Entrepreneurship and Business Law

Entrepreneurship and Business Law - Professor Tabrez Ebrahim

• Course Type: Foundational
• Credits: 3
• Enrollment Limit: Determined by the Registrar
• Description:  This course explores business law, entrepreneurship, financing, practical applications, and policy of emerging and high-growth business entities. This course is designed to familiarize law students with basic business tenets, financial acumen, and legal issues of startup businesses and the fundamental legal frameworks in which they start, operate, and raise capital for their growth. Special attention will be paid to starting, growing, and operating an entrepreneurial technology venture. Whether a student plans to start and operate a business or serve as legal counsel to startup and emerging growth companies, this course will fuse legal and business concepts to help them better understand what it means to launch and run a business. Topics include choice of business entity, incorporation, federal securities law, equity-based compensation, intellectual property legal protection, capital raising, financing and fundraising strategies, and legal documentation of business transactions. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of the core functions of a business, financial and valuation principles, new venture creation, the innovation process, sources and uses of funds, venture capital, special issues of business management, and governance and succession which arise in the context of growing businesses both from entrepreneurial and legal perspectives. Among other things, students will study how venture capital contract provisions are designed to protect investors from economic and voting dilution and will identify, assess, and draft model legal document terms that reflect hypothetical investment scenarios. 
• Prerequisite: none
• Evaluation Method: Writing assignment, presentation, homework assignment, and exam 
• Capstone: Yes, with professor permission
• WIE: Yes