Business Enterprises: Legal Structures, Governance, and Policy

This book undertakes a traditional, and inclusive, approach to the law of business organizations. The volume includes materials many books now on the market omit, such as agency and unincorporated business associations, while at the same time maintaining a wide breadth of coverage. As such, the book permits professors to emphasize closely held and other non-public companies while at the same time offering the basics on public company law and practice. Along these lines, the book includes materials on securities offerings, registration, exemptions from registration, and lawyers' responsibilities under the securities laws. Features that make this book a strong teaching tool and a strong learning tool include: •  Chapter introductions that summarize and highlight the overall and contextual importance of chapter contents (rather than merely list and categorize the parts of the chapter); •  Basic corporate finance nomenclature and other information necessary to an understanding of transactional business law, including individual chapters on basic corporate finance, corporate changes and change of control transactions; •  Materials allowing for a comparison of laws and practices in other countries with those of the United States in key areas of study; and •  Well-selected notes and problems that permit the integration of concepts and foster application skills at key junctures. This single text allows for coverage of law, underlying theory and policy, and practice skills. In one volume, the book contains material sufficient to educate a young lawyer to function in general business law practice. The emphasis has been on creating a teaching resource that is comprehensive in the view of the five experienced business law teacher-practitioner authors.