Beyond Gilson: The Art of Business Lawyering

Thirty years ago, Ronald Gilson asked the question, “what do business lawyers really do?” Since that time legal scholars have continued to grapple with that question and the implicit question of how business lawyers add value to their clients. This article revisits the question again but with a more expansive perspective on the role of business lawyer and what constitutes value to clients. Gilson put forth the theory of business lawyers as transaction cost engineers. Years later, Karl Okamoto introduced the concept of deal lawyer as reputational intermediary. Steven Schwarcz attempted to isolate the role of business lawyer from other advisors and concluded the only value lawyers added was as regulatory cost managers. All of these conceptions of business lawyering focused too narrowly on the technical skills employed, and none captured the skill set or essence of the truly great business lawyer. In this article, I put forth a more fully developed conception of business lawyer that highlights skills that differentiate great business lawyers from the merely average. I then discuss whether these skills can be taught in law schools and how a tiered curriculum might be designed to better educate future business lawyers

Clinical Legal Education at a Generational Crossroads: X Marks the Spot

Clinical legal education is at a crossroads. Three distinct generations – Baby Boomers, Generation-Xers, and Millennials – with incredibly varied life experiences and expectations will determine the path forward by the way they relate to each other. This essay discusses the current state of clinical legal education as created and led by the Baby Boomers who were typically movement lawyers from the 1960s and 1970s. Written from the perspective of a Gen-Xer, the essay challenges the norms of social justice and law reform as the primary drivers behind clinical education and argues for a greater ideological neutrality in determining the path forward. The essay goes on to articulate some of the challenges that impede Gen-X from fully engaging in the leadership and strategy of clinical legal education. It also describes thoughts on teaching to the Millennials and ultimately bringing together all three generations to forge a unified path forward for clinical education

Beyond Gilson: The Art of Business Lawyering

Thirty years ago, Ronald Gilson asked the question, “what do business lawyers really do?” Since that time legal scholars have continued to grapple with that question and the implicit question of how business lawyers add value to their clients. This article revisits the question again but with a more expansive perspective on the role of business lawyer and what constitutes value to clients. Gilson put forth the theory of business lawyers as transaction cost engineers. Years later, Karl Okamoto introduced the concept of deal lawyer as reputational intermediary. Steven Schwarcz attempted to isolate the role of business lawyer from other advisors and concluded the only value lawyers added was as regulatory cost managers. All of these conceptions of business lawyering focused too narrowly on the technical skills employed, and none captured the skill set or essence of the truly great business lawyer. In this article, I put forth a more fully developed conception of business lawyer that highlights skills that differentiate great business lawyers from the merely average. I then discuss whether these skills can be taught in law schools and how a tiered curriculum might be designed to better educate future business lawyers

“Impact” in 3D—Maximizing Impact Through Transactional Clinics

In speaking about “impact” clinical legal education, it is almost always exclusively as litigation—innocence projects, representing Guantanamo detainees, human rights concerns, environmental issues. Though these clinical efforts target different societal ills, all try to use the legal system as a catalyst for change. Rarely do clinicians invoke the word “impact” in the same manner in discussing transactional legal work much less transactional clinics. Yet transactional clinics can and do perform impact work. This article describes the current landscape of transactional clinics, the distinct evolution of community economic development clinics from small business and organizations clinics and argues that both can expand their vision of impact and employ new strategies to affect change. The article discusses the importance of clinic design in assuring that impact work is not undertaken at the expense of students’ educations. It argues that clinic design is comprised of three separate dimensions—service, skills development, and pedagogy—each of which influences and is influenced by the type of work that a clinic undertakes. The article suggests that clinicians should deliberately assess each dimension in determining its effect by an impact strategy. The article concludes by describing particular impact strategies the author employs in the clinic he directs, the strengths and weaknesses of such strategies, and encourages transactional clinicians to expand their conception of “impact” transactional work

Clinical Legal Education at a Generational Crossroads: X Marks the Spot

Clinical legal education is at a crossroads. Three distinct generations – Baby Boomers, Generation-Xers, and Millennials – with incredibly varied life experiences and expectations will determine the path forward by the way they relate to each other. This essay discusses the current state of clinical legal education as created and led by the Baby Boomers who were typically movement lawyers from the 1960s and 1970s. Written from the perspective of a Gen-Xer, the essay challenges the norms of social justice and law reform as the primary drivers behind clinical education and argues for a greater ideological neutrality in determining the path forward. The essay goes on to articulate some of the challenges that impede Gen-X from fully engaging in the leadership and strategy of clinical legal education. It also describes thoughts on teaching to the Millennials and ultimately bringing together all three generations to forge a unified path forward for clinical education

Polymeric membranes for super critical carbon dioxide (scCO2) separations

Providing an energy efficient recycle for the Teflon® synthesis process is of great interest due to environmental and economic reasons. This recycle step involves separating CO2 from a stream containing scCO2 and valuable monomer (C2F4). Membranes provide economical and environmental friendly separations compared to conventional methods (e.g. distillation, amine absorption). Therefore, I am investigating membrane materials that are well-suited for this important separation. Developing a robust membrane that can withstand the aggressive scCO2 environment (~1070 psi of CO2) is a key challenge. Supercritical CO2 swells traditional polymeric membrane materials, thereby increasing segmental mobility of the polymer chains which leads to a decrease in separation capacity. There have been no polymeric membrane materials identified in the literature which are suitable for this separation. In this work, I have identified an advanced polymer, Torlon® (a polyamide-imide), that solves this problem. After determining the appropriate material, it is important to choose a membrane morphology that is industrially desirable. The asymmetric hollow fiber membrane morphology provides the highest productivity. I have successfully produced defect-free asymmetric hollow fiber membranes using Torlon® that withstand high pressure feeds. These membranes have been shown to provide selective separations under scCO2 conditions without being plasticized. To further improve the separation performance of Torlon® membranes, mixed matrix concept was explored. Zeolite 4A, which is relatively more permeable and selective compared to Torlon®, was chosen as the sieve material. Mixed matrix membranes from Torlon® and zeolite 4A were made and their separation performance was measured. Based on these experimental measurements and Maxwell modeling, challenges in making successful mixed matrix membranes were identified and feasible solutions for these challenges are suggested.Ph.D.Committee Chair: William J. Koros; Committee Member: Amyn Teja; Committee Member: Carson Meredith; Committee Member: Sankar Nair; Committee Member: Wallace W. Car

Labeling of Folic Acid on Bovine Serum Albumin

Recent Clinical research focused mainly on the therapeutic safety which mainly involves the avoidance of toxicities. To prevent the toxicities, site targeted drugs are improved which exhibit their therapeutic action on the specific target or the diseased target without disturbing the healthy cells. Folic acid, a natural Vitamin (Vit B9) has shown promising results in site specificity mainly in the cancer cells where they are abundantly present. Folic acid is of great importance because of the promising results of several clinical trials which demonstrate that Folic acid increases the potency and simultaneously reducing the toxicity of the cancer therapies. Various different forms of drugs attached to the Folate for the target delivery are protein toxins, chemotherapeutic agents, oligonucleotides, liposomes with entrapped drugs, radiotherapeutic agents, immunotherapeutic agents, genetherapy vectors, MRI contrast agents and enzyme constructs for prodrug therapy. Recent clinical studies reveal that studies on coating of folate on surfaces such as gold surfaces and nanoparticles further increased the scope of use of Folate as a site specific target delivery system. Folic acid used as a folate binding protein or the folate receptor is used to target the diseased cell. The Folate receptor FR-α is used as a receptor to carry the folate into the cells. For the Folate based drug delivery systems, the concentration of the folic acid on the protein or the drug also acts as a variable for the transport of the drug, less concentration of the folic acid on the protein or drug may result in the poor binding of the drug or the protein to be transported to the folate where as a very high concentration of the folic acid may not bind to the protein or the drug as the formation of precipitates are evident. Therefore to avoid the overlabeling or underlabeling, optimal concentrations are to be designed for proper efficiency of the drug delivery to the target site. Recent research limited on a single concentration of the folate which is bound to the protein for the target delivery. Our project mainly focused on the maximum labeling of the folate onto the protein to provide the best results for the target delivery. The labeling was carried out using the Human Bovine Serum Albumin as the protein and the EDC as the linker to bind the Folic acid on the protein

GeneJax: A Prototype CAD tool in support of Genome Refactoring

Refactoring is a technique used by computer scientists for improving program design. The Endy Laboratory has adapted this process to make the genomes of biological organisms more amenable to human understanding and design goals. To assist in this endeavor, we implemented GeneJax, a prototype JavaScript web application for the dissection and visualization stages of the genome refactoring process. This paper reviews key genome refactoring concepts and then discusses the features, development history, user-interface, and underlying implementation issues faced during the making of GeneJax. In addition, we provide recommendations for future GeneJax development. This paper may be of interest to engineers of CAD tools for synthetic biology