There were three pretty good answers to the 2nd take home essay. They are attached here. Humberto Fajardo, Leigh Villareal Reggiena Abaca. Congratulations. Not A’s by any means but the best of the group.
Author: profhayesuwla
Biz Orgs: First Two Take-Home Essay Questions
Attached are the first two take-home essay questions. The first was due on Monday and Tuesday and the second is due next Monday and Tuesday. These are mandatory. The instructions are mandatory. I increased the word limit for the second question from 400 words to 500 words. Biz Org take home essay 1 Biz Org take home essay 2
Also attached are two answers I received for Question 1 which are “pretty good.” Essay Assignment 1 – Chris Cleveland Nathalie Sahakian – Essay Assignment No. 1 (2)
Prof. Hayes Office Hours This Friday
I am going to go by the school in Chatsworth this Friday, Sept 15 at 3:00 p.m. I will hang around until about 5:00 p.m. Students are welcome to come by and meet with me. I can review your response to the first take-home essay question or anything else you would like to review. No appointment necessary.
First Assignment – Project
I am still getting emails from students asking me to respond whether they can choose such and such company for the first assignment. The instructions state what I carefully announced in class – do not wait for my response, just go ahead with your choice unless you hear from me.
By the way, I am still getting emails today telling me what company a student chose. That email was due last Friday.
By the way part 2 – only about half of my 55 students have become followers of this blog. Please remind your friends to sign up so they can get my communications. Thanks.
Reading Materials
A student noticed that there is 140 pages of textbook assigned for the class next week. This will clarify what is required. You do not have to read cases in the textbook that have not been assigned. You should read the comments that follow the cases that have been assigned. You should also at least look through the rest of the materials. Some of it is very useful. But most important is that you read carefully the cases assigned and the comments that follow.
Nice Article on How to Keep Board Minutes – Some Thoughts on Board Meetings
“A well-documented board meeting creates an important historical record that can guide future deliberations and may prove useful during Board disagreements, litigation, Attorney General investigations, other governmental enforcement actions, or an audit by the IRS.”
Many students struggle in Biz Orgs because they cannot conceptualize a board meeting. I have tried to figure out how to have a board meeting in class or a part of a board meeting. I once had a make believe board meeting where the CEO of a very successful company demanded a huge bonus or she would quit. She left the room so the board members (the class) could deliberate. The corp was very profitable and the bonus would not “hurt” the corp. The CEO was a big part of the reason for the success of the company. After some discussion, I passed around 3×5 cards and had everyone vote in secret. The vote was overwhelmingly to reject the requested bonus – all but unanimous.
I then “advised’ the CEO out in the hall of the rejection – and she “advised” me that she quit and left in a huff. Now there are shareholders who are saying that the board blew it by letting her leave. Profit is down.
What result? What would go in the minutes? What would you, as a board member, want in the minutes?
Response from the Bar Monitor re Whether Lower Bar Pass Rate Will Increase Disciplinary Issues
Thanks to Prof. Robert Barrett for this article. Prof. Fellmeth is responding to the article by the two Pepperdine professors, When bar exam scores go low, discipline rates go high. You can access the LA Daily Journal Article by Prof. Fellmeth here. The Pepperdine professors argue that the bulk of the state bar disciplinary actions are against attorneys who take the bar exam more than once. Therefore they say, reducing the pass level will increase the number of disciplinary actions in the future.
That’s not right says Prof. Fellmeth for the following reasons:
- “Bar discipline is not directed at incompetence itself.” Incompetence is resolved typically through malpractice actions, i.e., the client sues his lawyer and seeks damages. Of course lowering the pass rate could increase the number of malpractice actions in the future.
- Bar discipline is minimal in any event. Professor Fellmeth says that the bar files a Notice of Disciplinary Charge against about 3 lawyers per 1,000 each year. He says if the Pepperdine study is right, the number of NDCs might increase to 4 per 1,000.
- He says the high passing score tends to reduce the number of attorneys in active practice which he calls “supply constriction.” That tends to keep prices high which tends to affect attorney supply for the poor and middle class. I’m sure that’s right but I have a tough time saying that we should reduce the minimum passing score so that there will be more attorneys, thus more reasonable pricing?
- He seems to argue that passing a higher percentage of those who take the bar will not lower the overall quality of practicing attorneys in California today. If he is right about that, I am for reducing the raw pass score. As I said in my last post, if everyone who scores between 1400 and 1440 eventually passes, then the higher raw score is simply forcing those who fall between those numbers to take the exam more than once. It does not “weed out” those who are not competent.
Bringing an Action in Federal Court versus State Court
On another list serve an attorney asked if there was any benefit to bringing an action in federal court versus state court (assuming there is diversity). My friend Gary Wallace’s answer is great.
There are a great many differences between the two forums. Here are some: Continue reading
Some Thoughts about the Bar Exam and UWLA
A student sent me the following comment to my last post about whether the bar exam specs should be lowered (no – says I).
what do you think about this argument from two years ago?
http://www.newsweek.com/bar-exam-unfair-and-undemocratic-322606
The post and the article is thought-provoking and I appreciate the comment.
The article makes the following comments:
- The bar exam was designed and continues to operate as a mechanism for excluding the lower classes from participation in the legal services market.
- {T]he bar exam “is an unpredictable and unacceptable impediment for accessibility to the legal profession.”
- The burden of the bar exam falls disproportionately on low-income earners and ethnic minorities who lack the ability to pay for law school or to assume heavy debts to earn a law degree. Passing a bar exam requires expensive bar-exam study courses and exam fees, to say nothing of the costly applications and paperwork that must be completed in order to be eligible to sit for the exam.
I have thought about my response for a day or so now. I personally believe that the people of color in this country “have been given a bad check” as Martin Luther King said in 1963 when I was in grade school. It is a national shame that we as a country cannot and do not do more to fix this. That is one reason I continue to teach at UWLA. (Make no mistake, the biggest reason is the Chatsworth campus is so close to my home.) But I do enjoy doing my little bit to help people of color and those who want to be an attorney but cannot get into or cannot afford the major schools. UWLA creates a nice and very much needed niche providing an opportunity to become an attorney to those who, again, cannot get into or cannot afford the major schools. Continue reading
The High Cost of Lowering the Bar
Two professors from Pepperdine wrote this article which “present[s] data suggesting that lowering the bar examination passing score will likely increase the amount of malpractice, misconduct, and discipline among California lawyers. Our analysis shows that bar exam score is significantly related to likelihood of State Bar discipline throughout a lawyer’s career.” As you might expect they have received some serious criticism for their conclusions.
Today they responded to those criticisms with an article in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. They are both good reading.
Prof Hayes UWLA 