December 3, 2019
Rutgers Law students negotiated a business acquisition as part of a two-day transactional competition.

Rutgers Law School students studying transactional and corporate law got to put their knowledge to work at a two-day competition that tested their skills in negotiating a business acquisition, as counsel for both buyers and sellers.

The Transactional Competition is an academic initiative organized by the law school and the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance. The goal of the Transactional Competition is to provide law students who aspire to practice as transactional lawyers an experience comparable to the experience moot court provides to future litigators.

On November 22 and 23, students enrolled in the Transactional Competition Course being taught by Professor Yuliya Guseva and Adjunct Professor Ira Marcus took part in a Transactional Competition at Rutgers Law School’s Newark location. Co-Dean David Lopez and Rutgers Law faculty members welcomed the judges, who were highly experienced practicing attorneys from New York and New Jersey law firms and corporations, and the competition students.

Prior to the competition, the students had marked up an asset purchase agreement that was used in the negotiations. Each two-student team took part in three rounds of negotiations. After each of the rounds, the judges reviewed the markups, observed the negotiations, scored student performance and provided feedback to the competitors. The professors said they hope the participating students significantly improved their transactional skills during this innovative competition. 

Guseva, who drafted the course description, said, “It is important to prepare our students not only to argue cases and predict how judges will decide cases, but also to counsel clients engaged in buying and selling businesses and to help them manage transactional risks and structure and draft agreements. In brief, transactional practice calls for new skills, which cannot be gleaned from casebooks.”

The two-day competition was generously supported by the Center for Corporate Law and Governance, Saiber, Debevoise & Plimpton, and GreenbergTraurig.

There were two first-place buyer’s teams and two first-place seller’s teams. Congratulations to students Samuel Allaman RLAW ‘20, Lucas Katzenmeier RLAW ‘20, Kristen Krag RLAW ‘20, Alcides Mauricio RLAW ‘20, Yelky Perez RLAW ‘21, Colman Preziosi RLAW ‘20, Katarina Gonzalez RLAW ‘20, and Juan Estrada Castillo RLAW ‘21.

The competition would not have been possible without the generous help from the lawyers who served as judges: Ami Foger of Saiber LLC, Seth Zuckerman of GreenbergTraurig, Kevin Schmidt of Debevoise & Plimpton, Katherine C. Lee of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Keith Ansbacher, former General Counsel of BASF, Alan Wovsaniker of Lowenstein Sandler, Ira Starr of Starr, Gern, Davidson, & Rubin, Vincent Rubino of Hartz Mountain, Karen Killeen of BASF, Ralph Lowenbach of Orloff Lowenbach, Stifelman & Siegel, Brett Harris of Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer, Chris Andrew of Johnson & Johnson, Marsha Moore of Post Polak, and Charles Weissman of Dechert.

 

Rutgers Law Media Contact:
Shanida Carter

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