Bite-Sized Business Law
Looking for the latest in legal business news?
Get a breakdown of the top stories in business law from industry leaders on the front lines with Bite-Sized Business Law. Host Amy Martella takes a closer look at the latest corporate happenings through interviews with the attorneys, legal experts, public figures, and scholars behind the news to distill business law’s biggest stories into bite-sized portions.
This is your chance to go further into the world of business law and stay up to date with legal cases and industry trends.
Corporations impact us all, leading changes that extend far beyond business to shape the economy, public policy, technology, and beyond. Looking at the big picture, Amy discusses not only the underlying issues in business ethics and legal cases leading the biggest stories but also sparks thought-provoking discussions on where the law should be headed.
Amy is the Executive Director of the Corporate Law Center at Fordham University School of Law. Her background ranges from big law to government to tech startups, allowing her to offer an insider’s perspective of the issues that shape corporate actions, large and small. Covering crypto regulation to securities fraud, AI’s impact to Elon Musk’s pay package, Bite-Sized Business Law covers it all with guests of varying viewpoints to provide the nuanced analysis needed to tackle complex problems.
Whether you're looking for the latest in legal insight on intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, business ethics or legal cases in the business law world, you’ll find it here. Enjoying a thoughtful perspective on the news stories of the moment, Bite-Sized Business Law examines big issues and delivers them in small doses.
Bite-Sized Business Law is a project by the Corporate Law Center at Fordham Law. The Center serves as a hub for scholars, professionals, policymakers, and students to engage in the study, discussion, and debate of current issues in corporate law. The Center focuses on aspects of corporate law, corporate compliance, antitrust law, and securities regulation. Through initiatives like the Mergers and Acquisitions seminar and the Securities Litigation and Arbitration Clinic, students actively engage in real-world research and cases, bridging the gap between classroom learning and practical application in the legal field.
Bite-Sized Business Law
What Can We Learn from Ancient Business Organizations?
Business structures may seem like a modern invention, but their roots stretch back to ancient civilizations. In this episode, we explore the origins of trade and commerce with Barry Hawk, whose latest book, Family, Partnerships and Companies: From Assur to Amsterdam, uncovers how early societies shaped the way we do business today. In addition to being an author, Barry has had a long and successful career as an antitrust lawyer: he was a partner at Skadden for two decades, worked as the head of EU and International Antitrust Practice, and served as the former director of the Fordham Competition Law Institute. In our conversation, Barry outlines the nine pre-industrialized societies that he focuses on in his book and what we can learn from the way in which they conducted business. He unpacks theories on hunter-gatherer trading, Italy’s fascinating history of business, the role of the English and the Dutch in advancing joint stock companies, and what these societies can teach us about our modern economy. To hear the full scope of today’s conversation with Barry Hawk on the history of business, be sure to tune in!
Key Points From This Episode:
- The inspiration behind Barry’s new book Family, Partnerships and Companies.
- An overview of what ancient business organizations would have looked like.
- The type of partnerships that were formed and why families were often relied upon.
- How environment and resources shaped hunter-gatherer behavior and trade.
- What historical evidence reveals about Mesopotamian society and their economy.
- Ways that ancient Greek and Egyptian societies are misunderstood.
- Why we look to Rome as the birthplace of business organizations.
- The history of joint stock companies and the rise of global trade.
- Why other societies didn’t follow the joint stock companies model.
- How understanding ancient business models can help us analyze modern society.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Barry Hawk on LinkedIn
Family, Partnerships and Companies
‘Family, Partnerships and Companies’ Abstract
Fordham University School of Law Corporate Law Center