The latest supplement to Ribstein & Lipshaw Unincorporated Business Entities (4th Edition, 2009) is available online at my website. There you can also find the Supplement to the Teacher’s Manual.
This edition of my long-running casebook and its exhaustive teacher’s manual have been well-received. Ultimately I hope and expect this course will replace the current now-outmoded emphasis in the basic course on big publicly held corporations. Consider the following:
- LLC formations are now outstripping corporate formations.
- The unincorporated context inherently provides a better basis for a transactional-oriented course, and our book fully exploits this potential.
- Law grads need more than ever to be able to hit the practice ground running. Although spending weeks on executive compensation and proxy access might be a nice way to use the headlines to lure the students into the materials, it doesn’t provide the basic training in transactional work that most law graduates. Which
- Students easily can connect to the intimate and familiar context of the closely held firm, and the rapidly developing law of LLCs provides at least as much intellectual stimulation as the basic course.
- The contractual framework of the unincorporated course is a good basis on which to build coverage of publicly held firms, which I envision as an upper class elective.
Yes, I know, the basic texts include partnership and LLC coverage. But it’s way too little to give students the training they need in the area.
So catch the wave. Read the book and the supplement.