Editorial Team
Eric Gouvin, Western New England College School of Law
Eric Gouvin is Professor of Law and formerly the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Western New England College School of Law in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 2002, Professor Gouvin founded the law school’s Small Business Clinic, which provides pro bono legal and business consulting services to low-income entrepreneurs in western Massachusetts. In 2005, he established the Law and Business Center for Advancing Entrepreneurship as a joint venture with the School of Business at Western New England College. The Law and Business Center provides educational events such as speaker series, conferences, and workshops of interest to entrepreneurs, policymakers, and educators.
Prior to joining the faculty at Western New England, Professor Gouvin practiced corporate, banking, and commercial law in a large firm in Portland, Maine. He handled matters for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small, closely-held concerns. His academic writings explore the intersection of corporate law and banking law in both domestic and international settings. He is a co-author of the treatises Blumberg on Corporate Groups and The Law of Corporate Groups: Jurisdiction, Practice and Procedure. In addition, he has published numerous law review articles and several lessons on corporate law for the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) library. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, a master’s degree from Harvard University, and two law degrees from Boston University.
At Western New England, Professor Gouvin teaches courses on Business Planning, Business Organizations, Secured Transactions, and the Regulation of Financial Services. He has regularly taught Business Organizations at the University of Connecticut School of Law and has taught courses in Comparative Corporate Law at the University of Paris X (Nanterre) and at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania.
Professor Gouvin also has a strong interest in community economic development and entrepreneurship, serving on the advisory boards for the Scibelli Enterprise Center in Springfield, Massachusetts and the Entrepreneurial Initiative of the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation in West Springfield, Massachusetts. An active member of the American Bar Association, Professor Gouvin has co-chaired the Business Law Education Committee of the Business Law Section and chaired the Adjunct Faculty Committee of the Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
Praveen Kosuri, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Praveen Kosuri is Practice Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As one of the first transactional legal clinics, established in 1982, the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic provides pro bono transactional legal services to Philadelphia entrepreneurs.
Prior to joining the Penn Law faculty two years ago, Professor Kosuri taught at the University of Chicago Law School where he was the Assistant Director of the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship. With a unique background in law, business, and public interest, Professor Kosuri brings a multidisciplinary approach to his work. As a former investment banker with an M.B.A., he is versed in all forms of capital-raising as well as transacting mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures for Fortune 500 companies. In addition, his subsequent experience representing businesses as a corporate lawyer and commercial litigator allowed him to apply an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to solving his clients’ problems. This same approach is the one he instills in his students.
Professor Kosuri has taught courses in Entrepreneurship and the Law, Negotiation, and Trial Advocacy. He also was an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Professor Kosuri began his career as a Cook County Public Defender. Professor Kosuri graduated from Duke University, Washington University in St. Louis for law school, and the University of Chicago for business school.
Lisa Lesage, Lewis and Clark Law School
Lisa LeSage is Associate Dean and Director of business law programs at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. She is the founder of the law school’s Small Business Legal Clinic and teaches a trial practice course. In addition to her teaching and program administration duties, she also oversees the law school’s four business law practical skills programs, including the Community Development Law Center Practicum and Clinical Internship Seminars: Corporate Counsel/IP and Center for Technology, Entrepreneurship and Law. She also has been awarded a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship in law in Santiago, Chile for the 2010 academic year.
Prior to joining the law school, she had an extensive complex civil litigation practice in state and federal courts, including civil racketeering, civil rights, and employment cases. Dean LeSage has held several leadership positions and participates on numerous boards, including the statewide Access to Justice Committee, former Vice President of the Oregon State Bar, and a Past President of the Oregon Law Foundation. She has spoken around the country on issues related to access to justice, business law, clinical education, and pro bono. She is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court, United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, United States District Court for the District of Oregon, and the Oregon State Bar.
Tony Luppino, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
Anthony (Tony) Luppino is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Graduate Tax Law Program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law. He also is an affiliated faculty member with the UMKC Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Since joining the law school faculty on a full-time basis in 2001, Professor Luppino has been involved in the founding and ongoing supervision of the UMKC Entrepreneurial Legal Services Clinic, which provides pro bono legal services to low-income entrepreneurs and innovators in the Greater Kansas City area. As an outgrowth of his 2004-2005 participation in the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurial Faculty Scholars Program, involving faculty from four Kansas City area institutions and multiple disciplines, he has published articles on multidisciplinary practice and interdisciplinary education in entrepreneurship and co-designed related courses.
Prior to joining the full-time faculty at UMKC, Professor Luppino practiced law for approximately nineteen years with firms in Boston and Kansas City. His practice included a wide variety of planning and transactional work across multiple disciplines, including business organizations, taxation, securities, trusts and estates, real estate, and intellectual property law. He also taught Partnership Taxation as an Adjunct Professor at the UMKC School of Law from 1994 through 2000 and has been a frequent speaker and draftsman of written materials on business law and taxation matters for continuing legal education and other professional seminars.
At UMKC, Professor Luppino teaches courses in Business Organizations, Business Planning, Partnership Taxation, and Advanced Partnership Taxation, and has taught Securities Regulation. In addition, he has co-designed and co-teaches a course in Entrepreneurial Lawyering: Solo and Small Law Firm Practice, an interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation course involving faculty and students from UMKC’s business, engineering, and law schools, and, starting in the Fall of 2009, an interdisciplinary business-law course on the Legal Contexts of Real Estate Decision-Making. He also regularly guest lectures on legal issues to students in business, engineering, and entrepreneurship classes at UMKC, Rockhurst University, and the University of Kansas.
Helen Scott, New York University School of Law
Helen Scott is Professor of Law and the founder and Co-Director of the Jacobson Leadership Program in Law and Business at the New York University School of Law. In that capacity, she has participated in the development of innovative Law and Business courses, including Investing in Microfinance and Professional Responsibility in Law and Business. The Program also coordinates programming with the Stern School of Business, including the JD/MBA Program. Professor Scott oversees the competitive Leadership Scholars program, and runs the capstone seminar for the Program, Law, and Business Projects. She has been a member of the NYU School of Law faculty since 1982 and teaches a wide variety of business law courses, including the basic Contracts and Corporations courses.
From 1999-2004, Professor Scott co-chaired the Listing and Hearing Review Council of the NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc., an independent advisory committee to the Board of Directors, with primary responsibility for formulating and recommending corporate governance and quantitative listing standards for that market. Professor Scott speaks regularly on corporate governance topics. In 1997, Professor Scott received the Legal Advocate of the Year award from the U.S. Small Business Administration in recognition of her participation in the development of the Angel Capital Electronic Network (ACE-Net) project to increase financing available to early-stage entrepreneurial enterprises. Before joining the law faculty, Professor Scott practiced law in Washington D.C. and New York.
Laura L. Hollis, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame
Laura L. Hollis is the Director of the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. She is an attorney, educator, administrator and writer whose expertise is in entrepreneurship and public policy, technology commercialization, economic development, and general business law.
A native of Champaign, Illinois, Professor Hollis received both her bachelor's degree in English and her law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Immediately following her graduation from law school, she practiced law with Meyer Capel Law Offices in Champaign, Illinois, concentrating on general litigation and corporate intellectual property. Thereafter she served as General Counsel and Director of International Affairs for Copyright Management, Inc. in Nashville, Tennessee, handling legal issues in international copyright administration and licensing for writers and publishers in the music industry. Hollis was a freelance writer for The Detroit News and HOUR Detroit Magazine, and a frequent public speaker. She also ran her own communications consulting company, Vox Angelis, LLC.
Hollis has spent nineteen years teaching law at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and has published numerous articles in law reviews and legal journals. She was a tenured Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Michigan State University. During Laura Hollis’s tenure at the University of Illinois from 2000 to 2010, she taught business law, entrepreneurship and public policy to engineering and business undergraduate students. As Program Director of the Technology Entrepreneur Center in the College of Engineering, she helped launch and administer TEC’s entrepreneurship curriculum and related programs. She was also instrumental in the creation and development of the Illinois’ i-emerging technology showcases on its Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses in 2001 and 2002. From 2005 through 2010, Hollis enjoyed a joint appointment in Illinois’ College of Business as Associate Director for the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Clinical Professor of Business Administration. In that capacity, Professor Hollis was responsible for curriculum and other program development, including a cross-campus undergraduate minor in entrepreneurship, and courses, seminars and workshops for University of Illinois faculty, students and staff.
Esther Barron, Northwestern University School of Law
Esther Barron is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Small Business Opportunities Center at Northwestern University School of Law. The SBOC provides transactional legal services to for profit and not for profit ventures in the Chicagoland area. The SBOC works closely with faculty and students from the University’s engineering, medical, and graduate business schools, and enrolls a large number of law students seeking the combined JD-MBA degree.
In additional to her clinical work, she teaches other courses, including Entrepreneurship Law and Venture Capital. She also oversees the Law School’s Structuring Transactions program, which is a series of practical courses focused on specific areas of transactional law.
Prior to joining Northwestern Law School’s faculty, she practiced at Goldberg Kohn in Chicago in its commercial finance department. She represented lenders and other financial institutions in middle market debt transactions. In 2005, she also co-founded a start-up handbag company, Elezar, LLC, targeting high-end boutiques and department stores. Elezar bags are currently sold throughout the country and have been featured in many national magazines and is a brand carried by several celebrities.
Professor Barron graduated Cum Laude from Brandeis University and received her JD from Northwestern University School of Law.
Previous Editors
Thomas Morsch, Northwestern University School of Law
Thomas Morsch is founding Director of the Small Business Opportunity Center (SBOC) at Northwestern University Law School. He served in that capacity from the inception of the program in 1998 until 2008 when he was named Emeritus Director. Prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern, he was a senior partner and member of the Executive Committee at Sidley Austin LLP, a multi-national law firm headquartered in Chicago.
The program at Northwestern expanded over his ten-year tenure to include high-demand courses in Entrepreneurship Law and Social Enterprise, seven seminars on “structuring transactions,” and a year-round clinical program in which law students provide hands-on legal assistance to entrepreneurs, small business owners, and nonprofit organizations.
The SBOC works closely with faculty and students from the University’s engineering, medical, and graduate business schools, and enrolls a large number of law students seeking the combined JD-MBA degree.
In addition to his work at the law school, Professor Morsch has been an active member of the Chicago legal community serving as President of the Chicago Bar Foundation, Public Interest Law Initiative, and Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law. He has received lifetime achievement and equivalent awards from numerous organizations including the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, Northwestern University Law School, Loyola University School of Law, Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois, the Anti-Defamation League, and Sidley Austin LLP.
