P R O G R A M  S P O T L I G H T
 
   MCLE’s series
  of finance BootCamps—

  Fundamental finance
  concepts for lawyers

MCLE’s Finance BootCamps

Business BootCamp for Lawyers
■ Financial Statement Analysis and Financial Forecasting
■ Capital Structure and Choice of Financing Instrument
■ Project and Business Valuation
■ Application of Project and Business Valuation

Professor David Scharfstein, Edmund Cogswell Converse Professor of Finance and Banking at Harvard Business School, leads MCLE’s Business BootCamp for Lawyer

Real Estate Finance BootCamp for Lawyers
■ Develop Property Cash Flows
■Calculate and Interpret Investment Returns
■ Evaluate Alternative Financing Structures
■ Impact of Federal Income Taxation/the Value of Changes

W. Tod McGrath, President of advisoRE, LLC and lecturer in real estate finance at MIT’s Center for Real Estate, guides MCLE’s Real Estate Finance BootCamp

Coming this fall—

Wealth Management BootCamp for Lawyers
■ Introduction to Wealth
■ Investment Structures, Products and Vehicles/Portfolio Management
■ The Impact of Tax on the Transfer of Wealth
■ Intergenerational Issues in
Wealth Transfer

Finance has always been a challenging area for many lawyers and is becoming increasingly more complex and sophisticated as a result of advances in technology and in investment strategies, techniques and management. There are many more types of structures and vehicles in which to raise, store and invest money either for transactional purposes or for wealth accumulation, protection and transfer. Clients expect their lawyers to understand the advantages and disadvantages of all these finance structures and vehicles and to be able to effectively steer them to the best ones for their particular goals. It is essential for lawyers to be able to provide their expert legal advice within a business context.

MCLE’s innovative and intensive two-day BootCamps provide lawyers with a better understanding of the world of finance so as to better counsel their clients. The Business BootCamp for Lawyers, The Real Estate Finance BootCamp for Lawyers and the newest edition to this series, Wealth Management BootCamp for Lawyers teach lawyers the fundamental finance concepts and analytic techniques that drive investment decision-making.

Going back to school— this time, business school
Responding to the need of lawyers who represent clients in complex financial transactions, and with the help of a planning committee of distinguished corporate lawyers, MCLE developed in 1999 the Business BootCamp for Lawyers to teach the skills and knowledge that sophisticated business clients expect from their lawyers but which were not taught in law school— aspects of finance such as understanding and managing the liability side of a company’s balance sheet and understanding the concepts and techniques of business valuation. The course was also designed to teach them the relevant terminology to be able to talk the talk, and understand it too.

To find the perfect instructor, MCLE went back to school and sought the help of Professor David Scharfstein, then of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and currently the Edmund Cogswell Converse Professor of Finance and Banking at Harvard Business School. Professor Scharfstein teaches and researches on entrepreneurship and venture capital, corporate resource allocation, and the financing and management of biotechnology companies.

As a result of the Business BootCamp’s success and recognizing the need in other areas for a similar, tailored program, in the summer of 2006, MCLE developed the Real Estate Finance BootCamp for lawyers who represent developers, owner/operators, “money partners” and mortgage lenders. Once again, MCLE returned to MIT, this time to find W. Tod McGrath, who teaches real estate finance at MIT’s Center for Real Estate and is president of advisoRE, LLC, a company that assists clients with real estate strategy, analytics and negotiation.

And, for this fall, MCLE is developing Wealth Management BootCamp for lawyers who counsel wealthy individuals, their families and their foundations in the accumulation, protection, and transfer of wealth across generations.

Combining legal, finance and client perspectives: Not your standard CLE fare
Taught by non-lawyer experts in the fields of finance and investment, MCLE’s BootCamps bring to bear different perspectives from which to view clients’ problems so that lawyers can place their legal advice within the business context of the matter. With a solid understanding of financial concepts, lawyers are better able to identify and evaluate the financial concerns of their clients as well as the competing concerns of other parties involved. Lawyers can then combine their legal skills with a better understanding of fundamental financial concepts to more effectively formulate practical solutions to common client problems.

MCLE’s BootCamps provide the practical training MCLE is known for with the theoretical underpinnings and techniques taught in the best business schools. In addition to lectures and explanations of key finance concepts taught by expert teachers, the courses utilize the business-school case study and team approach in which students break out into small groups to work through critical analytic components of the finance hypotheticals posed by the case studies. The team’s problem-solving efforts are then individually reviewed to reinforce the group’s understanding of practical applications of finance concepts.

With programs such as these finance BootCamps, MCLE continues to find innovative, effective ways to prepare lawyers to better serve their clients.