Law team wins First Annual Transactional Lawyering Meet
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 12, 2010
A team from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law won top honors at a new competition that combines the detailed analysis of drafting legal documents with the intense strategies of business negotiations.
Cole Parker, left, and Casey Plant, right, comprised the IU Maurer School of Law's winning First Annual Transactional Lawyering Meet at Drexel University.
The Law School's team swept the competition, winning Best Seller-Side Draft and Best Overall Team, in the First Annual Transactional Lawyering Meet, held at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University from March 4-5, 2010. The team, comprised of third-year law student Casey Plant and fourth-year law and business student Cole Parker, prevailed over competitors from Brigham Young, Columbia, Cornell, Emory, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Temple, and Washington and Lee.
The competition is a transactional version of a traditional moot court competition. Mark E. Need, director of the Law School's Elmore Entrepreneurship Law Clinic and faculty adviser to the team, was pleased to see the development of such a contest. "Any competition that simulates 'real world' experiences presents a valuable opportunity for the students, especially outside of the classroom setting," Need said.
In the competition, students worked in teams of two to draft legal documents for the hypothetical sale of a division of a large company. Teams received a video interview of their hypothetical client in mid-January, drafting and submitting letters of intent for the transaction weeks ahead of the live competition. At the competition, following an exchange of drafts, teams participated in several 75-minute preliminary rounds of negotiation with opposing teams. In the final round, the best "seller" team and the best "buyer" team negotiated live in front of a judge panel made up of Philadelphia-area deal attorneys.
