Meet Professor Da Lin
We invited our business law faculty to share their thoughts about the business law curriculum at Richmond Law. This post features Professor Da Lin, who teaches and writes about corporate governance, securities regulation, and financial regulation. Before coming to Richmond, Professor Lin taught as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where she was a recipient of the HLS Student Government Teaching and Advising Award and the Women’s Law Association’s “Shatter the Ceiling” Award for Excellence in Mentorship. Professor Lin received her A.B. and S.M. in applied mathematics from Harvard University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. After law school, she clerked for Judge R. Lanier Anderson III on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced at King & Spalding LLP. Before law school, she worked as a research analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
She will teach a four-credit Business Associations course as well as Securities Regulation in the spring.
Q: If a student isn’t sure if they want to pursue business law, but they want to learn more about it, which courses should they start with?
A: Business Associations and Federal Income Tax are foundational courses for any student interested in exploring business law. Business Associations provides the necessary background for most advanced level business law courses, like Mergers & Acquisitions and Securities Regulation, and tax permeates nearly all aspects of transactional decision-making. For students who are interested in learning more about basic financial concepts, I’d recommend the winter term Introduction to Business course.
Q: If a student is really interested in pursuing business law, which courses would you advise them to take?
A: The basic courses stay the same. For advanced courses, it depends on what type of business law the student wants to pursue. The practice of “corporate lawyers” varies substantially, so it’s difficult to give strong guidance about what courses to take beyond the foundational ones. For example, students who are thinking about working with large public companies may want more exposure to corporate finance, securities regulation, and mergers & acquisitions. Students thinking about eventually working in-house will benefit from exposure to advanced tax, contracts, and commercial law courses. I’d encourage students who are unsure of what are the best courses for their career goals to reach out to professors who teach in the business law curriculum to discuss more individualized course plans.
Q: What skills or experiential courses in the business law area do you recommend?
A: It again depends on what type of business law the student wants to pursue. Contract drafting is valuable for most transactional practices, and the in-house clinical placements, the intellectual property & transactional law clinic, and the start-up accelerator practicum offer wonderful opportunities to gain experience in advising companies on various business decisions.