Wearing crisp suits and bearing dog-eared documents, scores of law students from 10 universities around the U.S. gathered at the law school in early March to make deals.

The students were participants in the First Annual Transactional Lawyering Meet, an unprecedented competition that put the negotiating skills of aspiring lawyers to the test. Representing fictional buyers and sellers, teams of students negotiated the purchase of a manufacturing company's business by a private equity investment group. Negotiating through three rounds over the course of two days, teams worked to craft and redraft a letter of intent that would serve the best interests of their respective "clients," each of whom wanted a deal on their own terms.

The sellers sought a large commitment of upfront cash, while outstanding litigation against the seller's company and the looming expiration of a pivotal trademark license gave the buyers pause.

As the sets of teams hammered out deals, transactional lawyers from some of the nation's leading firms served as "judges" and provided feedback on the students' performance.

Pepper Hamilton partner Lisa R. Jacobs said the students in the competition negotiated as ably as fourth-year associates.

Jeffrey P. Bodle, a partner at Morgan Lewis & Bockius, praised the law school for creating the meet.

"There's no way that I would have been able to do that," Bodle said of his own legal education.

Professor Karl Okamoto, who directs the Business and Entrepreneurship Law Program, said the competition was created to give students interested in transactional law the same opportunities that future litigators get in moot court and mock trial competitions. But in this competition, Okamoto observed, students sought a result that would benefit both clients.

Student Emily Foote said the process helped her to see how important it is to keep a broad perspective of a client's goals - and how readily a negotiator can get derailed as the talks unfold.

"It's so easy to get hung up on matters that in the grand scheme of things could get figured out very easily," Foote said.

The competition was structured similarly to projects in Okamoto's Law and Finance class, Foote said, although teams in the meet - as they drafted their respective proposals - could consult any experts they found on the faculty or elsewhere.

This flexibility made the competition mimic legal practice, Foote said, observing that effective attorneys must learn how to uncover information and resources that benefit their clients.

The competition drew participants from Columbia Law School, Cornell Law School, the Emory University School of Law, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, the Temple University Beasley School of Law, the University of Georgia, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Washington & Lee School of Law, as well as the Earle Mack School of Law.

Winning teams from the University of Georgia and Indiana University negotiated a final student round before Jacobs, Bodle and other accomplished transactional lawyers demonstrated how they would have handled the same deal.

This gave students who were well acquainted with the deal what Okamoto calls an "aha moment."

Just before the competition, a conference exploring new approaches to teaching transactional law drew professors from Brigham Young University, Cornell University, Emory University, Indiana University, Loyola Law School-Los Angeles, New York Law School, Suffolk University, Temple University, the University of California-Davis, the University of Connecticut, the University of Georgia, the University of Maryland, University of New Mexico, the University of Oregon and the University of Pennsylvania.