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Introduction to Special Topics

Terms:

Entrepreneur: 
An individual who is engaged in the process of creating a new company backed by new ideas. Entrepreneurs, the people who take the risks associated with starting the new firms, are generally people who are willing to place their personal assets and talents on the line in order to accomplish the creation of a new company.

Private Equity: 
“Private Equity” is a term that has shifted meaning in the course of its use in the legal and business world. Initially, “private equity” referred to that class of investments known as Leveraged Buyout Transactions. However, with time, private equity has come to refer to an entire “asset class”, or group of investment forms, that are characterized by high-risk / high-return investing. This group of investment assets includes venture capital investments, leveraged buyout (“LBO”) investments and a variety of other investment forms such as hedge funds (financially sophisticated funds which trade on corporate risks) and “fund-of-funds” (investment companies that invest in other mutual funds, rather than directly investing in companies).

Overview to the Final Chapter

As you have come to see over the course of your study of business law, there is a great deal of variety that you will likely encounter in your career as a legal professional working in a business oriented practice. Big companies, small companies, young companies, and old companies - along with the individuals that run them - will pass through your office and place work on your desk. A healthy practice will have a slate of clients that covers a large number of companies in each of these categories and probably a few that fall into each of the entity categories (e.g., partnerships, LLCs, LLPs etc.) that we discussed early in this course.

As a legal professional, it is not necessarily your job to ensure that every detail of every business deal is completed with the highest level of propriety in the law and in the best form available for the purposes of the business. However, you do have a responsibility to monitor your surroundings to ensure that no blatantly illegal conduct is being committed that is being helped or assisted by your work. In addition, it is your responsibility to apprise your clients of any legal steps that are advisable under the circumstances that your client faces. 

Hopefully, this course has taught you to identify some of the needs of the clients that you will be working with, to help those clients recognize the potential pitfalls of certain actions, and overall, to improve the level of service that you can present to your employer and to your clients.

This final chapter serves to identify some of the “hot areas” of business law and addresses some of the special circumstances you may encounter that will require your utmost attention. This is because clients in these areas - the various entrepreneurial and private equity fields - are likely to be some of your most demanding clients.

Finally, this chapter concludes with a discussion of two groups of individuals that, as a legal practitioner, you are most likely to encounter in your daily work. First, we will look at the work performed by accountants and the various services that are performed in that professional field. We will then turn to a brief overview of banking, with a particular emphasis on investment banking, as many company managers spend as much time with their bankers as they do with their lawyers.

…Closing the Curtain on Camelot

Hopefully, this course has enriched your legal expertise at the same time as it has broadened your field of possibilities for work in the law. As we close the curtain on our Corporate Camelot you need to be reminded once again that the business world and business law in particular are not always idyllic. However, striving towards that chivalric ideal is never the wrong course of action. Stay up to date on the law, ask lots of questions, and enjoy your work.