Jehan El-Jourbagy
Georgia College, J. Whitney Bunting College of Business
From the Classroom to the Courthouse
 
When I first taught Legal Environment of Business, I wanted the students to realize that this material does not occur within a vacuum -- everything we teach in class is borne out every day, not only in the workplace, but also in life. How could I get the students to draw these connections and look back on this class as a time when they learned not just academic but practical lessons? I immediately thought of getting them out of the classroom. Having worked in a local judicial circuit, I reached out to my colleagues and asked them, “If you would want students to know about the resources available at the courthouse and in the community, what would those resources be?” The answers to that question yielded this activity.

​The first version included twenty questions that were submitted as one project. Over time, I reorganized the project and aligned the questions with material covered in each test and spaced out submissions to correspond to specific class lessons. Students now know where to go if they need to evict someone; they know where to go to apply for a business license. They meet representatives of the local Chamber of Commerce and can find the closest Superfund site to their homes. They learn, on a personal and practical level, how the Legal Environment of Business is applicable. And when the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, this assignment was adjusted to add new laws and realities and so students could complete it from home.

Christine A. Ladwig
Southeast Missouri State University, Harrison College of Business and Computing
Using Business Scenarios to Develop Student Skills in Strategic Legal & Ethical Decision Making
 
Can you devise a legal and ethical strategy that creates business value in the following scenarios?

• Visitors to Walt Disney World deposit the cremains of loved ones in park landscaping and attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean…
• Snapchat’s Speedometer Filter encourages users to superimpose their vehicle speed over snaps, resulting in multiple serious accidents with injuries and deaths…
• A teenaged worker in a haunted house attraction nearly strangles to death while visitors think her accidental hanging is just part of the show….
• Owners of the electronic security device Wink Hub learn that the company will begin charging a monthly subscription fee after posting for years that such a fee “would never happen.” Hub possessors who fail to pay the fee within a week will have their devices rendered useless…
• After a tragic duck boat accident in Branson Missouri takes the life of seventeen people, the industry looks for ways to stay in business and keep passengers safe…

These situations and many others are typical of the complex—and sometimes dangerous— problems that businesses face on a daily basis. Leaders must devise and implement strategies that not only avoid short-term negative repercussions, but also strengthen and create ongoing value for the organization and its stakeholders.
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To help students practice the skill of business decision making, I’ve designed scenarios that address three important aspects (pillars) of better decisions: formulating a Strategy, understanding the applicable Law, and applying Ethics. This “Three Pillar” practical framework—Strategy, Law and Ethics—enables students to experience making ethically responsible decisions that minimize risk and simultaneously create value for businesses and stakeholders. 

Konrad S. Lee
Utah State University, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business
A Role-Play Exercise to Teach Lawful Debt Collection Practices
 
Role-play exercises are an effective active learning tool for teaching business law principles. Research has shown that role-play experiential learning exercises show better cognitive, affective, and interactive learning than other, often favored techniques, such as group assignments, case method, invited lecture, and electronic collaboration.
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The role-play demonstrated in this exercise is very simple and yet very effective.  It is a simulation of a telephone call from a credit collection agency to a debtor who is currently in default on a large credit card bill.  Specifically, the instructor acts as a credit collections telephone caller seeking to extract payment from a debtor, who is played by a student.  During the telephone conversation, the collection agency officer describes to the debtor efforts which have been taken by the agency to secure payment and tries to get the debtor to pay the debt.  The script that the instructor follows, along with the student-debtor responses, illustrate various violations of the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA).  Students present in the classroom, who are witnessing the exchange between the instructor and debtor-student during the mock collections call, seek to identify which collection practices violate the FDCPA.  Following the role-play telephone call, the instructor elicits from students suggested FDCPA.  Finally, using the Instructor Notes the instructor follows up on each response with an explanation of how the third-party debt collection caller ignored or violated the rules of the FDCPA.

Tonia Hap Murphy
University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business
Law in the Time of Coronavirus: How and Why to Cover Coronavirus Disruptions in a Business Law or Legal Environment Course
 
Students will have natural interest in relating the virus that has upended their lives to their coursework. This presentation provides materials and specific suggestions for covering coronavirus-related issues throughout a business law or legal environment course—connected with such diverse topics as civil procedure, constitutional law, criminal law, intellectual property, contracts, consumer protection, and corporate governance, among others. The materials link to over fifty resources, including video clips, court rulings, government and law firm advisories, news reports, law reviews, company press releases, and actual contracts.  The materials aim to equip us to incorporate coverage of the pandemic in a knowledgeable, sensitive, and effective manner—integrating legal concepts with broader practical and strategic questions.  Just as the life of every person has been affected by the 2020 pandemic, so too has the operation of every business, as these materials suggest.  These examples will enhance our courses in the Fall 2020 term and beyond.   

​Daniel R. Cahoy
Pennsylvania State University, Smeal College of Business
The Name Game
“This proposal seeks to bridge the gap between the legal, business and social world of trademarks. It describes a simple combination of exercises that can complement basic instruction to help students engage their emotional and strategic brains. Specifically, the combination first presents a debate on a key ethical issue in the midst of the basic instruction on the nature of trademarks. It then follows up with a realistic classroom exercise that requires students to apply business and legal skills in choosing a trademark, validated by classroom voting.”

​Shawna Meyer Eikenberry
Indiana University, Kelley School of Business
Living with a Contract:  Helping Students Understand the Importance of Contract Language and Negotiations
“Many textbooks deal with basic concerns of contract law – offer, acceptance, consideration, what law applies, consent to contract, possible remedies, etc. And these are important topics, no doubt. But in “real life,” the most common contract issues that business professionals address usually aren’t about these kinds of issues. Instead, they actually negotiate contract terms and decide whether to live with risks that come with accepting contract terms that they can’t negotiate. It is this kind of real life situation that this group of assignments and related lessons strive to illustrate.”

​Michael R. Koval
Salisbury University, Perdue School of Business
You’ve Been Chopped!  Energize Those End-of-term Student Presentations with Some Friendly Competition
“This proposal describes my end-of-term Tort Lawsuit Competition, which requires students to find and analyze a current lawsuit based in negligence that has been filed, but not yet heard, against a business or organization. Each student completes this task individually before the competition by finding a complaint and submitting a paper. In groups, the students choose one of their lawsuits to use for the competition. A Lightning Round provides all groups the opportunity to present their work on the same day in a fast-paced game show environment. The students vote as to which lawsuits they want to hear more about. The winners move on to the next class period, and the losers are chopped! This is a fun and educational way to wrap up a Legal Environment course, and can be used in classes of just about any size.”

Anthony L. McMullen
University of Central Arkansas
“The Simpsons” Teach Legal Environment of Business:  Three Episode Clips to Teach Basic Principles of Negligence and Contract Law
“As a fan of the “The Simpsons,” I once contemplated authoring a blog akin to “Law and the Multiverse” (lawandthemultiverse.com), where I would write about various legal issues raised over the past thirty seasons. When I realized that time would not permit me to pursue this endeavor, I started incorporating episodes into my teaching.
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I have adopted the flipped-classroom approach to teaching, which allows more time for showing how the law is applied rather than just explaining what the law is. Students are assigned reading and homework before class. I curate YouTube videos for students who are auditory learners, and I create voice-over PowerPoints to increase instructor presence and provide additional material on challenging topics. At the beginning of each class, I ask students if they have questions. Once any questions are resolved, I give the students ten minutes to review discussion questions (provided to students in advance) in small groups before having a full class discussion. While the discussion problems come from various sources (old essay questions, textbook case problems, hypotheticals that I make up), I enjoy classes where the students can discuss legal issues raised by “The Simpsons.” My Master Teacher presentation would show ALSB members how to incorporate the show into lectures on negligence, basic contracts, and promissory estoppel.”
 

The McCombs School of Business community already considers Robert Prentice an all-star professor, but now he's also officially a Master Teacher.

On Aug. 8, the director of the Business, Government, and Society department won the Master Teacher Competition at the Academy of Legal Studies (ALSB) annual conference in Boston. For his award-winning presentation, Prentice led a sample class showing how a professor might introduce the subject of behavioral ethics, which attempts to explain why people make ethical—and unethical—decisions. The audience voted for their favorite presentations. "I got the most votes, so apparently there had been a lot of drinking beforehand," Prentice jokes.