Here's a little write up about Brett's law school competition in Philadelphia, as reported by BYU Law.
http://www.law2.byu.edu/news/item.php?num=672BYU Invited to Participate in the First Ever Transactional Lawyering Competition
This year BYU law students have been invited to participate in the first ever Transactional Lawyering Meet to be held at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University in Philadelphia. BYU is one of the ten schools invited to this inaugural event, which also will include law students from Columbia, Cornell, Drexel, Emory, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Temple, and Washington & Lee.
An internal competition was held at BYU in January to select the national team. In that competition, BYU law students worked in teams of two to prepare and submit letters of intent for a business acquisition. The students negotiated against each other, and judges selected the team of Brett Nichols [2L] and Doug Yarrington [2L] to represent BYU at the meet which will be held on March 4 and 5, 2010. The two students have spent the past month working with Associate Dean Gordon Smith and visiting professor Marie Mackey in preparation for the upcoming competition.
“We have been preparing by meeting together frequently to discuss various modifications that we can or should make to the form contract that was given as part of the competition materials,” Yarrington said. “We have also benefitted from frequent and critical input from Professors Smith and Mackey, each of whom has taken considerable time to help us grapple with issues where we lack experience.”
Professor Smith, who has been instrumental in helping organize the internal competition as well as prepare Nichols and Yarrington for the upcoming national competition, sees this competition as an opportunity for students to combine skills and knowledge in an area of law that isn’t always focused on in law school.
“Law schools emphasize litigation -- both in the classroom and in co-curricular activities, such as moot court -- but many law students find that they prefer transactional work,” Smith said. “The purpose of this competition is to combine training in the skills used by transactional lawyers, including drafting and negotiation, with a substantive knowledge of contract, corporate and securities law. Mix in the need for business judgment, and you have a recipe for a valuable learning experience that most law students otherwise would not receive.”
As this is the inaugural competition both professors have had the opportunity to help with the organization of the national competition by providing feedback from the January internal competition.
“We, as professors, have been able to provide feedback and make suggestions about the scoring rubric,” said Mackey. “It has been exciting for us to be able to influence certain aspects of this new competition.”
Nichols realizes how beneficial participation in this competition will be for students as it grows and continues on in the future.
“We are breaking new ground for what will hopefully become a national trend comparable to moot court, but to prepare law students for transactional work as opposed to appellate litigation,” Nichols said. “I am excited for this opportunity to gain experience in a transactional setting, competing against students from some of the top law schools in the country.”
Posted: February 25, 2010
Katie started Kindergarten and LOVES it. She would probably go all day, every day if she could. Today they chased the gingerbread man all over school, finally caught him, and ate him. She is already showing greater focus and fine motor skills. 
Amanda is DYING to also start school, so we joined a computer preschool. She learns reading fundamentals, to spell her name, familiarity with numbers, and some basic science (like the five senses). 
I. . . . am going crazy keeping up with it all, longing for a vacation (or at least a vacation from laundry and dirty floors!) and happy to have an employed husband and sound children. Life is good. Good night.
