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

• Advice from a Harvard Law School study for aspiring lawyers to learn accounting and statistics, despite the reputation of law as a career path for smart people who don’t want to do math.
• The oldest existing law firm in the U.S. is not Cadwalader.
• 2013 was a big year for startups in the legal industry, according to Tech Cocktail.

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

• DealBook’s The Deal Professor on an attempt to de-decimalize trading of small company stocks.

• Keith Paul Bishop on a recent SEC no-action letter relating to private company M&A brokers.

• The Wall Street Journal on state-level LLC formation fees, including a discussion of New York’s publication requirement, which would be scaled back under a pending bill.

• DealBook on what it terms the “Stealth I.P.O.” – while not inaccurate, the article paints the JOBS Act process for confidentially submitting S-1 registration statements for smaller IPOs as somehow enabling companies to withhold information from investors, though as the article goes on to note, there is a mandatory 21-day period during which the information can be reviewed and digested.

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

• Regulation A offerings have become rather uncommon occurrences, and “Regulation A+” rules will change things further. Here’s more about what we can expect from Regulation A, according to Daniel Gorfine, writing for MoFo’s Jumpstarter blog.

• On the NY Times’ DealBook: Fantex, the start-up looking to sell stocks tied to athletes’ future earnings is moving forward with football player IPO’s.

• Also on DealBook, a creative way to permit private company employees to cash out on their stock without (it is hoped) creating securities law issues.  I’m not sure whether this company sought no-action relief from the SEC, but that’s what I would do.

• From the L&W Capital Market Group’s Words of Wisdom blog, the pros and cons of repeating old risk factors from a 10-K in a subsequent 10-Q.  I’m on the side of just including new ones.

Some interesting legal reads for the week of February 3, 2014:

• The SEC issued transitional guidance for Rule 506 offerings commenced before the effective date of the new rules permitting general solicitation.  Here is a summary from Securities News Watch.

• Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Regulation recaps the House subcommittee hearings on the complexity of complying with the crowdfunding regulations as implemented.

• From the Words of Wisdom Blog by the L&W Capital Markets Group, this summary of the current state of finder regulations (broker-dealer).

• Orly Lobel presents an argument against using non-competes in the Wall Street Journal’s “The Accelerator” blog.

 

Starting now, I’m introducing a new (hopefully weekly) feature of this blog, where I provide a few links to some outside articles and blog posts that I found interesting.  Here goes:

• Announcements of acquisitions of public companies lead to near-automatic shareholder lawsuits.
• An account of (apparently) the first Regulation D offering using general solicitation under the new rules.
• The SEC issued a report mandated by the JOBS Act on disclosure requirements under Regulation S-K, which applies to public company filings under the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
• A useful reminder that Form Ds, the form filed to report private offerings conducted under Regulation D, are publicly available when filed with the SEC.