Corporations and Advanced Corporations Law, or Company Law?

[zhenzhenzhen]

Hi guys, this question is really specific to those students that have already done corporations law. In the JD course, they are going to compress both corporations law and advanced corporations law to just one unit next year (2016). This gives me the option to follow on the old course structure and do both corps and advanced corps, or take up the new offering at the end of 2016.

Corporations law will reduce to one unit by Trimester 2 2016 - with Principles of company law replacing two current subjects LAW7275 Principles of corporations law and LAW7277 Advanced corporations law - the new unit having 42 contact hours. Existing students will be given a reasonable opportunity to complete the two existing units and will be advised their deadlines for completion to avoid the switch over to the new 42 hour unit. One way to ensure that you do complete these units before Trimester 2 2016 is to follow the recommended course progression map.

The question I have is, is corporations law really hard and will I be better served splitting the content up over two trimesters? Next, will having done corporations law matter in any way for clerkship applications that I have coming up soon?

Thanks!

[ninwa]

For me corporations law was one of the more difficult law subjects. I also found it extremely boring though and I would probably rather shoot myself in the face than take two corps subjects.

I assume though that if you're applying for clerkships you're wanting to work in 1) commercial law and 2) top/mid tier firms, and therefore it might be useful to have those two corporate-y subjects on your transcript. On the other hand, I've heard that law firms don't care so much about what you studied as your overall GPA - if you don't meet a certain cut-off, they won't even look at your application (allegedly). That said, I've never applied for clerkships or commercial law firms so I don't know much. Maybe message lynt.br.

[zhenzhenzhen]

Hmm. Not sure how they're gonna combine 2x30h contact hours into 1x42 contact hours - though for things like Criminal Law they dropped a portion of the content, so it's possible they might do the same here. Corps sounds sad though

Thanks! I will message

[Rohmer]

I'd just do one subject (i.e. old method) unless you're pretty sure you'll like Corps. Personally, I didn't find corps very interesting. A lot of people find it boring, especially those with no interest in commercial stuff. I majored in finance but still found corps comparatively dull. It's not the hardest unit, but (at least at undergrad level) it is very crammed, which is why I'd be hesitant about a 2 in 1. Quite a bit of Corps Act interpretation is involved. Not all that many cases, except when you get to director's duties, and then there's a tonne of them. DD is one of the more interesting areas, but still kinda dry. Even the lecturers will sometimes complain about the dryness of corps. Having said all this, some still find it interesting, mainly those with commercial/business interests and/or those clerking in the big firms.

It won't really matter that you haven't done corps before the clerkships. It'd look good if you pulled a D/HD in corps (assuming they noticed), but ultimately they basically only care about your law WAM.

[zhenzhenzhen]

Hmm, I guess my decision is pretty easy then. Thanks Rohmer

[lynt.br]

I had a quick look at the unit handbook entries for principles of corporations law and advanced corporations law. 'Principles' covers a lot of the important introductory corporate law principles including legal status of corporations, corporate constitutions and internal rules, corporate contracting and insolvent trading. All of these topics are super important regardless of where you want to work as they introduce you to the legal consequences of incorporation. 'Advanced' covers corporate governance, directors' duties and shareholder rights and remedies which is probably more interesting to learn about as a student but is less relevant in day to day practice (but still important to at least know of).

I couldn't find a handbook entry for the new Corporations law unit but I assume it just consolidates all of those topics into one trimester. This would be similar to how the LLB corporations law unit runs (it covers all the topics mentioned above but in one semester). I don't think you would be disadvantaged doing one option over the other, and I don't think one would be significantly harder than the other as I assume both will cover the same content.

Having done corporations law prior to applying for clerkships is helpful for your own purposes, however, you probably only need to know of the topics covered in the 'Principles' unit to be fine. Commercial law firms are typically advising incorporated entities so knowing what the legal status of a corporation is and how and what laws apply to it will just make your life easier than having to learn it yourself on the job. This is one of the reasons the new LLB(Hons) course has moved Corporations Law to third year, before students apply for clerkships. At the end of the day though, it's more just being familiar with the concepts than having in-depth knowledge of a particular section of corporations law.