Susan Mac Cormac was named North America’s Most Innovative Lawyer by the Financial Times in 2015. Randall Baron has recovered more than $1 billion for shareholders challenging mergers and acquisitions. Scott Kupor heads one of Silicon Valley’s premier venture capital firms.
Just a sampling of the standouts enriching Berkeley Law’s business portfolio. Adam Sterling ’13, executive director of the school’s Berkeley Center for Law and Business, has put the pedal down to “give our students the opportunity to interact with not just the world’s top academics, but also the world’s top practitioners.”
Mac Cormac (Social Enterprise Law), Baron (Anatomy of Deal Litigation), and Kupor (Governance in Venture Capital) are among those who taught many first-time offerings. The list included Executive Compensation, in which Doreen Lilienfield— who surveys compensation-related governance practices of the largest 100 domestic issuers each year—illuminated a specialty that affects almost every corporate deal.
Schedule flexibility also paid dividends. Greg Genske ’98, who has negotiated some of baseball’s richest contracts, taught Representing Professional Athletes on seven consecutive Wednesdays. Over three packed days, deal-making dynamo Linda Lichter ’76 brought entertainment agreements to life in Negotiating Hollywood Contracts.
Condensing the schedule of certain courses “lets us bring in top experts who otherwise couldn’t come to Berkeley for an entire semester,” says Susan Whitman, assistant dean of academic planning and coordination. “There’s great value in that.”
—Andrew Cohen