Business Law Practicum

Loyola’s Business Law Practicum offers a unique and innovative approach to educating business lawyers that is designed to allow students to “hit the ground running” as first- year transactional associates.

Supervised by the Patrick J. McDonough Director of the Business Law Practicum, Dana M. Warren, with the advice and guidance of Faculty Co-Director Therese H. Maynard, the Business Law Practicum moves students beyond the abstract study of business law to an interdisciplinary analysis of transactional lawyering problems and business objectives that requires reading, comprehending, and managing, as well as drafting and modifying, actual transactional documents.

To complete the Business Law Practicum program, students must take Business Associations, Securities Regulation, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Business Planning I. For more information regarding these courses, please see Curriculum.

The Business Law Practicum’s capstone class, Business Planning I: Financing the Start-Up Business and Venture Capital Financing, allows students to understand the lawyer’s role in business transactions by taking a “client” through a series of simulated deals that introduce the legal, ethical and business issues that confront the transactional lawyer in representing an early stage growth company. Practicum Director Warren and Faculty Co-Director Maynard have written a casebook based on the Business Planning I course materials. This casebook, Business Planning: Financing the Start-Up Business and Venture Capital Financing, is available from Aspen Publishers.

In addition, under development is Advanced Mergers and Acquisitions: Selling the Privately Held Business, which will use a simulated deal format to examine various approaches to the sale of a privately held business to a private or public acquirer. 

On a longer-term basis, the objective is to use the same curricular model to address other types of transactional legal practice, such as real estate, commercial lending, or intellectual property.