Features
Professor Paolo Saguato Takes a New Approach to Teaching Business Law in His Forthcoming Casebook
Scalia Law Professor Paolo Saguato and his co-author Professor Cathy Hwang (UVA Law) recently put the finishing touches on a business law casebook that seeks to connect and engage with the current generation of law students. After teaching business associations for several years, Professors Saguato and Hwang recognized that they could better connect with and train their students if they used more relatable cases. Their resulting casebook, available September 18, does just that — offering cases that any student, regardless of their background, can relate to and get excited about.
The authors spent three years on the project, part of which involved consulting a large group of research assistants on the cases that would appeal most to them and their classmates. The new casebook’s range of material shows that the work paid off with cases on Jay-Z, music licensing deals, migrant workers, bungee-jumping and skiing accidents, acquisitions made by billionaire investors, shareholder suits to force corporate social responsibility, and more. The casebook will also help students pickup practical skills, like how to look up information on the SEC’s database and how to write a professional transaction email.
Professor Saguato summed the book up by saying, “The book is meant to introduce students from all backgrounds to business law and its concepts, and to show how ubiquitous it is — Business law is everywhere and it is cool!”
Hwang received her JD from the University of Chicago Law School and her BA in economics and international relations from Pomona College.
Both professors have produced well-received scholarship and been recognized for their success teaching law students. Professor Saguato has been published in the Yale Journal on Regulation; the Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance; the Journal of Corporate Law Studies; and the Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation. Professor Saguato was also awarded the London School of Economics Class Teacher Award, when he taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2016. Since his arrival at Scalia Law, he’s been shortlisted every year for the University’s highest teaching award. You can learn more about Professor Hwang in UVA’s press release.
Professor Saguato earned a BA (Laurea in Scienze Giuridiche) and a JD (Laurea Magistrale in Giurisprudenza) summa cum laude at the University of Genoa (Italy) and a PhD in Private, Business, and International Law at the same university. In addition, he holds a LLM from Yale Law School, which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar.