This book is not done, but should be by May 2024.

Goals

The goal of this book is to provide a free, flexible platform for you to build a course. Cut it up as you please. I am happy to share my slides, syllabus and test materials with you, whether or not you are using this book.

Our approach:

• Assume complete ignorance.
• Speak informally and directly. Many students start with an emotional barrier to this subject matter, expecting to struggle. We speak informally to make the subject more approachable.
• Begin with the most intuitive concepts and progress to less intuitive material.
• Start with concrete, relatable scenarios and grow into theory and general applications.
• Cut cases deeply
  • If it is not relevant to the principle we are teaching that day, we cut it. 
  • We try to teach only one concept at a time and trim other concepts for other lessons. 
  • We leave enough facts for (most) cases to stand on their own.
• The goal for each principle is isolation, manipulation, repetition then combination. 
• Focus on application and problem sets
  • One case to teach the rule, ten case summaries to develop the intuition. 

Contact Info

For other materials or comments contact Paul Weitzel, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. paul.weitzel@unl.edu. 

There are several ways to use this book in connection with artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, Claude, Mixtral or others, and we waive any rights that might stop you from doing so.

Some ideas:

• Assign students to:
  • Copy and paste the reading into the AI prompt and ask for a summary. Then copy the response into a Word document and turn on track changes. While reading, critique and correct the summary to improve nuance or mistakes.
  • Or ask the Chatbot to provide a 1 page summary of a principle in advance of reading, then critique that summary as they read.
  • You can also do this without them pasting the text in, and just asking for a three paragraph summary of the topic of that day's reading.
• Allow students to:
  • Upload sections of the casebook into the AI prompt and tell the AI System this should be used as the base of knowledge for subsequent responses.
  • In the same instance (that is, without opening a new chat window), students can use the AI as a tutor to ask questions.
  • Students can use it to generate questions that they can use to test themselves.
  • They can use it to judge the quality of their responses.
  • Note that there may be errors, but in our testing it is fairly competent with introductory business association materials.

Yes. Take what you need. Go help your students.

Hey!

Welcome to Business Associations! We understand that many of you are not excited about business and may be taking this solely to help with the bar. We got you. This book assumes complete ignorance. If you put in the work, you will be fine.

But we do ask that you keep an open heart. Because this field is amazing.

Think for a moment about what we create. We coordinate and cooperate to build wonders— skyscrapers, iPhones and photovoltaic plates that channel the power of the sun to let me watch cat videos in high def.

Business associations is the law of how we work together. We will learn how to organize, gather resources, divide up the spoils and (importantly for our profession) sue each other when things go sour.

But as corporate behemoths gain more power to create, they also gain power to distort our society. What is the role of corporations in our society? Should corporations focus only on profits or can they consider other values? What if those values are religious? What about values that touch the bottom line? Should a gun manufacturer be allowed to voice it's view on crime legislation? Should a hospital? And if corporations are a legal fiction, what does it even mean to say a corporation is speaking?

This course will cover all those questions, largely through the lens of an entrepreneur opening a cycling shop. We hope you enjoy this topic as much as we do.

There are different ways to legally organize a business. If you want to form a partnership, you will use one set of laws. If you want to form a corporation, that is a different set of laws. It can be tricky at first to remember which set of laws apply to the entity you want.

Business organizations are primarily governed by state law, and the law for each type of organization is typically in different sections of the state code.

For this course, we will use the restatement and the model rules for each type of businesses. For corporate law we will also use Delaware law, because most large companies are organized under Delaware law.

Here is a cheat sheet for finding which law applies and tracking down abbreviations: