief that they will never have to write another brief. And then, they find that transactional practice is actually concentrated writing that requires clarity, accuracy and conciseness—the hallmark of all good writing. Conversely, transactional clinicians are prepared to teach the core skills of transactional practice including drafting, but are having to teach the basics of subject-verb agreement, passive voice, headings and outlining. This Innovation Roundtable is for transactional clinicians who teach writing–which means you. Bring your writing tools, writing expectations, writing rubrics and issues for an hour of real talk and real work about teaching writing in transactional clinics. This roundtable will also discuss tools for evaluating writing and potential allies in your institution for the endeavor. |
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2:00 - 2:15 PM |
Break |
| 2:15 - 3:00 PM |
Concurrent Sessions
Pivots in Our Perspectives
Movement and Community Lawyering in Transactional Clinics
220 Dockser
Presenters: Camille Pannu Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School Anika Singh Lemar Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School Description:
We each teach transactional clinics that prioritize community lawyering and social change work. This panel will use case studies from our respective clinics to consider the barriers to and benefits of tackling movement and community lawyering in transactional clinics. These case studies will address the role of transactional lawyering in the environmental justice, workers’ rights and housing justice movements. We will discuss our work representing rural California communities with little access to water infrastructure, home-based child care providers struggling to address barriers imposed by landlords and local zoning boards, and worker-owned cooperatives organized by immigrant worker-centers. These case studies will allow us to discuss movements and their lawyers pivoting during crises. We also hope to use those case studies to illuminate the benefits to our students and clients of incorporating community and movement lawyering in transactional clinics. Pivots in Our Teaching
The Pitch: Teaching Client Selection, Board Governance and Advocacy 230 Dockser
Presenter: Casey Faucon Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Instruction, The University of Alabama School of Law This teaching session will provide tools to incorporate the “pitch” in the administration of a transactional clinic to teach client selection, advocacy in the transactional context, and board governance.
In the Entrepreneurship & Nonprofit Clinic, the student attorneys conduct intake meetings with potential clients. The students then produce an intake memorandum and “pitch” the potential client to the rest of the class in a simulated “Firm Meeting” setting. The other students, acting in their capacities as directors of our hypothetical clinic “firm,” then have the opportunity ask questions of the pitcher. The students then anonymously vote on whether to accept the client or refer them out.
Using this format, the students learn how to advocate on behalf of a business client within a professional setting. They develop the ability to investigate and stress the importance of the client’s business mission and social or economic impact, to construct a compelling narrative as to why their potential client should receive free legal services, and to identify potential legal issues facing the client.
In doctrinal business law courses, students learn about fiduciary duties of corporate directors and officers and proper board governance. Clinic students often provide board governance training to clients, but most have no experience serving on a board or legally advising one. This format teaches students proper board governance but, most importantly, it links good board governance and management with upholding and maintaining one’s fiduciary duties to a corporation.
Pivots on the Horizon
Legal Technology: Plugging Students in to an Emerging Market
250 Dockser
Presenters:
Emily Buchholz Director of the Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic, University of Wisconsin Law School Clinical Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School
Description:
Billions of dollars are being poured into legal technology startups, including large language model-based tools like Harvey AI. The question is not “if'' but “how fast” the legal landscape will dramatically change. This panel discussion will provide updates on the legal technology market along with current estimated timelines for development. We will then share several ways the University of Wisconsin’s Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic has begun to innovate in this space, with a focus on the Legal Technology Externship program. This program places law students inhouse with legal technology companies to complete law-adjacent projects; a classroom component requires students to read scholarship about, and discuss the many ways in which legal technology has and will continue to change the practice of law. Finally, we will guide participants in a discussion about the future of legal technology, with a focus on the role the participants believe legal technology should play in our profession. Participants will be given a virtual “handout” at the end of the panel presentation that includes all legal technology tools mentioned in the panel presentation and resources identified as part of the group discussion. |
| 3:00 - 3:15 PM |
Break sponsored by Bloomberg Law |
| 3:15 - 4:00 PM |
Pivots in Our Perspectives
Using Feminist Theory and Methods in Transactional Clinics
Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Description:
Lawyering choices that transactional attorneys make at each stage of client representation — from interviewing and researching, to drafting and counseling — have profound impacts on gender equity. For example, the non-disclosure agreements drafted for Harvey Weinstein empowered him to silence the women he assaulted, and his employment agreement with The Weinstein Company further strengthened the power he wielded to harm his victims. Transactional attorneys drafted these documents and many others that establish the legal framework governing organizations and their resources, operations, relationships and outputs. It is therefore critical to examine the role that transactional lawyers can and should play in promoting gender equity.
To address gender inequity, transactional lawyers – and the transactional clinicians who educate them – can powerfully leverage their role, knowledge, and skills by employing feminist legal theory and methods. Informed by the insights of Feminist Judgements: Corporate Law Rewritten and intellectual property-related contributions to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions, this workshop will provide an introduction for transactional clinicians of all gender identities who are interested in using feminist theory and methods in their teaching and client representation, to promote gender equity and help their clients support women as workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, leaders and stakeholders. Participants of this workshop will achieve an introductory understanding of feminist theory and methods, and its relevance to and applications in transactional law practice specifically. Participants of this workshop will also work together collaboratively to apply this understanding and develop realistic, actionable strategies for integrating feminist theory and methods into their clinic curricula and fieldwork.
Pivots in Our Teaching
DEI and the Corporate Toolbox
230 Dockser Presenters: Michelle Sonu
Lecturer in Law, Stanford Law School Description:
Students in transactional clinics that do not work directly with underrepresented clients or communities may wonder how they can advance DEI, or how DEI issues may even surface. Broadly speaking, experienced transactional lawyers have a “corporate toolbox” with various tools (e.g., contract provisions) to help their clients advance a goal or address an issue. Some of these corporate lawyer tools can address DEI goals such as racial equity and anti-harassment. The Organizations and Transactions Clinic at Stanford Law School has in the past several years addressed some DEI issues in its work with both clients and students. Examples of this work for clients include providing advice and tools to nonprofit boards of directors seeking to improve diversity and inclusion, and drafting contract provisions to address discrimination, harassment and reputational concerns. Students can engage in these issues through a homework exercise and related class session where they consider various corporate lawyer tools for addressing racial equity, gender dynamics, and the like in the marketplace.
At this session, conference participants will also have the opportunity to share relevant aspects of their own practices and programs.
Pivots on the Horizon
How to Start an NIL Program Within a Clinic
250 Dockser Presenters: Associate Clinical Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
Description:
Following the NCAA’s approval of a policy that allows students to profit off their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), transactional clinic services are needed to help review NIL contracts for students and student-athletes. But how do existing clinics begin to take on this new work? This session outlines the cross-campus collaboration, training and outreach that transactional clinics can do to build an NIL program. The program at Ohio State is used as a primary example, but participants will be invited to share how such programs work at their universities as well. Time will be allocated to brainstorm solutions to challenges that clinical supervisors have encountered in building NIL programs.
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| 4:00 - 4:05 PM |
Break |
| 4:05 - 4:15 PM |
Closing Remarks 240 Dockser |
With Thanks to Our Conference Sponsors:
Gold Sponsors
Bloomberg
United Church of Christ Church Building and Loan Fund
Silver Sponsors
The Association of American Law Schools
Enterprise Foundation
New England Legal Foundation
Postmates
Kat and Tim Gregor
Kase and Kate Jubboori
Krista and Jeffrey Snow
Scott and Robin Weisman
Bronze Sponsors
Hotshot Legal
Law School Sponsors
Northeastern University School of Law
Boston College Law School
Boston University School of Law
Jun 9, 2023 - Jun 10, 2023
All day