Andrew Abramowitz

• A profile of a matching service connecting small businesses with lawyers.  I generally get my clients the old-fashioned way – referrals – but approaches like this could be useful for both lawyers and the businesses.
• A downside of donation-based (not equity-based) crowdfunding – upset donors when the company hits it big and they don’t share in the riches.
• Website Quora raises $80 million in VC funding, which it says it doesn’t need.  The thinking is that it’s an insurance policy, meaning the company will always not be short of cash.  But not putting the cash to use hurts the company’s earnings on per-share basis.
• Crowdfunding isn’t just a U.S. thing.  The latest developments in the U.K.

Some interesting legal reads for the week of March 31, 2014:

• A speech from the SEC’s Director of Corporate Finance about recent developments, including the new general solicitation rules.  And here’s a blog post by Steve Quinliven summarizing and analyzing the speech.
• Another speech by Jeremy C. Stein, a Governor of the Federal Reserve, noting crowdfunding as potentially having a role in community development projects, not just tech startups, movies and the like.
• Though having said that, here’s an example of a movie funded by accredited investor-crowdfunding.

Some interesting legal reads for the week of March 24, 2014:

• Further to my recent post on risk factors, here’s an intriguing idea from Keith Paul Bishop on standardizing some risk factors.

• Jim Hamilton reports on a pending bill that would eliminate the XBRL financial statement requirement for smaller public companies.

• Recent public comments from SEC Chair Mary Jo White in her speech:  “Protecting the retail investor”. She talked about key topics such as investor protection, investment advisor/broker-dealer issues, and the JOBS Act initiatives.

Some interesting legal reads for the week of March 17, 2014:

• A debate between Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard and the folks at Wachtell Lipton about the legality of poison pill plans.

• The number of students taking the LSATs is on the rise again. According to the Law School Council the number of law school admission tests administered in February was up from the previous year..

• Some criticism of the angel funding reality show Shark Tank.  It always drives me nuts watching the show that they don’t negotiate anything other than price and percentage stake.

• How the Affordable Care Act can encourage entrepreneurship by eliminating “job lock.” The U.S. system of employer-provided health care deterred people from quitting a job to start their own business, but with the ACA this problem has found its solution while creating jobs in the process.

Some interesting legal reads for the week of March 10, 2014:

• Some skepticism from DealBook’s The Deal Professor about theories of rampant insider trading among SEC staffers.

• Findings from Prof. Steven Davidoff (here not in his capacity as The Deal Professor) that newly-public small companies struggle to succeed in comparison to their larger brethren.

• A study of staggered boards, which finds that companies adopting them have higher shareholder returns following adoption, and more generally challenges the notion that increasing shareholder power is always positive.

• Joe Wallin on the mechanics of actually filing a 83(b) election.