3Ls Mauricio Cuellar, Eamon Gallagher, and Matthew Leaper won the Regional Transactional LawMeet®competition held at the Western New England University School of Law on Feb. 15. 2Ls Adriana Gonzalez, Garrett Graff and Joel Ruffini tied for second place in the regional contest.
The competition, the first of its kind in the country, required student teams to negotiate a stock purchase agreement between two fictitious medical companies. LawMeet®, created by Earle Mack School of Law Professor Karl Okamoto, aims to fill an unmet need in legal education, to prepare students who seek to be transactional attorneys on how to structure and negotiate a simulated “deal” on behalf of a fictional high-profile client.
The Earle Mack students competed in one of six regional competitions, up from five the previous year. Cuellar, Gallagher and Leaper will compete against the winners of the five other regional competitions at the national competition to be held at the law school in March.
The law school hosted the Mid-Atlantic regional competition on Feb. 15 as well. Teams from the American University Washington College of Law, Brooklyn Law School, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Hofstra Law School, Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School, University of Richmond School of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, Villanova Law School, and Widener Law competed in the Mid-Atlantic regional.
At the end of the competition a panel of expert judges negotiate the very same deal as the competitors. Premier transactional attorneys Michael D. Ecker from Eckert Seamans, Sarah Hewitt and Jon C. Hughes from Schnader, and Sherry Lemonick of Sherry Lemonick, LLC, faced off against each other in the hypothetical transaction.
Following the negotiations, the expert judges commended the students competitors for their exceptional performances with Ecker urging students to not only consider the legal questions in such transactions but also the practical issues. Similarly, Lemonick encouraged students to be mindful that transactional lawyering is unique because it is not about winning and losing but rather reaching an agreement that benefits all parties.