Teaching Business Associations Law in the Evolving New Market Economy

Abstract

Over the past ten years, the doctrinal rules governing business associations have become more complex (with, e.g., the addition of significant federal law on corporate governance and corporate finance and the recent enactment of social enterprise forms of entity). Moreover, a number of us have added experiential learning to the business associations course (or another similarly titled foundational course on business entity law) and have increased the number and types of assessment tools used in our business associations pedagogy. This has made the task of teaching business associations somewhat overwhelming.

Law faculty respond to the challenges of teaching introductory business associations courses in many different, valid ways. This essay, originally written as a discussion session paper for the 2012 annual conference of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, identifies these trends and describes my ways of contending with them. My goal in publishing this work is to offer some help to faculty members interested in developing or revamping a business associations course offering.

Keywords: legal education, business associations, pedagogy

JEL Classification: I29, I30, K22