What do corporate lawyers do? This question has vexed academics for a long time. For some, lawyers merely write down what others tell them. For others, lawyers provide a reputational stamp on the transaction itself. A leading theory is that lawyers act as ‘transaction cost engineers’ to help make transactions more efficient.
But do they actually do any of that? This course reviews different theoretical approaches to the role that law plays in corporate transactions, and the role that lawyers play in corporate transactions, and then brings in leading Aotearoa corporate lawyers to discuss their practice. We will therefore discuss what others have said that corporate lawyers do, and try to find evidence for that in practitioner discussion of what they actually do.
Practitioner case studies will be delivered in the afternoon. The morning before, we will discuss the area of law and some major issues faced by that area of law.