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2025 Winter - CML4107D - Studies in Business Law (Class number: 8358)

Law for Start-Ups


Professor(s) : Douglas Sarro
Language : English
Units : 3
Level : Upper year

Class Schedule

TermActivityDay
2025 Winter
(2025-01-27 - 2025-04-07)
SEMMon 09:00 - 10:50
2025 Winter
(2025-01-27 - 2025-04-07)
SEMWed 09:00 - 10:50

Description:

Law can raise considerable challenges for start-up companies and their advisors. This course looks at some of these challenges and the options available to navigate them. Topics to be covered include forming a start-up and designing contractual relationships among founders and with employees and outside investors. In working through these topics, we will touch on aspects of corporate, securities, tax, employment, and other areas of law. We will also consider ethical issues that might be faced by lawyers advising start-ups, and how professional conduct rules address them.

Just as law raises challenges for start-ups, so too do start-ups raise challenges for law. Many have called for law reform to make it easier for start-ups to raise capital and bring innovative products and services to market. But as recent fraud and other scandals involving start-ups and other technology companies illustrate, start-ups and innovations can create social harms as well as social benefits. As such, throughout the course, we will consider diverse perspectives on the complicated relationship between law, innovation, and society.

Teaching Method

Lecture

Materials Used:

Bryce C Tingle, Start-up and Growth Companies in Canada: A Guide to Legal and Business Practice, 3rd ed (Student Edition) (Toronto: LexisNexis, 2018)

Method of Evaluation

Other Type of Evaluation:

80% take-home exam
20% group presentation

Final Exams:

Exam type Take-home

Exam duration

Six hours

Examplify Settings

None