Essential Analytical Techniques for Lawyers
Lawyers face non-legal, analytical issues every day. Business lawyers need to understand a business in order to represent their client properly. Litigators need to judge the best route in adopting a litigation strategy. Family lawyers routinely need to value a business. Environmental lawyers need to understand economic externalities. Social lawyers need familiarity with financial instruments that have positive and negative attributes. In these and many other situations, lawyers tend to learn on the job, and even then the pressures of the moment often means that they learn just enough to move on to the next problem. This course is designed to help all lawyers develop a more systematic way of thinking about their work.
Students steering away from a technical or business curriculum will find this course important because it covers a great deal of material they will see in practice, but will probably never see again in law school. The remainder of students will find this course useful to gain insight into some of the advanced courses in the business curriculum (such as Corporate Finance, Law and Economics, Structuring Commercial and Financial Transactions and Fixed Income Markets and Quantitative Methods).
This course is designed to be accessible to everyone—including those with no prior quantitative leanings.
The areas of focus include:
1. Decision Analysis and Game Theory. We explore the use of decision trees in all areas of the law. By examining payoffs, costs, probabilities and game theory, we can be better prepared to decide on a course of litigation or negotiation. These sorts of analyses recently played on a very big stage with Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
2. Contracting. Even litigators draft contracts! What are the right strategies? What issues should be addressed and when? What is your bargaining position? How can lawyers add the greatest value?
3. Accounting. Whether it is a litigator or family lawyer trying to understand the value of assets of a family or a corporate lawyer negotiating a complex contract, the principles of accounting need to be understood by everyone.
4. Statistical Analysis. Statistics play an important role for lawyers in many ways. They drive many governmental regulations, they help determine damages in cases, they help triers of fact determine the likelihood of an event. This section of the course will focus on sampling, surveys, correlations and inferences. Perhaps more importantly, we will focus on false inferences—on how to spot statistics that are being misused.
5. Finance. Beginning with the basic principles for valuing bonds, equities and derivatives, this section examines the structure of the financial markets. We also look at the construction and management of portfolios of liquid and illiquid securities. Finally, we will survey the various types of derivatives in the financial markets and the basic principles for pricing those derivatives.
6. Economic Analysis of Law. Law serves many purposes. It helps resolve disputes, it helps facilitate commerce, it even helps achieve questionable goals. In all cases, economic concepts are at work. We will briefly examine important topics in microeconomic theory and then survey economics as a driver in basic areas of contracts, litigation, criminal law, torts and property.
Final course grades will be determined by the following allocation:
25% Class Participation and Team Participation
25% Problem Sets (done in teams)
50% Final Exam
Students steering away from a technical or business curriculum will find this course important because it covers a great deal of material they will see in practice, but will probably never see again in law school. The remainder of students will find this course useful to gain insight into some of the advanced courses in the business curriculum (such as Corporate Finance, Law and Economics, Structuring Commercial and Financial Transactions and Fixed Income Markets and Quantitative Methods).
This course is designed to be accessible to everyone—including those with no prior quantitative leanings.
The areas of focus include:
1. Decision Analysis and Game Theory. We explore the use of decision trees in all areas of the law. By examining payoffs, costs, probabilities and game theory, we can be better prepared to decide on a course of litigation or negotiation. These sorts of analyses recently played on a very big stage with Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
2. Contracting. Even litigators draft contracts! What are the right strategies? What issues should be addressed and when? What is your bargaining position? How can lawyers add the greatest value?
3. Accounting. Whether it is a litigator or family lawyer trying to understand the value of assets of a family or a corporate lawyer negotiating a complex contract, the principles of accounting need to be understood by everyone.
4. Statistical Analysis. Statistics play an important role for lawyers in many ways. They drive many governmental regulations, they help determine damages in cases, they help triers of fact determine the likelihood of an event. This section of the course will focus on sampling, surveys, correlations and inferences. Perhaps more importantly, we will focus on false inferences—on how to spot statistics that are being misused.
5. Finance. Beginning with the basic principles for valuing bonds, equities and derivatives, this section examines the structure of the financial markets. We also look at the construction and management of portfolios of liquid and illiquid securities. Finally, we will survey the various types of derivatives in the financial markets and the basic principles for pricing those derivatives.
6. Economic Analysis of Law. Law serves many purposes. It helps resolve disputes, it helps facilitate commerce, it even helps achieve questionable goals. In all cases, economic concepts are at work. We will briefly examine important topics in microeconomic theory and then survey economics as a driver in basic areas of contracts, litigation, criminal law, torts and property.
Final course grades will be determined by the following allocation:
25% Class Participation and Team Participation
25% Problem Sets (done in teams)
50% Final Exam
Please note that course organization and content may vary substantially from semester to semester and descriptions are not necessarily professor specific. Please contact the instructor directly if you have particular course-related questions.
Sections/Instructors
Bill Brown
Essential Analytical Techniques for Lawyers 319.01
Fall 2009
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