Law for Entrepreneurs is an up-to-date textbook that covers the broad spectrum of legal issues that entrepreneurs must understand when starting and running a business. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style.
After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Law for Entrepreneurs provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to contracts, product liability, intellectual property, insurance, agency law, partnerships, corporations, and employment law. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy that entrepreneurs need to talk in an educated way to customers, suppliers, employees, creditors, shareholders, government regulators and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.
Type of Material:
Open (Access) Textbook
Recommended Uses:
Individual (in class and/or self-paced)
Technical Requirements:
Firefox ver 85.0.1
Adobe reader ver 21.001.20135
Microsoft 365 ver 16.0.13530.20440
Identify Major Learning Goals:
Students will learn from an up-to-date textbook that covers the broad spectrum of legal issues that entrepreneurs must understand when starting and running a business.
Students will relate law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style.
Target Student Population:
Business law students in major-level courses
Entrepreneurs students in major-level courses
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic business information
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
This is available either online or in a PDF format which can be downloaded.
Learning objectives are provided at the beginning of every chapter.
Key takeaways, exercises, and self-tests are provided.
The reference material is comprehensive and thorough.
The chapters are fairly broad, often appearing to rehash information generally covered in most standard business law texts, whilst several are surprisingly deep in coverage.
Concerns:
This was originally released in 2012, which means that some of the content may or may not be the most recent information available depending on case law since 2012.
Generally, a book for entrepreneurs usually includes a chapter on real property, since many entrepreneurs start with real estate investment. Mayer includes a chapter on mortgages, mechanics' liens, and other filings, but no real property per se, i.e. an entire chapter to personal property, but not to real property.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The book begins with common terms and definitions and proceeds through examples, definitions, and history
The book is developed around American concepts which would be familiar to readers in the USA This includes civil disobedience, different schools of legal thought, current and historical, basic concepts, and categories, state courts, and other areas such as the difference between civil and criminal cases.
Self-tests, exercises, and answers to the self-tests are available in the chapter
The bar across the bottom of the book provides easy access to the table of contents, the previous chapter, and the next chapter.
With the exception of bringing in more recent cases, there will be no need for numerous changes to be made throughout the year.
The book is adequately phrased, with an appropriate amount of legalese and plain grammar to be easily understood by most undergraduates. Legal terminology is properly explained.
Much of the material is very basic and easy to understand, although some topics are quite in-depth, generally, the book is fairly a quick read, with the substantial chapters.
Concerns:
The ordering of the presented materials could be better. For example, product liability is grounded in torts but is placed after the chapters on contracts (9 of them). Insurance is before the chapters on agency but should be after.
Sole proprietorships are not truly discussed, and the chapters on corporations are split up with a chapter on securities regulation.
The chapter on personal property is just added on at the end but would have been better found earlier, or at least next to the one on intellectual property.
This was developed using the United States so it may not be of interest outside of the USA. For people wanting to get immediately into laws pertaining to entrepreneurship, the introductory aspects of the book may seem unnecessary.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Background information provided provides a foundation for understanding what applies in entrepreneurial environments.
A sample case is provided with discussions about laws and outcomes, and questions about the case are included.
Notes to students are interjected to provide historical and interpretive information.
The text looks good and is very constant in the navigation, display, and colors.
The spacing in paragraphs is likewise consistent and appropriate.
The chapters are short and basic in coverage, with a good balance of legalese and English grammar; simple and understandable.
Concerns:
Readers need to be patient, business and more specifically entrepreneurship are part of the content but the background at the beginning is necessary for context and understanding.
Because this is a book, it is limited in engagement and interactive appeal.
However, the format of the book is readable and easy to follow.
Consistently written and laid out, instructors need to determine the background of their students before choosing this text, as the materials may be too repetitive for many students.
Creative Commons:
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