Washington and Lee law professor Lyman Johnson was recently elected Chair of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Agency, Partnerships, and LLCs. The Section focuses exclusively on noncorporate business associations. In recent years, limited liability companies(LLCs) have emerged as far and away the most popular form of business entity for start-up ventures, far surpassing the formation of corporations.
Every year the Section focuses on a timely topic of interest to scholars working in this area. This January the Section featured a tribute to the scholarship of Larry Ribstein, a prolific scholar from the University of Illinois who did pioneering work in the area of partnerships and LLCs and who died suddenly at the end of 2011. Prof. Johnson provided a comment on a paper delivered at that session. As Chair, Johnson says his hope is to raise even further the profile of this important section and to explore connections with other AALS sections. He will also seek to reach out to members of the practicing bar and the judiciary who are grappling with issues in this area.
Prof. Johnson is also a founding Executive Committee member of the new AALS section on Transactional Law and Skills. This section focuses on teaching students the substantive knowledge, skills, and tasks required to become transactional lawyers, such as those who work in law firm Financial Services or Corporate Acquisitions groups.
