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Executive Director sought for Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law & Policy at the UCLA School of Law

I'm passing this along at the behest of the search committee: The UCLA School of Law is seeking a highly energetic, experienced individual to be the Executive Director of a newly established Institute for the study and practice of business law and policy located at the UCLA School of Law. The Institute is designed to bring world class policy analysis, research and educational opportunities in business law and policy to UCLA, the broader community of Southern California, the nation and the world.

The Executive Director will plan and oversee all aspects of the Institute’s programs, which are designed to support and expand research, policy analysis, and teaching (including clinical teaching) about business law and policy at UCLA School of Law. The Executive Director will help to develop the business law curriculum, including improving and expanding the Business Law Specialization for law students. The Executive Director will also supervise fellows, policy consultants, research assistants, student interns, and volunteers; engage in fundraising; and organize symposia and other academic programs related to the advancement of business law and policy. The Executive Director will work closely with the Faculty Director, members of the business law faculty, and the advisory board of the Institute.

Minimum requirements include an excellent academic record; a J.D., M.B.A. or equivalent advanced degree from a U.S. school; at least five years of successful business law practice or business experience; demonstrated management, administrative and organizational skills, with successful prior experience in fundraising or coordinating scholarly or professional conferences preferred; prior successful teaching experience and a record of publications concerning business law and policy topics preferred; a strong record of established relationships with other business professional and with professional organizations preferred.

The level of appointment will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. This is a year-round, academic, non-tenure track position.

Confidential review of applications, nominations and expressions of interest will begin immediately and continue until an appointment is made. Please send resume, cover letter, and the names and addresses for at least two professional references to the attention of:

Edna Sasis, Office of the Dean, UCLA School of Law, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1476.

The University of California is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer, and seeks candidates committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities and to a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.

Blog Roll Addition

I am now following Keith Bishop's California Corporate and Securities Law blawg. Extremely useful resource on all things California business law-related.

LA Times has more details on Milken to UCLAW Gift Controversy

The LA Times is reporting that:

A $10-million gift to UCLA's law school from alumnus Lowell Milken is stirring debate on the campus about the decision to name a business law institute for the former financier, who was linked to Wall Street's junk bond scandal two decades ago.

A prominent business law professor has raised objections to the Milken gift and to UCLA's announcement this month that it will establish the institute in his name. But other law school faculty, along with top UCLA administrators, say they welcome the donation, noting that Milken was not convicted of any wrongdoing. ...

Concerns about the latest donation were raised by UCLA business law professor Lynn A. Stout, an expert on corporate and securities law, in a letter last month to UC President Mark G. Yudof and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Stout said the gift posed "serious ethical problems and reputational risks for UCLA" and could damage her own reputation as well.

In an interview Tuesday, Stout said she also worried that Milken's name on the new institute would imply that the law school endorsed him as a role model for its students. "I don't think someone who has been banned from the security industry and barred from the New York Stock Exchange is an appropriate model for UCLA alumni and students," she said. ...

Law Professor Kenneth Klee said Stout appeared to be alone among the law school faculty in criticizing the donation. "Everybody else here is thrilled with this gift," said Klee, who like Stout is an expert on business law. He noted that the 1989 indictment against Lowell Milken was dropped the following year.

As for Milken being a role model, Klee said: "I think we would want more of our alumni to become leading philanthropists." ...

UCLA Law School Dean Rachel F. Moran said she was "mystified" by Stout's criticism of the gift. Moran noted that Stout had sought and received funds from an earlier Milken donation to offset the costs of a law school conference next month that the professor is helping to organize.

UCLA spokeswoman Carol Stogsdill said up to $49,000 from that previous, unrestricted Milken grant to the law school could be spent on the September conference.

Stout said that meeting, which she said is being organized by UCLA and the Aspen Institute, would receive some Milken funds but she said she would not benefit personally from her association with it.

In the blogosphere, Above the Law has their typical tabloid-level perspective (hitting Prof Stout with an unfair guilt by association smear and asking "What’s wrong with milkin’ a Milken?"). Meanwhile, Larry Ribstein weighs in by observing that:

I have more perspective [on the Mlken's role in the 1980s takeover wars] in my paper, Imagining Wall Street.  There I note that Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street

may have helped create an environment that became increasingly unfriendly to takeovers.  In the year following the film’s release, Drexel and Milken were prosecuted, eventually culminating in the fining and jailing of Milken along with many others in the takeover game, and the demise of Drexel Burnham. Milken pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in jail.68 [United States v. Milken, No. (S) 89Cr.41(KMW), 1990 WL 264699 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 21, 1990)]  * * * It is hard to say how much of that attitude was based on actual events reported in the media, and how much on the fiction Wall Street helped create. Milken was prosecuted not for insider trading, but rather for technical violations of the Williams Act—that is, using Boesky to accumulate non-disclosed positions in target shares.69 [Id. at 4]

In short, there is a big question whether Lowell’s history is such as to taint UCLA by his gift.

But I am not unsympathetic with the idea that law schools are supposed to be teaching their students that ethics trumps money, and so should be careful about whom they take money from, and more generally the company they keep. Indeed, for that reason I wrote critically last year about Bill Lerach’s foray into law teaching.

The real question here is where you draw the line and who decides.  Is the decision to turn down a gift based on ethics or politics?  More to the point, would the same people who oppose the Milken gift also object to an association with Lerach?

And how do you balance those considerations against the institution’s needs?  Interestingly, Professor Stout has written extensively about the need to take the interests of all constituencies into account in corporate decision-making.  Where would UCLA’s students stand in the decision Professor Stout favors to reject the Milken gift?

Secession from SF

Not a bad idea:

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone ... said in a statement late Thursday that Riverside, Imperial, San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Kings, Kern, Fresno, Tulare, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa and Mono counties should form the new state of South California.

The creation of the new state would allow officials to focus on securing borders, balancing budgets, improving schools and creating a vibrant economy, he said.

“Our taxes are too high, our schools don’t educate our children well enough, unions and other special interests have more clout in the Legislature than the general public,” Stone said in his statement.

But only if they take Los Angeles with them. Getting out from under the nitwits in San Francisco (and don't get me started on Marin) would be a major plus.

Over-regulation in California

Larry Ribstein has some anecdotes of how California legislators and regulators are driving business out of the state.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a rather disturbing story on that topic in The Economist:

The Dashtakis are the kind of immigrants who give California its vibrancy. Ms Dashtaki’s father brought with him a tradition from the old country: the secret of making fantastically good yogurt, the sort that has foodies fighting one another as they throng California’s farmers’ markets. So Ms Dashtaki, spotting a marketing opportunity in her father’s magnificent facial hair, called their little venture “The White Moustache” and prepared to become that all-American immigrant archetype: the entrepreneur.

Alas, after three months of operating (for about $300 in revenues a week, and no profit at all), she encountered that other American tradition, red tape (after the red bands that used to hold bundles of bureaucratic papers together in the old days). For although she had spent a year getting the required permits from Orange County, she had, it turned out, yet to make the acquaintance of the “milk and dairy food safety branch” of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). On a Saturday morning in March, Ms Dashtaki got a call and was told to shut down or risk prosecution. ...

Ms Dashtaki and her father say their yogurt is safe. It always has been, both in Iran and in America. Nonetheless, she was eager to demonstrate the safety of her process and to comply with all regulations. Hence her surprise when she researched just what those regulations said.

For a start, they date back to 1947. When she pointed out to Stephen Beam, the head of the CDFA’s Milk and Dairy Food Safety Branch, that the rules might be somewhat out of date, Mr Beam replied that the rules have been “amended many times in multiple areas during the past 60-plus years”. But when Ms Dashtaki researched those modifications, they turned out to concern only frozen or “soft-serve” yogurt, not the regular sort, and they still made no allowance at all for yogurt made from pasteurised milk. ...

Further complications ensue, of course, the upshot of which is that "Ms Dashtaki is pondering whether to move to another state, one whose rules allow for artisanal products."

Memo to Mr Beam:

“If the law supposes that [Ms Dashtaki can't get a permit to make her yogurt],” … “the law is an ass—an idiot."

And so are you.

Crazy Bridesmaids Girls

The juxtaposition of ad and strip bar sign amused me:

RajinCajun

Had lunch today at the RajinCajun food truck, which was parked on Wilshire in the Miracle Mile area near LACMA. Had a very good bowl of jambalaya topped with a spoonful of gumbo. Just the right amount of heat, although vast quantities of hot sauce were available for those with the need for real heat. The praline cheesecake looked good, but good sense prevailed.

Recommended

Twitter: @cajunonwheels

web: http://www.ragincajun.com/

Breakfast at Doughboys Cafe

Doughboys Cafe on Third Street (just east of La Jolla) is a great breakfast place. I got the breakfast sandwich: Fried eggs, bacon, grilled tomato, and cheese between two slices of bread that's then gratineed (sp?). Wow.

What Brown got right

Eli Lehrer:

A quick look at Jerry Brown’s California budget reveals a pleasant surprise: The once and current California governor has proposed eliminating a huge swath of special business tax breaks, “redevelopment authorities,” enterprise zones and other subsidies for business. He’s absolutely right.

Scads of research shows that special favors governments do for business often shift development or “poach” it from other states rather than stimulating new activity. Even when they truly create activity that wouldn’t exist in their absence, such activity simply amounts to a transfer of resources from taxpayers to the owners of businesses that do the things favored by politicians who hand out subsidies. This is deeply unfair.

Broad tax reform is over due out here.

Chemerinsky on Investing in Higher Education

UC Irvine law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky in today's LA Times:

The proposals for the University of California now being considered in Sacramento — limiting tuition and fees, freezing executive and faculty salaries and increasing legislative control over the UCs — are well intentioned. But they are a recipe for ruining a great public university system.

A public university has only three choices: It can be subsidized by the state, it can raise tuition and fees to make up needed revenue, or it can be mediocre. Without adequate revenue, faculties will shrink, meaning fewer and larger classes; the quality of faculty teaching and research will diminish; programs and facilities will be inadequate for education. ...

One proposal being discussed is freezing or decreasing executive and faculty salaries. But this is no answer. If the University of California is going to retain and attract high-level faculty, it must pay the same as comparable schools across the country. Over the last few weeks, I have negotiated salaries with superb professors we are attempting to recruit who are currently teaching at Harvard, Northwestern and Yale. The University of California must match their current salaries or they will not come. As much as I love living in Southern California, I could not have afforded to leave Duke University if it meant taking a substantial pay cut.

I'm with him through all of that (naturally). If you think California benefits from having someone who is one of the 100 most influential people in corporate governance doing award winning teaching at a public university, you're going to have to accept UCLA paying something near market price.

But then we come to this little nugget:

Nor is there reason to believe that there are significant wasteful expenditures within the UC system.

Sorry, Erwin, but you just went off the rails. The UC Merced campus was an unnecessary financial burden. And speaking of unnecessary UC programs, your law school at UC Irvine was documented to be completely unnecessary.

(HT: Caron)

A SF Aphorism for the Gubernator

You know the expression about locking the barn door after the horse has bolted? Here's a Star Wars version:

Pulling the fire alarms on Alderaan five minutes after the Death Star shoots.

It's from an article on California's fiscal emergency, which opines:

The L.A. Times reports Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger “is scheduled to welcome the new [California] Legislature on Monday by declaring a fiscal emergency and ordering it into special session.”

Boy, it sure would be nice if we could deal with some of these fiscal problems before they explode into “emergencies.”  California has been storing highly flammable canisters of unsustainable spending in the basement for decades, while chasing away business with flaming torches made from bundles of expensive regulations and mandates.

In fairness to Arnold, I think California's fiscal problems are appropriately laid at the feed of our dysfunctional state legislature and our idiot voters acting through the absurd ballot proposition system. We keep voting ourselves bread and circuses without figuring out how to pay for them.

I Love Hollywood Values

In a post on the murder of Hollywood publicist Roni Chasen, Nikki Finke of the widely read Deadline Hollywood website writes:

Her shocking death hit Hollywood hard because so many liked Chasen, a petite and hardworking PR-woman who specialized in Oscar campaigns.

Where else but here in LA would the poor woman's body type be relevant? Where else would being petite deserve mention in the same breath as being hard working? And where else would the implication be that people like her, at least in part, because she was petite? Weird.

Lunch @KogiBBQ food truck

Helen and I tracked down one of the Kogi BBQ trucks in Brentwood for lunch today:

The Korean short rib and spicy pork tacos were excellent. Just the right amount of heat and tons of flavor. Very fresh ingredients. Excellent all around.

Lunch at the South Philly Experience food truck

Caught up with the South Philly Experience food truck on Olympic Blvd this afternoon.

As you'll see below, I went with the Cheese Steak with onions and "wiz":

Yum.

Brown and Boxer win

Bummer.