Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
Thirty years ago, Ronald Gilson asked the question, “what do business lawyers really do?” Since that time legal scholars have continued to grapple with that question and the implicit question of how business lawyers add value to their clients. This article revisits the question again but with a more expansive perspective on the role of business lawyer and what constitutes value to clients.
Gilson put forth the theory of business lawyers as transaction cost engineers. Years later, Karl Okamoto introduced the concept of deal lawyer as reputational intermediary. Steven Schwarcz attempted to isolate the role of business lawyer from other advisors and concluded the only value lawyers added was as regulatory cost managers. All of these conceptions of business lawyering focused too narrowly on the technical skills employed, and none captured the skill set or essence of the truly great business lawyer. In this article, I put forth a more fully developed conception of business lawyer that highlights skills that differentiate great business lawyers from the merely average. I then discuss whether these skills can be taught in law schools and how a tiered curriculum might be designed to better educate future business lawyers.
Keywords
Transactional business lawyers, characteristics, knowledge, loyalty, creativity, problem solving, legal education, clinical training, James Freund, George Dent Jr., Mark Suchman, Jeff Lipshaw, Therese Maynard
Publication Title
Lewis & Clark Law Review
Repository Citation
Kosuri, Praveen, "Beyond Gilson: The Art of Business Lawyering" (2015). All Faculty Scholarship. 1572.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1572
Included in
Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Business Organizations Law Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Legal Education Commons, Legal Profession Commons
Publication Citation
19 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 463 (2015)