Courses | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

The class will meet on Mondays from 4:30 to 7:45 pm in Uris 331. Law students will have a special first meeting on Jan.28, and a final meeting on March 11. Presentations for this class are slated in the A term final exam period for the Business School.

High-stakes real estate M&A and restructuring transactions require consummate deal-making skills and a thorough understanding of the underlying business, legal, financial and strategic frameworks. This Workshop will explore the relevant skill-sets and underlying frameworks through a combination of class discussions and hands-on mock negotiation and drafting exercises.

The REIT and commercial real estate worlds are in the midst of a massive wave of restructurings and recapitalizations, fast on the heels of a period of extraordinary liquidity and large numbers of highly levered M&A transactions. These waves of transactional activity provide an ideal backdrop for learning the strategy and tactics involved in sophisticated negotiations, as well as the legal and business building blocks that shape the commercial real estate industry.

The class will take a multi-disciplinary approach, based on the premise that an effective transactional lawyer must understand the business and financial goals and implications of the deal and, similarly, that an effective business or finance expert must have a solid grasp of the legal and structural underpinnings for the transaction.