On Friday 5 May, the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law (3CL) hosted a special one-day conference on 'Teaching Deals in the Classroom', featuring a number of eminent speakers from both academia and legal practice.
The event was organised with the generous support of Travers Smith, a leading London-based law firm with significant expertise in corporate, financial and commercial law. The conference marked the fifth anniversary of the Cambridge MCL degree and also its flagship Deals course.
The morning sessions were convened by Brian Cheffins and Marc Moore from the Cambridge Law Faculty, and featured keynote presentations from pioneering US and UK Deals teachers: namely Ronald Gilson (Columbia), Michael Klausner (Stanford), Rafal Zakrzewski (Cambridge/Clifford Chance) and Dan Awrey (Oxford). Meanwhile, Sarah Paterson (LSE) and Alan Dignam (QMUL) offered critical perspectives on the merits of universities providing such course offerings to law students.
...the success of today’s conference signals that Deals teaching is now very much on the UK law school radar.Marc Moore
The afternoon sessions comprised two compelling practitioner roundtable discussions convened by Richard Hooley and Felix Steffek from the Cambridge Law Faculty, and which featured some of the leading Deals practitioners working in the City of London today: namely James Palmer (Herbert Smith Freehills), Chris Hale (Travers Smith), Mark Campbell (Clifford Chance), Richard Uffland (Hogan Lovells) and Robert Hingley (Ondra/Takeover Panel). Also featured on the practitioners’ panel were two recent MCL alumni now working as highly successful corporate transactional lawyers, namely Adrian Amer (Slaughter & May) and Karen Petch (Allen & Overy).
The conference was highly successful in showcasing evolving international best practices in Deals teaching at various leading academic institutions. Additionally, the audience discussions generated a range of illumining viewpoints from current MCL students, MCL alumni, academics, practitioners and doctoral students alike.
MCL and 3CL Director Marc Moore commented:
"While the teaching of corporate transactions in the university law school environment is well-established in the United States, until recently this has not been the case here. However, the success of today’s conference signals that Deals teaching is now very much on the UK law school radar. This development will be instrumental in fostering enhanced collaboration and mutual understanding between corporate law academics and practitioners going forward, which can only be of benefit to students."
A gallery of photographs from the day is available on the Faculty's Flickr stream:
