Deb,

I think the idea of a funded outside study makes a lot of sense. Since they
have an obvious self-interest, perhaps we could get West,  Prentice Hall,
and McGraw Hill Irwin to fund the study.

On a more personal note, I will be visitiing at Harvard Business School Jan
- June 2000 and teaching a new course Legal Aspects of Management in place
of the more traditional big co. business law class Joe Hinsey (who has
retired) has taught in the past. I know that George Siedel (sp?) from
Michigan worked closely with the HBS task force on the role of law in the
MBA curriculum chaired by Lynn Sharp Paine, which recommended beefing up
the law curriculum. Perhaps George and Lynn (or one of the other HBS
committee members Michael White or Hank Reiling) might be persuaded to
write an article about what HBS is doing and why. Obviously, I'll do
everything I can to spread the faith while I'm there.

Connie Bagley
Stanford Graduate School of Business





At 07:49 AM 10/14/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I agree with Jordan that the quotations will be dismissed as anecdotal.  I
>also agree that we need empirical evidence.  However, if we ourselves
>undertake such a study (and several of our members have done excellent
>studies--right now I can think of George Siedel's study that he presented
>in St. Louis and a study that Elliot Klayman published a number of years
>ago), it will be dismissed as biased.  I personally think our profession is
>in a state of deep crisis and if we don't take serious action soon, we will
>cease to exist.
>
>I would like to propose that the national association, the regionals, and
>our members as individuals contribute to a fund that we could use to hire
>an outside consulting firm to do a survey of business executives not just
>on the law subjects they think are important, but on the importance of law
>for the practice of business, and on the importance of business
>practitioners themselves having basic legal knowledge.  We could submit the
>resulting report to every business school dean and to the AACSB.  We could
>use this report not only for defensive purposes, but to go on the offense.
>
>I am curious about what others think of this proposal.
>
>Deb Ballam
>
>