Opportunities at universities for law department lawyers to learn about business

Business acumen – that’s what some say counts the most for general counsel (See my post of July 16, 2005 on the priority of business judgment over legal judgment.) To become more knowledgeable about such subjects as financial statements, performance evaluation, and management techniques, general counsel (only) can consider the business-education program developed by the Texas General Counsel Forum and Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business, as reported in InsideCounsel, March 2006 at 16.

Business education for senior in-house counsel crop up from time to time (See my post of May 14, 2005 about a program at Harvard Business School and April 18, 2005 about Said Business School at Oxford.). A program at the University of Nottingham (UK), for example, has some law department components and the School of Management at Boston University offers a program overseen by Prof. Susan Samuelson for corporate counsel.

It will be better, in my humble opinion when business school and law school academics take more teaching and research interest in the management of in-house legal functions.