Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab Transactional Clinic—Significant Accomplishments for 2014-15

We are pleased to report that the Kirkland & Ellis Foundation, its partners, and Law School alumni made a gift of approximately $5.5 million in March to endow a fund to support the Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab Transactional Clinic (the “Lab”), strengthening the Firm’s enduring ties with the Law School and underscoring a shared commitment to helping students build practical skills in transactional law.

The Lab successfully completed in excess of 120 projects during the 2014–2015 academic year in collaboration with companies including Accenture, Allstate, Baxter, CDW, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Honeywell, IBM, Integrys Energy Group, the Italian Trade Commission, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, Nike, Northern Trust, Schneider National, Schreiber Foods, Sony Electronics, Stericycle, Verizon, and various start-up companies in connection with:

• the Booth School of Business
     o New Venture Challenge (including the winner, Maestro);
     o Social New Venture Challenge (including the winner, BallotReady); and
• the Chicago Innovation Exchange (the newly established incubator for the University and the South Side of Chicago).

Last September, the Lab and the ABA Global Anti-Corruption Committee hosted a conference, entitled “Supply Chain Integrity and Corporate Responsibility: A New Legal Enforcement Landscape.” Representatives from the U.S. Attorney's Office, federal judiciary, non-profit sector, academia (including a panel composed of Law School professors Richard Epstein, Todd Henderson, and Anthony Casey), and Fortune 500 companies attended the conference. It was the first conference to rigorously explore the myriad legal issues related to corporate social responsibility. At the conference, Lab students David Birnbaum, Justin Mercurio, and Daniel Sito presented on India’s new corporate social responsibility law and its implications for companies doing business in India.  This conference follows the path set by the Lab’s recent and highly successful conference, “FCPA Corporate Compliance Programs and Third-Party Vetting: Toward a Determination of Compliant Practices.”

The Lab continues to be successful due in large part to the interesting projects and high-quality work that draw ambitious students and leading organizations to come together to collaborate on cutting-edge legal projects.  For example, the following is a representative sampling of the many projects undertaken by the Lab over the past academic year:

• Drafted memorandum on website accessibility for global technology company;
• Prepared form contracts, including sales and license agreements, for multinational consumer goods corporation;
• Developed pre-litigation risk assessment for significant technology company;
• Assessed risks across various real estate agreements, and proposed ways to mitigate such risks, for a large retail company;
• Structured long-term audit-sharing agreement for a multi-billion dollar company as part of its recently completed spin-off transaction;
• Examined laws limiting state campaign contributions by corporations and their officers regarding bids on government contracts for a global technology company;
• Drafted a guidebook that explores potential visa options for a large not-for-profit company that is interested in partnering with foreign musicians on a temporary basis;
• Advised leading insurance company regarding the insurance-related provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act and the regulatory agencies which it established;
• Simplified standard non-disclosure agreement for a large retail company;
• Drafted a master services agreement for a newly acquired business unit of a global waste management company;
• Reviewed trends and analyzed potential legal risks with respect to omni-channel marketing for a global technology company; and
• Assisted a rapidly growing startup company in developing its FCPA compliance program.

Beyond these projects, the Lab has continued to host its very successful Speaker Series. The Speaker Series has continued to provide Lab students with an opportunity to hear from leading practitioners (from both law firms and in-house legal departments) on core areas of law (e.g., the fundamentals of a specific type of transaction), topical business-and-law issues, and those real-world concerns critical to young attorneys’ success (e.g., client development and networking). In addition to many other esteemed practitioners, the following legal and business leaders participated in the Speaker Series over this past academic year: Kamran Bajwa (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); Jon Ballis (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); Ryan Dahl (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); Chris Ekren (Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Sony); Scott Falk (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); John Flavin (director of Chicago Innovation Exchange); Marc Kieselstein (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); Brian C. Van Klompenberg (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); Linda and Dennis Myers (Partners at Kirkland & Ellis); Seth McNary (CEO at Verbatim); Michael Mullican (Vice President, Assistant General Counsel at Meijer); Joel Neuman (VP and Senior Managing Counsel, Coca Cola Foodservice and On-Premise); William Ridgway (Assistant U.S. Attorney); Stephen Ritchie (Partner at Kirkland & Ellis); Neal Stern (VP and Assistant General Counsel at NBA); and Liisa Thomas (Partner at Winston & Strawn).

Finally, the Lab hosted the fourth annual Transactional Challenge for rising second-year law students to provide exposure to transactional practice during the students' first law school summer. Approximately half of the rising-second year class registered for the Challenge, which allows students to compete in a series of real-world corporate transactional exercises. The Challenge also gives participating students an opportunity to network with senior in-house counsel and law firm partners as part of a post-competition reception in the fall.