
Mission
The mission of the Business Law Section is to foster the highest quality of professionalism and practice in business law and to enhance the legislative and regulatory environment for conducting business in Michigan. To fulfill this mission, the Section shall: (1) expand the resources of business lawyers by providing educational, networking and mentoring opportunities; (2) review and promote improvements to Michigan's business legislation and regulations; and (3) provide a forum to facilitate service and commitment and to promote ethical conduct and collegiality within the practice.
Become Active in the Section
It is easy to become active in the Business Law Section. As is true with many volunteer organizations, the time and effort put into the Section by its officers, Council members, Committee chairs, and other active members directly correlates to the viability of the Section and its worth to all Section members. Volunteer Today
Beverly Hills Resident Marguerite Donahue is the 2024 Recipient of the Stephen H. Schulman Outstanding Business Lawyer Award
Marguerite Donahue, a corporate transactional attorney practicing law with Taft Detroit, has been named the recipient of the 18th Annual Stephen H. Schulman Outstanding Business Lawyer Award by the State Bar of Michigan’s Business Law Section.
This prestigious award honors Michigan business lawyers who consistently exemplify the characteristics the Business Law Section seeks to foster and facilitate: the highest quality of professionalism, the highest quality of practice, and an unwavering dedication to service, ethical conduct, and collegiality within the practice of law.
A Beverly Hills resident, Donahue’s practice includes mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, private equity and more. During her career, Donahue has managed a variety of transactions, including asset sales, stock and membership interest sales, public and private securities offerings, exchange offers and reorganizations. At Taft, she is a member of the firm’s Venture Capital and Emerging Companies practice group. Before that she was a shareholder with Seyburn Kahn and an associate with Dykema. Throughout her distinguished career, Donahue has counseled a wide range of corporate clients from small businesses to mid-sized and large organizations in a variety of industries.
Donahue joins other experienced and accomplished business law attorneys who received the Schulman Award, including many leading business law attorneys in Michigan she has closely worked with. She was taught by Professor Schulman at Wayne State Law School and remembers him as knowledgeable and engaging.
“He was very immersed in corporate law and was great with students,” Donahue said. “He was really the godfather of business law in the state. Many firms hired him as a consultant. To be (the recipient) of an award in his name and with so many other influential business lawyers is truly an honor for which I am grateful.”
Upon joining the Section in the late 1990s, Donahue quickly became immersed in leadership positions. She first served as the Section’s liaison with the Institute of Continuing Legal Education (ICLE) and became a Section council member. She served in various officer positions before becoming Chair of the Section from 2012-13. Her service to the Section has included service on various committees, including Strategic Planning and the Ad Hoc Committee on Legal Opinions in Business Transactions, which issued a widely referenced report on state law matters affecting legal opinions delivered in business transactions.
Section membership has been an important part of Donahue’s career, not just for the connections and shared knowledge, but because it has helped keep her “in the know” on state and national legal developments. For example, the Section’s collective involvement in the Corporate Transparency Act has been important to preparing her for counseling clients on this important new law which mandates new disclosures by the vast majority of corporations and limited liability companies.
“I’ve been able to learn about potential new laws before enactment, which is extremely helpful for my practice,” Donahue said. “It’s hard to keep up with all the legal changes that impact your clients and your firm just from a computer screen. Having access to information shared with the Section and its members is important. It has made me a better lawyer.”
For example, the perspectives of Donahue and other Section members on business law has often been relied upon by justices of the Michigan State Supreme Court after the court’s invitations to the Section to file amicus briefs in important cases of first impression . “Even in cases where the Supreme Court didn’t adopt the Section’s positions, the Justices always carefully considered them,” she said.
Donahue has been honored as a Super Lawyer for the better part of the last 25 years and is former recipient of the Wayne State University Women’s Alumni Association Service Award. She earned her B.A. in Economics from Wayne State University and her J.D. from Wayne State University Law School.
Donahue will be introduced at the Schulman Award Ceremony, held in conjunction with the Section’s annual meeting on September 20 in Grand Rapids by Julia Dale, Director of Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency, who is also a former Chair of the Business Law Section.
The Business Law Section established the Stephen H. Schulman Outstanding Business Lawyer Award in 2006, to be presented annually. Past recipients of the Schulman Award include Cy Moscow, Martin Oetting, Hugh Makens, and Jim Bruno in 2006; Charlie McCallum and Verne Hampton in 2007; Ann Baker in 2008; Justin Klimko in 2009; Alex DeYonker in 2010; Jim Cambridge in 2011; Jeff Ammon in 2012; Dan Minkus in 2013; Diane Akers in 2014; Larry Schultz in 2015; Timothy Damschroder in 2016; John Trentacosta in 2017; Dee Dee Fuller in 2018; Eric Lark in 2019; Douglas Toering in 2021; Mark High in 2022 and Michael Khoury in 2023. (There was no recipient in 2020 because of COVID-19).
About Professor Stephen H. Schulman:
Professor Schulman had a significant impact on the lives and careers of thousands of future attorneys during his tenure at Wayne State University Law School. There, he taught courses on corporations, business planning, administrative law, and more. In addition to receiving the Donald H. Gordon Award for Excellence in Teaching, his students selected him multiple times as the school’s Professor of the Year. Schulman served as faculty advisor and regular contributor to The Wayne Law Review for several decades and was co-reporter for the Business Law Section’s Subcommittee on the Revision of the Michigan Business Corporation Act. Schulman was also instrumental in drafting much of Michigan’s corporate law that is still in place today. Schulman passed away in 2000.
MAC Cup M&A Negotiating Tournament
It’s kick-off time for the second season of our MAC Cup M&A negotiating tournament, with more students, more negotiations, and more awards! We’ve expanded eligibility, to include Canadian as well as US JD candidates. We’ll have qualifying rounds at the end of October/early November, and then (like last year) semi-finals and finals in January, culminating at our Laguna stand-alone meeting. Applications will be accepted Sept. 3 – 13. .
- Please encourage your summer associates to participate! You also should reach out to your favorite law schools to encourage them to field a team and enhance (or defend) their reputation.
- You can point students to the new MAC Cup website – here – where they’ll find materials from last year’s competition and information on this year’s competition, and can sign up for updates and application materials.
- If you’re interested in judging or coaching a team, or want to help with the competition, please contact themaccup@mwe.com
- More information is available at the MAC Cup website or by e-mailing the MAC Cup Subcommittee at themaccup@mwe.com
- Thank you to our MAC Cup II sponsors (to-date): Sullivan & Cromwell, Hotshot, Dexterity, McDermott Will & Emery, and Morrison & Foerster. Sponsorship opportunities (see options here) are still available – contact Ariel Veytsman aveytsman@mwe.com
If you’re e-mailing potential student participants, you can send them a note along the lines of the following:
JD students interested in M&A,
The ABA Business Law Section’s M&A Committee is kicking off the second season of its MAC Cup M&A negotiating tournament. Last season, students from 8 schools competed (virtually and in-person) in mock negotiations of a business acquisition, with the semi-final and final rounds occurring in-person at the M&A Committee’s meeting in Laguna Beach, California (with travel costs covered by the M&A Committee) and the final teams receiving scholarship awards along with their trophies.
This season the competition is expanding to include qualifying rounds in the fall, providing more opportunities for you to participate and gain recognition. Contestants will get access to professional M&A training materials as well as practical M&A drafting and negotiation experience. Contestants also will get the opportunity to interact with the M&A lawyers and other professionals in the M&A Committee, a leg-up on issues and skills when you start working and (for winners) an expense-paid trip to Laguna and other prizes.
· The competition is open to JD candidates from US and Canadian law schools.
· Applications will be accepted Sept. 3 – 13. Qualifying rounds will be held in late October/early November, with semi-finals and finals in January 2025.
· More information is available at the M&A Committee’s MAC Cup website – here – where you can sign up for updates and application materials, and access materials from last year’s competition.
We encourage you to consider this opportunity.
Michigan’s “New Expanded” Receivership Act Webinar
Set forth is a link to the October 23rd webinar on the new expanded Michigan Receivership Act enacted and immediately effective on October 15, 2020. The link contains the audio presentation and the written materials utilized for the presentation. We hope that they will provide you with resource materials to better understand the new recently enacted legislation.
Updates on Michigan Uniform Securities Act (MUSA) Rule-Making
The Michigan Uniform Securities Act (2002), Public Act 551 of 2008, MCL 451.2101 et seq. (“MUSA”) became effective on October 1, 2009, and thereby superseded the 1964 version of this largely uniform state law. On September 1, 2016, the Corporations, Securities, and Commercial Licensing Bureau (“Bureau”) of the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (“LARA”) published for public comment a new rule set (“Proposed Rules”). These Proposed Rules would implement various regulatory changes made by the new MUSA. If adopted, the Proposed Rules will replace six transition orders that implemented a limited number of the statutory changes made by the new MUSA. The Proposed Rules would make a significant number of further changes in Michigan’s regulation of securities, including important public policy changes directly impacting small business capital formation, securities offerings, private funds, securities brokerage, and investment advisory services. For more information, please see the following resources: