As we complete another academic year, I am struck by how many people have contributed to the success of the Center and its programs.
I am thrilled that Dean John Corkery has appointed Steven L. Good, CEO of Sheldon Good & Company, to a three-year term as the first chairman of the Center’s advisory board. In recent years, Good has had an increasingly important role in the work of the Center. We met in 2004, when he agreed to be the luncheon speaker for our Kratovil Conference on Real Estate in Bankruptcy. He brought along his recently published book, Churches, Jails, and Gold Mines: Mega Deals from a Real Estate Maverick, and shared some of his wonderful auction stories with the audience.
The Center’s relationship with Good took off from there. One of our LLM students did a real estate legal practicum at Sheldon Good & Company, and Good hired Craig Post, one of my real estate students, who wanted to work with Good in the auction industry. In addition to sponsoring the reception for the 2007 Kratovil Conference, support from Sheldon Good & Company enabled me to co- author, with Good, an article on auctions published by the ABA Real Property Probate & Journal. An excerpt from this article appeared in the last issue of this newsletter.
We hope that over the next three years, under Good’s leadership, the advisory board will grow in number and the members of the board and their organizations will become a source of financial support for the Center’s programs and initiatives.
Steps to Finding a Perfect Real Estate Career
This newsletter’s focus on career services reflects our recognition of a primary motivation for our students making the commitment to get their real estate degrees at John Marshall. It also responds to a criticism by the recent report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law by Sullivan, Colby, Wegner, Bond, and Shulman (Jossey-Bass 2007), that law schools do not do an adequate job of helping students achieve their career goals. We are grateful to Assistant Dean for Career Services Laurel Hajek and her staff for collaborating with the Center on programs that benefit our real estate students.
The February presentation on portfolios by Dr. Margot Weinstein of MW Leadership Consultants LLC, described on page 8 of this newsletter, caught the attention of not only the real estate students but also students in John Marshall’s other LLM programs, who were invited to attend along with real estate alumni. Although development of portfolios is common in business schools, this approach is new in law schools and is one of the recommendations of the Carnegie Foundation. We love to be on the cutting edge.
Collaborations and Interactions Benefit All
A few years ago, while serving as chair of the Section on Real Estate Transactions of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), I became convinced of the need to integrate the legal education we offer in real estate transactions with the parallel business education, and to foster collaboration between attorneys and those on the business side. The ability to collaborate with real estate clients and other professionals is an essential skill that attorneys need to have.
As a result of this insight, the Center strongly encourages real estate students to meet and network with real estate professionals. Following the advice we give students, at the suggestion of advisory board member Richard Green (professor of real estate finance, George Washington University) I joined the American Real Estate Society (ARES), comprised of business professors and real estate industry executives. Membership in ARES has proved to be beneficial and has given me the opportunity to meet those involved in the “other side” of real estate education.
Our Kratovil Conferences on Real Estate Law & Practice present members of the real estate industry as speakers, as well as academics and practicing attorneys, to insure that business as well as legal perspectives are covered. The 2007 Kratovil Conference was no exception. Ronald Pollina, PhD, of Pollina Corporate Real Estate took part in the panel discussion and gave an economic perspective on the topic of commercial leases.
This past year saw increased opportunities for our students to network with both attorneys and members of the real estate industry. For this we especially want to thank Al Klairmont of Imperial Realty, who is the driving force behind the Eisenberg Foundation’s ever-growing Mentor Program. This year saw the establishment of the Career Awareness Program and a Student Ambassador Program. Participation in these programs enables our real estate law students to collaborate with business students and corresponds to the Center’s educational philosophy that the law and business aspects of transactions must be learned integrally.
My final example of a collaboration involving attorneys and industry leaders is the work that Good, Weinstein, and I are doing to develop the first real estate case study from a legal standpoint. In 2006, Good and Weinstein presented the business case study they authored, which covers the auction of real estate assets in the bankruptcy of United Homes Inc., at the ARES conference.2 I have explained the importance of business case studies to business school education in prior issues of the newsletter and the Center’s hope to produce real estate legal case studies.
Now, thanks to my collaboration with Good and Weinstein, and the willingness of the attorneys involved in the United Homes bankruptcy case to contribute their perspectives, the first case study is becoming a reality. I am especially grateful for the cooperation of Ronald Barliant of Goldberg Kohn, a long-time member of the advisory board who was the judge in the case; Richard Lauter of Freeborn & Peters, attorney for the debtor; and Barry Chatz of Arnstein & Lehr, attorney for the unsecured creditors committee.