3Ls Ernie Holtzheimer and Angie Yannaris received the award for Best Draft in the Southeast Region of the Transactional LawMeet, held at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Seven regions hosted LawMeets on Feb. 26 in a competition that featured a mock merger of two emerging technology companies that sought to fuse their respective innovations and enhance the commercial potential of each.

The Kline School of Law hosted the Mid-Atlantic Regional LawMeet, in which the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia advanced to the national competition, which will be held on April 1.

In each region, transactional attorneys from leading law firms and corporations judged students’ deal-making and negotiating strategies and skills and then capped each meet with a demonstration of how veteran transactional lawyers would have handled the same scenario.

In the Mid-Atlantic Region, Pam Lehrer, general counsel at Berwind Corporation, joined Elizabeth Diffley and Justin Watkins, both partners at Drinker Biddle and Gerrie Sinatra, a partner at Dechert, in offering a demonstration and sharing insights about the challenges and rewards of transactional lawyering.

"We have been teaching court room skills to future litigators for years using mock trial and moot court competitions,” Lehrer said. “It’s about time we started to bring up the next generation of transactional lawyers. I only wish LawMeets had been around when I was in law school.”

LawMeets were created by Professor Karl Okamoto, director of the Business and Entrepreneurship Law Program.  The competition has grown since the first LawMeet in 2010 drew teams from 10 law schools; in 2016, 84 teams took part in the seven regional competitions.  The two top teams from each of those seven regions will face off in the National LawMeet, to be held in Sullivan & Cromwell LLP’s offices in New York City.