The Social Network and the Legal Environment of Business: An Opportunity for Student‐Centered Learning

• Date: 01 March 2013
• Author: Shelley McGill
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1722.2013.01114.x
• Published date: 01 March 2013

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 30, Issue 1, 45–97, Winter/Spring 2013

The Social Network and the Legal

Environment of Business:

An Opportunity for

Student-Centered Learning

Shelley McGill*

Cause its next. Cause we came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and

we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West and we took

to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is

what’s next.

Rob Lowe as Sam Seaborn1

I. Introduction

Aaron Sorkin has a passion for words—his signature movie and tele-

vision scripts are fast talking, jargon laced, word pictures that are in-

stantly recognizable.2The Social Network,3Sorkin’s 2011 Academy Award

∗Associate Professor, School of Business & Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University. An earlier ver-

sion of this article was designated a distinguished proceedings paper at the 2012 Academy

of Legal Studies in Business National Conference, 43 Acad. Legal Stud. in Bus Nat’l

Proc.__(2012), http://alsb.mobi/procedings/2012-alsb-national-proceedings.

1The West Wing: Galileo, Season 2, Episode 9 (NBC television broadcast Nov. 29, 2000). This

episode was written by Aaron Sorkin and Kevin Falls. Sam Seaborn is the fictional deputy press

secretary purportedly fashioned after George Stephanopoulos in the Clinton Administration

(1992–96).

2Aaron Sorkin is the 2011 Best Adapted Screen Play Academy Award Winner for the movie The

Social Network (Columbia Pictures 2010). Sorkin is also an Emmy Award Winning writer and

creator of the television series The West Wing (NBC television broadcasts 1999–2006).

3The Social Network (Columbia Pictures 2010). Movie clips and a free download

of the movie’s screenplay are available on the movie’s official Web site,http://www.

thesocialnetwork-movie.com/ (last visited Sept. 10, 2012). It is recommended that the reader

C2013 The Author

Journal of Legal Studies Education C2013 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

45

46 Vol. 30 / The Journal of Legal Studies Education

Winning4movie about the founding of Facebook, Inc.,5offers more than

just witty banter; it provides an ideal teaching platform for undergraduate

business law instructors. The movie’s reach extends well beyond intellectual

property law, presenting multiple business law and legal environment topics6

conveniently set in a student-friendly, reality-based, entrepreneurial context.

The movie’s story makes an ideal foundation for business law or legal envi-

ronment courses.

It can be a challenge to make a business school law course relevant and

engaging for the young undergraduate student who is not pursuing legal

studies.7Pedagogical scholarship encourages the convergence of managerial

watch the movie prior to reading this article. The screen play was adapted from Ben Mezrich,

The Accidental Billionaire: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius,

and Betrayal (2009).

4Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

and refers to the annual awards given by the academy to outstanding films, artists, producers and

technologists; also commonly referred to as the Oscars. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts

and Sciences, http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/index.html (last visited Sept. 11,

2012).

5Facebook, Inc., is a widely held company that operates a social communication platform

with a mission to make the world more open and connected. The business began as a

partnership, became a limited liability corporation (or LLC), a private corporation, and

then a public corporation; as of October 2012, the platform had one billion active monthly

users. Mark Zuckerberg is a founder and Facebook’s Chairman and CEO. About Facebook,

http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 (last visited Sept. 11, 2012).

The movie is a partially fictionalized version of real events.

6Undergraduate law courses in business programs are usually either “Business Law” or “Legal

Environment of Business” courses. Both survey a variety of legal topics with the latter typically

spending less time on contract law and more time on government regulation of business topics

such as employment discrimination and environmental law. The legal environment label is

not necessarily indicative of the more management contextual style that the name suggests.

Carol J. Miller & Susan J. Crain, Legal Environment v. Business Law Course: A Distinction Without

a Difference?,28J.Legal Stud. Educ. 149, 151–62, 199–203 (2011) (finding that variations in

course content were not always reflected in course name.). The label or name of the law course

is not important in the context of this article and the proposal for the use of The Social Network

as a course foundation will move either type of course to a more management contextual style.

The phrase “business law” is used throughout this article in a generic sense to refer to legal

topics relevant to business.

7Eric D. Yordy, Using Student Development Theory to Inform Our Curriculum and Pedagogy: A Response

to the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education,25J. Legal Stud. Educ.

51, 54–54, n.23 (2008) (advocating innovation in teaching theory and in determining course

content).

2013 / The Social Network and the Legal Environment of Business 47

and legal content within business school law courses.8The approach needed

for this type of course is very different from that of a law school course

where studying historic legal judgments is commonplace.9Business school

law professors search for relevant business cases and examples from their

student’s frame of reference and often supplement textbook material with

media clips, Internet videos, current news stories, as well as television and

movie examples.10 However, such examples and clips are usually topic specific

and new examples need to be introduced with every subject matter change.11

Since a typical business law course will survey a wide range of legal topics;12 a

multitude of different cases and examples are needed, each requiring factual

foundation and student familiarity.

This article recommends teaching law to undergraduate business stu-

dents through the lens of one current multidimensional business story al-

ready familiar to most undergraduate students: the founding and rise of

8Sean P. Melvin, Case Study of a Coffee War: Using the Starbucks v. Charbucks Dispute to TeachTrade-

mark Dilution, Business Ethics and the Strategic Value of Legal Acumen, 29 J. Legal Stud. Educ. 27,

44–45 (2012); Yordy, supra note 7, at 65. See generally Marc Lampe, A New Paradigm for the Teaching

of Business Law and Legal Environment Classes,23J. Legal Stud. Educ. 1 (2006); Anne Lawton,

Using a Management Driven Model to Teach Business Law,15J. Legal Stud. Educ. 211 (1997);

John Collins, Learning to Make Business Decisions in the Shadow of the Law,17J. Legal Stud. Educ.

118 (1999); Ross D. Petty & Richard P. Mandel, Putting Business into Business Law: The Integration

of Law and Business Strategy, 10 J. Legal Stud. Educ. 205 (1992). Recent academic scholarship

describes the need to integrate law into business strategy and competitive advantage theory. Con-

stance E. Bagley, What’s Law Got to Do With It? Integrating Law and Strategy, 47 Am. Bus. L.J. 587,

623–29 (2010) (proposing a new model for the integration using a societal context); Larry A.

DiMatteo, Strategic Contracting: Contract Law as a Source of Competitive Advantage, 47 Am.Bus.L.J.

727 (2010) (describing a variety of ways that contract law may be used strategically by business).

9Lampe, supra note 8, at 37.

10See Sandra K. Miller & Larry A. DiMatteo, Law in Context: Teaching Legal Studies Through the Lens

of Extra-Legal Sources,29J. Legal Stud. Educ. 155 (2012) (describing several movies that could

be used as extra-legal sources including The Help (Touchstone Pictures & Dream Works 2011)).

See, e.g., The Big Bang Theory: The Work Song Nanoluster, Series 2, Episode 18 (CBS television

broadcast Mar. 16, 2009) (describing the law of bailment).

11See, e.g., Pretty Woman (Touchstone Pictures 1990) (showing communication of acceptance

“without words” in bath tub negotiation of contract between Julia Roberts and Richard Geer;

movie may also be used when discussing legality of a contract—prostitution against public policy

in some jurisdictions).

12Miller & Crain, supra note 6, at 181–87 (discussing the usual topics covered in a business law

course and how those vary from a legal environment course). Legal topics in the movie include

contract law, tort law, intellectual property law, business associations, corporate governance,

securities law, employment law, agency law, privacy law, alternative dispute resolution, as well as

business ethics and legal processes and resources topics. See infra Appendix B.