New Ideas

For Modern Markets' Most Difficult Challenges

BYU Law School's Winter Deals Conference brings leading scholars and practitioners to Park City, UT, located within one of the most vibrant technology clusters in the United States, to present state of the art research on the legal institutions supporting contemporary markets

BYU Law Winter Deals Conference

Gathering Leading Researchers from Across North America

The BYU Law Winter Deals Conference brings leading scholars and practitioners to Park City, UT to discuss the modern global economy’s most pressing legal issues. Twenty-first century markets’ unprecedented scale, complexity, and dynamism present a difficult challenge for legal institutions, which must provide stable rules that businesses can trust as they make investments while also rapidly adapting to new demands, disruptive technologies, and crises. The Deals Conference explores policies for addressing that tension in a variety of domains, from Mergers & Acquisitions to Venture Capital to Corporate Governance to computational methods for transaction design.

2020 Keynote

We are delighted that Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery will be our keynote speaker at the Conference. The Court of Chancery is the leading adjudicator of corporate governance disputes in the United States, and its decisions inform corporate policy around the world. A member of the court since 2009, Vice Chancellor Laster has distinguished himself as one of the country’s most thoughtful voices on matters of corporate law and governance.

Location

Conference panels will be held at the Grand Summit Lodge at Canyons Village, part of Vail’s Park City Mountain Resort, the largest ski area in North America.

Park City, Utah.

 

BYU Transactional Design Project

Overview

The Transactional Design Project at BYU Law is dedicated to studying both well-established and disruptive forms of market infrastructure from an interdisciplinary perspective.  The Project is an incubator for new studies and research methods, a platform for academic and private sector collaboration, and the home of an innovative curriculum for training the next generation of transactional attorneys.

Faculty

The Transactional Design Project includes members of the BYU Law School faculty with extensive deal experience and a wide array of substantive legal expertise and methodological skills.  Members of the Project and their fields of interest include:

Matthew Jennejohn | M&A, Contract Design, Innovation Networks | SSRN

Curt Anderson | M&A, Transactional Skills Development | Profile

Gladriel Shobe | Corporate Tax, IPOs, M&A | SSRN

Christine Hurt | Securities Regulation, IPOs, Corporate Law | SSRN

Gordon Smith | Corporate Law, Venture Capital, Law & Entrepreneurship | SSRN

– View more information on the Project’s faculty

Research

Recent publications and current studies underway at the Transactional Design Project explore the role of tax structure in modern IPOs, the design of collaboration agreements in the life sciences industry, recent developments in poison pills, and the antitrust treatment of high technology mergers, among other issues.

– View more information on the Project’s research

Community

In addition to organizing the Winter Deals Conference, members of the Transactional Design Project also serve in organizations such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance‘s Legal Working Group, the Accord Project, and the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section. Members of the Project regularly collaborate with industry and are consulted by policymakers.  Students involved in the Project have gone on to leading law firms, regulatory agencies, and clerkships upon graduation.

– View more information on student alumni

Classes

The Project provides a framework for the law school’s core business-related courses, such as Business Organizations, Securities Regulation, and Corporate Tax.  Our faculty are also involved in specialized offerings, such as the Business Organizations Lab, the Mergers & Acquisitions Lab, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Law, the Crocker Innovation Fellows, and the Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic.

– View more information on classes

 

Curt Anderson’s M&A Lab