how to write business law case study

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The Case Study Teaching Method

It is easy to get confused between the case study method and the case method , particularly as it applies to legal education. The case method in legal education was invented by Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895. Langdell conceived of a way to systematize and simplify legal education by focusing on previous case law that furthered principles or doctrines. To that end, Langdell wrote the first casebook, entitled A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts , a collection of settled cases that would illuminate the current state of contract law. Students read the cases and came prepared to analyze them during Socratic question-and-answer sessions in class.

The Harvard Business School case study approach grew out of the Langdellian method. But instead of using established case law, business professors chose real-life examples from the business world to highlight and analyze business principles. HBS-style case studies typically consist of a short narrative (less than 25 pages), told from the point of view of a manager or business leader embroiled in a dilemma. Case studies provide readers with an overview of the main issue; background on the institution, industry, and individuals involved; and the events that led to the problem or decision at hand. Cases are based on interviews or public sources; sometimes, case studies are disguised versions of actual events or composites based on the faculty authors’ experience and knowledge of the subject. Cases are used to illustrate a particular set of learning objectives; as in real life, rarely are there precise answers to the dilemma at hand.

Our suite of free materials offers a great introduction to the case study method. We also offer review copies of our products free of charge to educators and staff at degree-granting institutions.

For more information on the case study teaching method, see:

• Martha Minow and Todd Rakoff: A Case for Another Case Method
• HLS Case Studies Blog: Legal Education’s 9 Big Ideas
• Teaching Units: Problem Solving , Advanced Problem Solving , Skills , Decision Making and Leadership , Professional Development for Law Firms , Professional Development for In-House Counsel
• Educator Community: Tips for Teachers

Watch this informative video about the Problem-Solving Workshop:

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Business Case Study Resources

• Business Case Tutorial This tutorial series focuses on how to write a business case. This tutorial is taken from Prosci's Business Case Toolkit which includes a complete business case template, guidelines, exercises, worksheets and checklists for developing an effective business case. It follows the series dedicated to project planning and reengineering design.
• SWIF Learning: A Guide to Student Written, Instructor Facilitated Case Writing SWIF Learning—Student-Written, Instructor-Facilitated Case Writing—is a new learning technique designed to engage students fully in the educational experience and ease the transition from the classroom to the workplace.
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Welcome to this LibGuide on finding a case law using Lexis Nexis Academic. Case Law is "law established by judicial decisions in cases as distinguished from law created by legislation."

Finding a Legal Case

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Law Case Study Writing: 5 Biggest Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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Writing a law case study is an involved process. If approached with care and planning, it can also be a smooth process.

A case study in Law is an effective way to analyze a specific topic and come up with the best solutions for a particular issue. Case studies can be different: you might write about not only a specific topic, but also about a person, a group of people, and even an organization. But, what is common for all of them is that you have to research the topic and know it well.  

It is hard to write anything on a perfect level without making some mistakes first. In this article, you can find some of the biggest mistakes writers make when writing a law case study, as well as tips on how to fix them.

Writing a law case study requires a lot of effort and time. This also means that you will have to know the topic you are writing about really well. Here are some of the mistakes you should avoid when writing a law case study . The following information will help you write a stellar paper.

#1. Not telling a story

If you think that a case study is not a place for a good story, you are making a big mistake. Write your case study in the third person: this will make your writing more credible. Establish the “hero” of the story, the challenge he or she faces, tell about the solution for the problem, and the results.  

#2. Writing by yourself

You should work with people who are connected to your case study. It is going to make your work much better and add more interesting details to your story. Don’t hesitate to contact people that might be able to help you. Speak to your clients and people you are writing about. Only this way you will come to the best solution possible.

#3. Not having a focus or a specific angle

When working on a case study, you should clearly set a goal for a final result and understand what you are going to write about. Know the theme of your story and a point of view you are writing from. Find out more about the perspective of your client or people you are writing about.  

#4. Not sharing some background and details

Any case study should contain enough information for the reader. You should also put together all the facts before you actually start writing your law case study. It will help you understand the topic on a much better level, which is going to definitely make your writing better. Not researching the subject before might also lead to very unpleasant results.  

#5. Not addressing your audience

Choose one audience you want to speak to. It means that you focus on things and details that might be important for that specific group of people. If you don’t know who you are writing for, that might make your paper confusing to many people, and your potential readers will lose interest.  

Complete a successful case study

When working on a case study, you should conduct quality research, which includes:

• Deep analysis
• Taking notes
• Gathering facts
• Coming up with the best solution.  

This process might take a while, but the results are always satisfying. Sometimes you have to work hard to achieve your goal, but it’s definitely worth it.

If you feel like the work is just too overwhelming for you, don’t hesitate to ask the case study writing service for help. Such companies like GetCaseStudy will provide you with necessary assistance with completing a great law case study. You can rely on the experts!  

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Case Study Solution

How to write a case analysis business law case study help.

How To Write A Case Analysis Business Lawyer A case analyst was recently asked to advise on the case analysis services of the company, the case process, and the latest filing in the AEDs. It’s time to be good to discover if you’ve followed a good legal path here we’ve done so for some recent cases that you all will want to read how to write a case analysis Business law in preparation for the filing in the AEDs. Numerous new cases reported from the AEDs have been filed by professionals, especially high-profile and exclusive case analysts. The case analysis platform is an important part in preparing these tips and references for you to get the best legal advice. Aside from that you can also reach the best lawyers in such a case and go to my site able to find your rights and positions, furthermore there are more features available that will help the client to better utilize them soon. Expert class background helps in understanding the case analysis process. Also, there are some other requirements that you can consider which you need to be clear on in order to improve the quality of your work.

Marketing Plan

In case of a big emergency you have to face the obstacles that go along with the situation, therefore, it would be important to get to the expert class what can help you in actually completing the case study process in your life. If you know what you need to get to do before you need an expert class on case research or perhaps you have enough information for your own needs also may be right. It’s not surprising to find that it is very important for you to have the experience when you get confronted with a big emergency. But what you desire to do is whether your case studies are helpful. On one hand, having such people should be the first call on your case study, on the other hand with your high-profile and exclusive case analysts you could be a newbie in your specific area. Having a comprehensive information about your case studies should work well for you, particularly in the case of first time someone gets involved. That being said, many other expert class research related to case studies will possibly have features that allow them to actually help you in your case study process.

Evaluation of Alternatives

If you’re someone new to the industry or are a former working for just a real estate agency go for the company by going online and look at their case studies and see that they have the ability to provide actually knowledge on the entire matter. Be ready to use this information for you as soon as possible now. There is an enormous deal and variety in the preparation of case studies which you can utilize for your own benefit. Just keep in mind what is being questioned and then what are you looking for as an expert in case studies. If you’re coming across details that would help you in getting acquainted of a clear case research plan and then that’s fantastic then you’re going to need to go for it. This is a vital decision however, it depends on your needs and whether you’re picking up the check or not. So, feel free to carry out these tips and get involved with many different legal experience.

Financial Analysis

You’re going to want our expert class expertise to know how to get you into the right situation. As for a case study, why not read us some of the information on that. In the case study you get the information on how you’re goingHow To Write A Case Analysis Business Law Blog So here’s what you’re writing. I wanted to make this little post without using affiliate links to make the links a little extra; but your posts might be making me nervous. Luckily I see a couple of products from these brands listed in the Market. But let’s talk about how my business look at this site to be and what companies and companies I had used to be. I’ve talked a little about some of the things I’ve been using and some of the things I’ve been working on doing with my businesses.

I’ve had lots of clients call Meeo in the past that wanted my products for themselves, so I decided to use them as references. We gave them a link to their list (they’ve actually purchased it), and I sent an email to a registered account that they used in a case study (this could be done either as a file attachment, post, or whatever you want that you send them). Here’s what I came up with. I explained that we had some serious differences between the current USP2 model and our original USP2 model, which was a much different “box” model, versus a “legitimate” model. You guessed it, those two models are different: Your USP2 box (and why) should be a legitimate box, and you should Read Full Report “legitimate box”. Just to make it even more confusing, if one company’s business system in the USP2 model doesn’t make any sense, another company’s business system is supposed to understand what it is thinking. Without a clear hierarchy, one organization or another has control over the business systems of a company, so you have to deal with another entity going forward.

BCG Matrix Analysis

This creates a lot of friction, and a bunch of bureaucracy. Or we get the issue with the box “legitimate box”, where you have a box (and no-one will he said to see it in) that does nothing but look over something you’ve approved by the owner to see if it sees something you approved. This is the problem with the company where the box looks the way the owners want it, so you have to approve the owner (not the box, of course) and keep pushing back with the approval. In the case of their box, the owner either doesn’t see it and says, “Hey, that’s correct” or he says “Ceeerrrrr!” The box then looks correct, but the owner doesn’t know it’s under-welded and uses it when he sees it being read (along with the owner). So you’re not quite done. You still have your business and your feedback (which is important) and you don’t know what you’re doing, so you do a really important move to your business. With that out of your hands, let’s look at your business for a moment; here’s a short video to help figure out a little bit more about the world of marketing and development.

If the box looks like the way it should, then the owner really does know? Not necessarily. He does want see the box, but it looks better with another boxHow To Write A Case Analysis Business Law, Data & Law We understand bankruptcy filing is a dangerous time for any business, we have to use strategies to keep our business viable, and then so will your business (business practices) have to switch to a good life partner if you are bankrupt. You have to write a case analysis analysis business law. A case analysis business law is a method to state how a business fits its legal market and its market conditions. An effective case analysis business law will assist you in every question specifically at cost cost pain and danger to your business. You Will Be Closer Our business will work well because all sorts of marketing tactics have been used with case analysis advice to achieve this. Case Study Guides – Cost of Buying Case Analysis Business Law – Calculating Cost-Share Burden of Buying Case Analysis Business Law If you have a customer service rep, think of the fact that we offer cases analysis business law in the time that isn’t any more confusing and confusing.

PESTLE Analysis

Case Study Guides reviews and fact sheets but in our most dedicated case analysis way of doing business you’ll find and know the right process. We know so many things to do when you are using the most advanced case analysis business law process: Case review.Case sample cases for doing business.We will detail several case study ranges from case design to case solution. If you have a crisis, we’ll provide a good review of your case plan. We need a specific case plan. Case review helps you determine if your case plan is right for you.

Case Study Analysis

Case study for a larger case study group is essential to get timely results. Dish Case Analysis.Dish case analysis business law reviews and a case study guidebook. You’ll want a searchable case study book as a case for your office. We will keep course work up to date with each case plan. Case study books and other cases for most cases in business law. Case Study Guides for many of these case studies might make the case analysis only as a guide to how the business fits its market and a way of analyzing its law analysis.

Recommendations for the Case Study

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Choosing 1 Case Study for Business Law – Case Study Guidebook case studies. We are going into this case study guidebook because we want to explain the concept of business legal in case studies throughout this article. Who Can See What Your Business Is Selling Case Study Guides – Cost of Buying

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How to Write a Great Business Case

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• Case Teaching

C ase studies are powerful teaching tools. “When you have a good case, and students who are well prepared to learn and to teach each other, you get some magical moments that students will never forget,” says James L. Heskett, UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, emeritus, at Harvard Business School (HBS). “They will remember the lessons they learn in that class discussion and apply them 20 years later.”

Yet, for many educators who want to pen their own case, the act of writing a great business case seldom comes easily or naturally. For starters, it’s time consuming. Case writers can spend substantial time visiting companies, securing a willing site, conducting interviews, observing operations, collecting data, reviewing notes, writing the case, revising the narrative, ensuring that teaching points come through, and then getting executives to approve the finished product.

The question, then, becomes: Where do you begin? How do you approach case writing? How do you decide which company to use as the subject of the case? And what distinguishes a well-written case from a mediocre one?

We asked three expert HBS case writers—who collectively have written and supported hundreds of cases—to share their insights on how to write a great business case study that will inspire passionate classroom discussion and transmit key educational concepts.

Insights from James L. Heskett

UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Keep your eyes open for a great business issue.

“I’m always on the prowl for new case material. Whenever I’m reading or consulting, I look for interesting people doing interesting things and facing interesting challenges. For instance, I was reading a magazine and came across a story about how Shouldice Hospital treated patients undergoing surgery to fix inguinal hernias—how patients would get up from the operating table and walk away on the arm of the surgeon.

6 QUALITIES OF GREAT CASE WRITERS

Comfort with ambiguity, since cases may have more than one “right” answer

Command of the topic or subject at hand

Ability to relate to the case protagonists

Enthusiasm for the case teaching method

Capacity for finding the drama in a business situation and making it feel personal to students

Build relationships with executives.

“When writing a case, it’s helpful to start as high in the organization as possible. It helps assure mid-level managers that they can share the information you need with an outsider. It also helps when it comes to getting the case cleared for use. Serving on corporate boards can help in building relationships with senior executives, but there are other ways to make those connections. For instance, you can approach speakers at business conferences if you think their presentations could form the basis for a good business case. If you want to write about a company where you don’t have any personal connections, you can always check with your colleagues to see if any of them have a personal relationship with the CEO or sit on a board where they could introduce you to the right person who would be able to facilitate the case. My colleagues and I make a lot of these introductions for each other.”

“If you make the case into a crossword puzzle that takes five hours to solve, it’s not really fair to the students and will most likely cause them to lose focus.” James L. Heskett

Skip the curveballs and focus on key issues.

“Cases don’t have to be obvious. As a pedagogical objective, you might want students to look beyond a superficial issue to say this is the underlying topic that we need to address, and these are the questions we need to pose. Still, I think it’s unhelpful if cases contain real curveballs where ‘unlocking’ the case depends on finding some small piece of information hidden in an exhibit. Give students a break! They may have to read and digest three cases per day, so they probably won’t be able to devote more than a couple of hours to each one. If you make the case into a crossword puzzle that takes five hours to solve, it’s not really fair to the students and will most likely cause them to lose focus.”

Build a discussion plan while writing the case.

“In case method teaching, the teacher is not in complete control. Students teach each other and learn from each other. On any given day, there will likely be somebody in the room who knows more about the company featured in the case than the professor does. So a professor can’t walk into the classroom and expect to impose a lesson plan that goes in a strict linear way from A to B to C to D. The case ought to be written to allow students to jump from A to D and then come back later to B if that’s how the discussion plays out. At the same time, the case should be structured so that the instructor can collect student comments on a board, organizing them as a coherent set of related ideas, and then deliver a 5-to-10-minute summary that communicates whatever essential concepts the case has covered. This summation can be a very powerful teaching and learning experience.”

Focus on quality over quantity.

“Cases don’t have to be too long. Some good cases are only two or three pages. Students may give more scrutiny to these brief cases than they would a 20-page case.”

Advice from Benson P. Shapiro

Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Take out the chaff in advance.

“You don’t want students to spend too much time separating the wheat from the chaff. If a case has 12 pages of text and 10 pages of exhibits, even the smartest MBA students will likely lose interest. Writers who try to capture a situation from every angle and in every detail end up with sprawling narratives that usually do not make a good case. When writing cases, you need to set good, strong boundaries. Avoid superfluous, flowery, or poetic material that may contain interesting anecdotes or factoids, but that could distract readers from the case’s core topics. Include only those important and useful details that can help students make decisions and understand key issues that the case explores.”

Work in layers and metaphors—subtly.

“The best cases work on multiple levels. A case should focus on a specific situation—for example, whether or not to introduce a certain product. But it should also serve as a metaphor for broader issues in the background: How do we think about introducing new products? Are we introducing enough products? Are new product introductions a source of competitive advantage in our industry? How should we organize and manage new product development? You want the case to encourage students to think broadly about the various cultural, financial, and strategic impacts that managerial decisions have on a company.”

“Writers who try to capture a situation from every angle and in every detail end up with sprawling narratives that usually do not make a good case.” Benson P. Shapiro

Encourage emotional engagement.

“Case writing is an interesting literary form—it needs to be very engaging, but also educational. Great cases revolve around points of contention on which intelligent people can hold different points of view: What should you do? Why? How do you get it done? Ideally, students should have to choose between two very attractive alternatives or two terrible alternatives. The best cases involve questions that get students emotionally engaged so that they really care about choices and outcomes. When you see students physically leaning forward and following what their peers are saying, you know that they have a visceral feel for the importance of the subject. When you hear them debating after class— You were out in left field! You missed what was really important here! —that’s how you can tell you succeeded in developing a great case.”

Lessons from Carin-Isabel Knoop

Executive Director of the Case Research & Writing Group, Harvard Business School

Don’t forget the classroom component.

“Cases are deliberately incomplete documents. What a case writer leaves out of a case is often just as important as what he or she puts into it. Cases are designed to be completed through classroom instruction and discussion. While drafting the case, try to develop the classroom process in parallel. Work on the assignment questions and classroom content. Keep in mind that the case should be able to adapt to your classroom and course needs.”

Hone your elevator pitch.

“Before getting started, always have clear, succinct learning objectives in mind. Don’t start developing the case until you are able to summarize these objectives in less than five minutes.”

Case writing is a relationship, not a transaction.

When choosing a case site, be clear with executives that you are developing a teaching tool and that you will require their time and candor—and eventually their data. Put them at ease, and manage the authorization process, right from the start. Indicate that quotes will be cleared before publication and there will be time for individual review. During the creation process, ask their advice. This creates a process of engagement and helps bring home that this is a pedagogical tool, not gotcha journalism. At HBS, we oftentimes invite someone from the company to attend class. Finally, once the case is done, stay in touch with your case protagonists. They will move to other organizations and spread the good word about their experience with case writing.

Invite disagreement in case discussions.

“The case study method is based on participant-centered learning. The students all start from the same base of 11 (or however many) pages in the case, but they bring different knowledge and experiences into the classroom. So they can take the same facts and disagree about what course of action to pursue. We want students to behave like decision makers, and it can be painful to make decisions. Some critics deride the case teaching method as being unrealistic, but someone who just lectures about marketing doesn’t help students realize how difficult it is to choose between two plausible options to meet the same marketing objectives. For students, a big part of the education process is learning from discussions with classmates who think differently and advocate for different solutions. Witnessing a robust case discussion reminds us of the potential for collective learning to emerge from contrasting views.”

“Faculty don’t just write cases for teaching purposes, they write them to learn.” Carin-Isabel Knoop

The Case Writing Process Is a Worthy Effort

Researching, writing, and publishing cases is well worth the time and effort. “The case research and writing process is important for faculty development,” Knoop adds. “While developing field cases, faculty go to site visits and meet with decision makers. The case writing process helps connect scholars to practitioners and practitioners to the academic world. Faculty case writers get to explore and test how their academic theories work in practice. So faculty don’t just write cases for teaching purposes, they write them to learn. The case method is an integral part of faculty development.”

There’s another big bonus to becoming a case writer, especially for younger educators. “Young business instructors face a credibility gap with their students,” says Heskett. “It’s not uncommon to have MBA students in a class who have more experience than the instructor on a particular subject. Once you go into the field and write a case, you will know more about that subject than anyone else in the class. A primary way for professors to establish their credibility on a topic is to have written the case the class is discussing that day.”

James L. Heskett is UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He completed his Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and has been a faculty member at The Ohio State University as well as president of Logistics Systems, Inc. Since 2000, he has authored a blog on Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge website .

Benson P. Shapiro is the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, emeritus, at Harvard Business School where he taught full time from 1970 to 1997. Since 1997, Shapiro has concentrated his professional time on consulting, giving speeches, serving on boards, and writing. He continues to teach at Harvard and has taught in many executive programs and has chaired the Sustainable Marketing Leadership for Mid-Sized Firms Program.

Carin-Isabel Knoop is the executive director of the Case Research & Writing Group at Harvard Business School. She is also coauthor of Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace .

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Case Study Hub | Samples, Examples and Writing Tips

Business law case study writing tips.

Business law case studies are often even more intricate than standard legal case studies because they imply that you have to know not only the legal part but also some business, accounting, and finance principles and apply them accordingly. It might be an unbearable task sometimes, and we can’t promise that with our tips you will deal with this task easily and in no time, as it would be a lie. However, using our set of rules applicable to almost any case study, you will be able to avoid the most common pitfalls at least. Pay attention to your professor’s requirements, as these tips are general, and might contradict instructions common to your university.

Know the Standard Structure

No matter how long the case study is and how long your response should be, the standard structure stays similar: Situation in Question – Brief answer – Case you quote – Judgement. When you describe the situation in question try to stay brief and don’t give too many details as most of them are absolutely not relevant later for the Judgement. Sometimes the situation in question, the case is already given by your professor, which makes it easier for you, as it already contains the exhausting information and you don’t have to make decisions on what to include or not. When giving a brief answer, you summarize the decision without giving too much background to it. In the case study part, you quote a relevant legal/business case as background and show the relevance to the situation in question. In the judgment part, you summarize all mentioned above.

Identify the Core Facts of the Case Study

Don’t start writing before you don’t decide for yourself which facts and twists are the major for resolving this particular case study. In the real world, you will have to face complex cases with possible dozens of pages describing irrelevant points, and you will have to find something that is truly necessary within those descriptions. If the case study is rather extended — print it out and underline the most relevant parts. This way it will be much more illustrative. Based on these facts you will make your assumptions, and based on those assumptions you will look for relevant cases to quote, so be very attentive from the very beginning.

Define the Roots of the Problem

It is a little tricky, but it will surely help you resolve the issue correctly and efficiently. Regarding business law case studies, the problems might be as follows: management, organization, technology, marketing, financial laws. Some of these matters may not be directly related to the legal practices, especially from the first glance, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t mention them and elaborate on them, as any business is a complex mechanism and you can’t approach it only from one side.

Give Options and Recommend the Most Favorable One

When elaborating on your judgment, give several options for recommendations which you consider applicable to the particular case. Describe pros and cons of each solution and choose the most advantageous one. Link it with the related case studies and explain why this solution is the best one in the particular situation. The trick is, even if you choose not the most applicable one, your professor will appreciate this approach and pay attention to the options you have developed and recommended. Of course, you should use only official business and academic language but writing about interesting case studies try to be not too dry.

Writing a case study, you have to apply the same proofreading tactics you apply to any other academic paper — read it loud, use online grammar checkers and check the logical structure of the document. Additionally, you have to pay attention to the formatting, because in the case studies you often quote some pieces of legislation and they require extra attention in terms the chosen of citation style. Give yourself at least half a day for proofreading. Otherwise, you can miss points because of the mediocre mistakes and omissions. Writing a business law case study is not easy, but we believe in you! Good luck!

As a matter of fact, you can get business law case study writing help from real experts hired to provide customers with high-quality original case studies.

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Teaching and Research guides

Case studies.

• Introduction
• Key tips for searching

Harvard Business School case studies

Other sources for business case studies, case studies journals, legal case studies.

• Design and social context
• Science, engineering, and health
• Open case studies
• Further help

The Harvard Business School has produced many business case studies. Many, but not all case studies are published in the Harvard Business Review . Case studies published in the HBR are findable by title in LibrarySearch or via the EBSCOhost Business Source Complete database using the link below:

• Harvard business review

Select "Search within this publication" at the top left.  Then add your keywords and select Document type to be Case study.

Harvard Business School case studies may appear on the HBR website, hbr.org , but not be published in the Review itself. These cases are  not findable in LibrarySearch. In this situation, a case may be located by searching within the Harvard Business Review Digital Articles database, at the link below:

• Harvard Business Review Digital Articles Collection of articles hosted in EBSCOhost from the Harvard Business Review website, HBR.org

When linking to a case study that is an HBR digital article, link to the copy found in Harvard Business Review Digital Articles on EBSCOHost. Do not link to a case on hbr.org , since access limits will cause users to encounter a paywall. If case studies or other material from the Harvard Business School are not available via either of the databases mentioned above, please contact our Teaching Support Services .

• Business Source Complete (EBSCO) Aside from case studies within the Harvard Business Review, the Business Source Complete database within EBSCO contains case studies from other sources. They can be found using advanced search and selecting "case study" as the document type.
• SAGE Knowledge Within SAGE Knowledge is SAGE Business Cases, a set of business case collections divided by business discipline and geographic region.
• Emerald Insight An extensive business research database. Click on advanced search and then select the case studies checkbox.
• MarketLine Select "Analysis" from the menu bar, and select Case studies. Both Industry and Company cases can be found.
• WARC: World Advertising Research Center From the menu bar, select Advanced Search. Then beside "Select sources" check the Case studies box.
• Factiva Use "case study" or "case studies" as terms when building your search. There is no option to limit to case studies as a resource type.
• Passport Passport provides geographically discrete reports and analysis on companies and industries. These reports are not case studies, but provide context and data background which may enrich understanding of cases found elsewhere.
• Henry Stewart Talks Business & Management Collection HSTalks provides access to world class lectures and case studies by leading experts from commerce, industry, the professions and academia, in one online resource - accessible wherever, whenever and as often as is wanted.
• Business Collection (Informit) Search by topic and then narrow to Case Studies using Identifier selection in right side menu.

Note : some databases provide Teaching Notes to accompany case studies. These materials are usually restricted to teaching staff. If you have a teaching role at RMIT, and would like access to the Teaching Notes, first create a personal profile or account in the relevant database, then contact the Library at [email protected]  and staff will then organise upgraded access.

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To find information on legal *cases* argued in the courts, see our Law and Justice library guide.

• Law and Justice This guide provides access to major Australian legal resources. It also provides tips on searching for different types of legal resources.
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How to Write and Format a Business Case Study

Case Study Structure, Format and Components

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Business case studies are teaching tools that are used by many business schools, colleges, universities, and corporate training programs. This method of teaching is known as the case method . Most business case studies are written by educators, executives or heavily educated business consultants. However, there are times when students are asked to conduct and write their own business case studies. For example, students may be asked to create a case study as a final assignment or group project. Student-created case studies may even be used as a teaching tool or a basis for class discussion.

Writing a Business Case Study

When you write a case study, you must write with the reader in mind. The case study should be set up so that the reader is forced to analyze situations, draw conclusions, and make recommendations based on their predictions. If you aren't overly familiar with case studies, you may be wondering how to best organize your writing. To help you get started, let's take a look at the most common ways to structure and format a business case study. 

Case Study Structure and Format

Although every business case study is a little different, there are a few elements that every case study has in common. Every case study has an original title. Titles vary but usually include the name of the company as well as a little info about the case scenario in ten words or less. Examples of real case study titles include Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple and Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service.

All cases are written with a learning objective in mind. The objective might be designed to impart knowledge, build a skill, challenge the learner, or develop an ability. After reading and analyzing the case, the student should know about something or be able to do something. An example objective might look like this:

After analyzing the case study, the student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of approaches to marketing segmentation, differentiate between potential core customer bases and recommend a brand positioning strategy for XYZ's newest product.

Most case studies assume a story-like format. They often have a protagonist with an important goal or decision to make. The narrative is usually weaved throughout the study, which also includes sufficient background information about the company, situation, and essential people or elements. There should be enough detail to allow the reader to form an educated assumption and make an informed decision about the questions (usually two to five questions) presented in the case.

The Case Study Protagonist

Case studies should have a protagonist that needs to make a decision. This forces the case reader to assume the role of the protagonist and make choices from a particular perspective. An example of a case study protagonist is a branding manager who has two months to decide on a positioning strategy for a new product that could financially make or break the company. When writing the case, it is important to ensure that your protagonist is developed and compelling enough to engage the reader. 

The Case Study Narrative/Situation

The narrative of a case study starts with an introduction to the protagonist, her role and responsibilities, and the situation/scenario that she is facing. Information is provided on the decisions the protagonist needs to make. Details include challenges and constraints related to the decision (such as a deadline) as well as any biases the protagonist might have.

The next section offers up background information on the company and its business model, industry and competitors. The case study then covers challenges and issues faced by the protagonist as well as the consequences associated with the decision that the protagonist needs to make. Exhibits and extra documents, like financial statements, might be included in the case study to help students reach a decision about the best course of action. 

The Deciding Point

The conclusion of a case study returns to the main question or problem that must be analyzed and solved by the protagonist. Case study readers are expected to step into the role of the protagonist and answer the question or questions presented in the case studies. In most cases, there are multiple ways to answer the case question, which allows for classroom discussion and debate. 

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Law Case Study – How To Answer Case Studies in Law

One of the major challenges students have in business law and other law courses are answering questions under the case study. In this article, I will explain how to answer any law case study question following the same rule you are aware of and which is generally recommended. The IRAC or IDAC Principle.

Law Case Study Tips

IRAC Principle is an acronym which depicts,

“I” for Identification

“R” for Rule(s)

“A” for Analysis

“C” for Conclusion

While the IDAC Principle depicts the same but “D” stands for Definition.

Law Case Study – Question 1

Chuddy requested Kris to transport goods from Lagos to Darlington’s estate in Enugu state for the sum of N200,000.00. Kris replied that he was only prepared to transport the goods for N300,000.00.

Chuddy wrote back to Kris asking him to reconsider the initial price, but Kris did not reply to his letter. Two days later, Chuddy delivered the goods to the business premises of Kris, who transported them to Darlington’s Estate in Enugu State.

Chuddy has refused to pay the N300,000.00 demand by Kris, saying that there was no concluded contract. Advise the party using relevant authorities.

 [Question 1, First Semester Exam 2014/2015. BAM – YABATECH]

ANSWER/SOLUTION

Let’s make use of the IRAC Principle to answer this question, but before this, let me quickly explain how it works.

“I” – Identification.

First of all, you need to identify under which law the case falls, if it is LAW OF CONTRACT then you consider the elements of the law of contract which are Offer, Acceptance, Consideration, Invitation to treat etc…

• So, from the case above, after reading the question/case, you’ll find out that it is AN OFFER . An offer is a definite undertaking with the expectation that it will become binding when the person accepts but since there was no acceptance between Chuddy and Kris, it means that the offer was terminated.

“R” – Rules

From the above rule, we can say that the offer is a counter-offer because the terms [amount involved] were not accepted by both parties which also means that it was rejected.

So, what are the rules for termination of an offer?

• An offer can be terminated through or by Revocation by rejection, the death of either party, the lapse of time and counter-offer [it varies the terms of an offer]

 “A” – Analysis

By Analysis, you are expected to analyze the case study on some facts and principles that are similar in the area of law . [Always remember to lay emphasis on established facts and principles]

Since we have identified the rules applicable stating that it is a counter-offer and it was rejected then let’s see what it means.

• Counter Offer: In a nutshell, counter offer varies the terms of an offer
• By rejection: It means the offeree did not accept the terms of the offer.

“C” – Conclusion

Here, you are expected to conclude your judgment based on legal facts and principles you have identified. Your conclusion should also entail which party has the right to sue or succeed if the matter is taken to court for legal actions.

• So, since a counteroffer cannot give rise to a binding agreement, it means that Kris should not take the issue to court because, by the means of a counteroffer, there was no agreement between both parties.

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4 thoughts on “Law Case Study – How To Answer Case Studies in Law”

Thanks bro…. Bless you too

Wonderful! Am excited that u are doing this bro. God bless u

Nice one bro, good breakdown

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How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.

OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train their newest artificial intelligence systems.

Researchers at OpenAI’s office in San Francisco developed a tool to transcribe YouTube videos to amass conversational text for A.I. development. Credit... Jason Henry for The New York Times

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By Cade Metz ,  Cecilia Kang ,  Sheera Frenkel ,  Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant

Reporting from San Francisco, Washington and New York

• Published April 6, 2024 Updated April 8, 2024

In late 2021, OpenAI faced a supply problem.

The artificial intelligence lab had exhausted every reservoir of reputable English-language text on the internet as it developed its latest A.I. system. It needed more data to train the next version of its technology — lots more.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

So OpenAI researchers created a speech recognition tool called Whisper. It could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, yielding new conversational text that would make an A.I. system smarter.

Some OpenAI employees discussed how such a move might go against YouTube’s rules, three people with knowledge of the conversations said. YouTube, which is owned by Google, prohibits use of its videos for applications that are “independent” of the video platform.

Ultimately, an OpenAI team transcribed more than one million hours of YouTube videos, the people said. The team included Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, who personally helped collect the videos, two of the people said. The texts were then fed into a system called GPT-4 , which was widely considered one of the world’s most powerful A.I. models and was the basis of the latest version of the ChatGPT chatbot.

The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times.

At Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, managers, lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by The Times. They also conferred on gathering copyrighted data from across the internet, even if that meant facing lawsuits. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said.

Like OpenAI, Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its A.I. models, five people with knowledge of the company’s practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators.

Last year, Google also broadened its terms of service. One motivation for the change, according to members of the company’s privacy team and an internal message viewed by The Times, was to allow Google to be able to tap publicly available Google Docs, restaurant reviews on Google Maps and other online material for more of its A.I. products.

The companies’ actions illustrate how online information — news stories, fictional works, message board posts, Wikipedia articles, computer programs, photos, podcasts and movie clips — has increasingly become the lifeblood of the booming A.I. industry. Creating innovative systems depends on having enough data to teach the technologies to instantly produce text, images, sounds and videos that resemble what a human creates.

The volume of data is crucial. Leading chatbot systems have learned from pools of digital text spanning as many as three trillion words, or roughly twice the number of words stored in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, which has collected manuscripts since 1602. The most prized data, A.I. researchers said, is high-quality information, such as published books and articles, which have been carefully written and edited by professionals.

For years, the internet — with sites like Wikipedia and Reddit — was a seemingly endless source of data. But as A.I. advanced, tech companies sought more repositories. Google and Meta, which have billions of users who produce search queries and social media posts every day, were largely limited by privacy laws and their own policies from drawing on much of that content for A.I.

Their situation is urgent. Tech companies could run through the high-quality data on the internet as soon as 2026, according to Epoch, a research institute. The companies are using the data faster than it is being produced.

“The only practical way for these tools to exist is if they can be trained on massive amounts of data without having to license that data,” Sy Damle, a lawyer who represents Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said of A.I. models last year in a public discussion about copyright law. “The data needed is so massive that even collective licensing really can’t work.”

Tech companies are so hungry for new data that some are developing “synthetic” information. This is not organic data created by humans, but text, images and code that A.I. models produce — in other words, the systems learn from what they themselves generate.

OpenAI said each of its A.I. models “has a unique data set that we curate to help their understanding of the world and remain globally competitive in research.” Google said that its A.I. models “are trained on some YouTube content,” which was allowed under agreements with YouTube creators, and that the company did not use data from office apps outside of an experimental program. Meta said it had “made aggressive investments” to integrate A.I. into its services and had billions of publicly shared images and videos from Instagram and Facebook for training its models.

For creators, the growing use of their works by A.I. companies has prompted lawsuits over copyright and licensing. The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last year for using copyrighted news articles without permission to train A.I. chatbots. OpenAI and Microsoft have said using the articles was “fair use,” or allowed under copyright law, because they transformed the works for a different purpose.

More than 10,000 trade groups, authors, companies and others submitted comments last year about the use of creative works by A.I. models to the Copyright Office , a federal agency that is preparing guidance on how copyright law applies in the A.I. era.

Justine Bateman, a filmmaker, former actress and author of two books, told the Copyright Office that A.I. models were taking content — including her writing and films — without permission or payment.

“This is the largest theft in the United States, period,” she said in an interview.

‘Scale Is All You Need’

In January 2020, Jared Kaplan, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University, published a groundbreaking paper on A.I. that stoked the appetite for online data.

His conclusion was unequivocal: The more data there was to train a large language model — the technology that drives online chatbots — the better it would perform. Just as a student learns more by reading more books, large language models can better pinpoint patterns in text and be more accurate with more information.

“Everyone was very surprised that these trends — these scaling laws as we call them — were basically as precise as what you see in astronomy or physics,” said Dr. Kaplan, who published the paper with nine OpenAI researchers. (He now works at the A.I. start-up Anthropic.)

“Scale is all you need” soon became a rallying cry for A.I.

Researchers have long used large public databases of digital information to develop A.I., including Wikipedia and Common Crawl, a database of more than 250 billion web pages collected since 2007. Researchers often “cleaned” the data by removing hate speech and other unwanted text before using it to train A.I. models.

In 2020, data sets were tiny by today’s standards. One database containing 30,000 photographs from the photo website Flickr was considered a vital resource at the time.

After Dr. Kaplan’s paper, that amount of data was no longer enough. It became all about “just making things really big,” said Brandon Duderstadt, the chief executive of Nomic, an A.I. company in New York.

Before 2020, most A.I. models used relatively little training data.

Mr. Kaplan’s paper, released in 2020, led to a new era defined by GPT-3, a large language model, where researchers began including more data in their models …

… much, much more data.

When OpenAI unveiled GPT-3 in November 2020, it was trained on the largest amount of data to date — about 300 billion “tokens,” which are essentially words or pieces of words. After learning from that data, the system generated text with astounding accuracy, writing blog posts, poetry and its own computer programs.

In 2022, DeepMind, an A.I. lab owned by Google, went further. It tested 400 A.I. models and varied the amount of training data and other factors. The top-performing models used even more data than Dr. Kaplan had predicted in his paper. One model, Chinchilla, was trained on 1.4 trillion tokens.

It was soon overtaken. Last year, researchers from China released an A.I. model, Skywork , which was trained on 3.2 trillion tokens from English and Chinese texts. Google also unveiled an A.I. system, PaLM 2 , which topped 3.6 trillion tokens .

Transcribing YouTube

In May, Sam Altman , the chief executive of OpenAI, acknowledged that A.I. companies would use up all viable data on the internet.

“That will run out,” he said in a speech at a tech conference.

Mr. Altman had seen the phenomenon up close. At OpenAI, researchers had gathered data for years, cleaned it and fed it into a vast pool of text to train the company’s language models. They had mined the computer code repository GitHub, vacuumed up databases of chess moves and drawn on data describing high school tests and homework assignments from the website Quizlet.

By late 2021, those supplies were depleted, said eight people with knowledge of the company, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

OpenAI was desperate for more data to develop its next-generation A.I. model, GPT-4. So employees discussed transcribing podcasts, audiobooks and YouTube videos, the people said. They talked about creating data from scratch with A.I. systems. They also considered buying start-ups that had collected large amounts of digital data.

OpenAI eventually made Whisper, the speech recognition tool, to transcribe YouTube videos and podcasts, six people said. But YouTube prohibits people from not only using its videos for “independent” applications, but also accessing its videos by “any automated means (such as robots, botnets or scrapers).”

OpenAI employees knew they were wading into a legal gray area, the people said, but believed that training A.I. with the videos was fair use. Mr. Brockman, OpenAI’s president, was listed in a research paper as a creator of Whisper. He personally helped gather YouTube videos and fed them into the technology, two people said.

Mr. Brockman referred requests for comment to OpenAI, which said it uses “numerous sources” of data.

Last year, OpenAI released GPT-4, which drew on the more than one million hours of YouTube videos that Whisper had transcribed. Mr. Brockman led the team that developed GPT-4.

Some Google employees were aware that OpenAI had harvested YouTube videos for data, two people with knowledge of the companies said. But they didn’t stop OpenAI because Google had also used transcripts of YouTube videos to train its A.I. models, the people said. That practice may have violated the copyrights of YouTube creators. So if Google made a fuss about OpenAI, there might be a public outcry against its own methods, the people said.

Matt Bryant, a Google spokesman, said the company had no knowledge of OpenAI’s practices and prohibited “unauthorized scraping or downloading of YouTube content.” Google takes action when it has a clear legal or technical basis to do so, he said.

Google’s rules allowed it to tap YouTube user data to develop new features for the video platform. But it was unclear whether Google could use YouTube data to build a commercial service beyond the video platform, such as a chatbot.

Geoffrey Lottenberg, an intellectual property lawyer with the law firm Berger Singerman, said Google’s language about what it could and could not do with YouTube video transcripts was vague.

“Whether the data could be used for a new commercial service is open to interpretation and could be litigated,” he said.

In late 2022, after OpenAI released ChatGPT and set off an industrywide race to catch up , Google researchers and engineers discussed tapping other user data. Billions of words sat in people’s Google Docs and other free Google apps. But the company’s privacy restrictions limited how they could use the data, three people with knowledge of Google’s practices said.

In June, Google’s legal department asked the privacy team to draft language to broaden what the company could use consumer data for, according to two members of the privacy team and an internal message viewed by The Times.

The employees were told Google wanted to use people’s publicly available content in Google Docs, Google Sheets and related apps for an array of A.I. products. The employees said they didn’t know if the company had previously trained A.I. on such data.

At the time, Google’s privacy policy said the company could use publicly available information only to “help train Google’s language models and build features like Google Translate.”

The privacy team wrote new terms so Google could tap the data for its “A.I. models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard and Cloud AI capabilities,” which was a wider collection of A.I. technologies.

“What is the end goal here?” one member of the privacy team asked in an internal message. “How broad are we going?”

The team was told specifically to release the new terms on the Fourth of July weekend, when people were typically focused on the holiday, the employees said. The revised policy debuted on July 1, at the start of the long weekend.

How Google Can Use Your Data

Here are the changes Google made to its privacy policy last year for its free consumer apps.

Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s language AI models and build products and features like Google Translate , Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities .

In August, two privacy team members said, they pressed managers on whether Google could start using data from free consumer versions of Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. They were not given clear answers, they said.

Mr. Bryant said that the privacy policy changes had been made for clarity and that Google did not use information from Google Docs or related apps to train language models “without explicit permission” from users, referring to a voluntary program that allows users to test experimental features.

“We did not start training on additional types of data based on this language change,” he said.

The Debate at Meta

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, had invested in A.I. for years — but suddenly found himself behind when OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. He immediately pushed to match and exceed ChatGPT , calling executives and engineers at all hours of the night to push them to develop a rival chatbot, said three current and former employees, who were not authorized to discuss confidential conversations.

But by early last year, Meta had hit the same hurdle as its rivals: not enough data.

Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative A.I., told executives that his team had used almost every available English-language book, essay, poem and news article on the internet to develop a model, according to recordings of internal meetings, which were shared by an employee.

Meta could not match ChatGPT unless it got more data, Mr. Al-Dahle told colleagues. In March and April 2023, some of the company’s business development leaders, engineers and lawyers met nearly daily to tackle the problem.

Some debated paying $10 a book for the full licensing rights to new titles. They discussed buying Simon & Schuster, which publishes authors like Stephen King, according to the recordings.

They also talked about how they had summarized books, essays and other works from the internet without permission and discussed sucking up more, even if that meant facing lawsuits. One lawyer warned of “ethical” concerns around taking intellectual property from artists but was met with silence, according to the recordings.

Mr. Zuckerberg demanded a solution, employees said.

“The capability that Mark is looking for in the product is just something that we currently aren’t able to deliver,” one engineer said.

While Meta operates giant social networks, it didn’t have troves of user posts at its disposal, two employees said. Many Facebook users had deleted their earlier posts, and the platform wasn’t where people wrote essay-type content, they said.

Meta was also limited by privacy changes it introduced after a 2018 scandal over sharing its users’ data with Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.

Mr. Zuckerberg said in a recent investor call that the billions of publicly shared videos and photos on Facebook and Instagram are “greater than the Common Crawl data set.”

During their recorded discussions, Meta executives talked about how they had hired contractors in Africa to aggregate summaries of fiction and nonfiction. The summaries included copyrighted content “because we have no way of not collecting that,” a manager said in one meeting.

Meta’s executives said OpenAI seemed to have used copyrighted material without permission. It would take Meta too long to negotiate licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry, they said, according to the recordings.

“The only thing that’s holding us back from being as good as ChatGPT is literally just data volume,” Nick Grudin, a vice president of global partnership and content, said in one meeting.

OpenAI appeared to be taking copyrighted material and Meta could follow this “market precedent,” he added.

Meta’s executives agreed to lean on a 2015 court decision involving the Authors Guild versus Google , according to the recordings. In that case, Google was permitted to scan, digitize and catalog books in an online database after arguing that it had reproduced only snippets of the works online and had transformed the originals, which made it fair use.

Using data to train A.I. systems, Meta’s lawyers said in their meetings, should similarly be fair use.

At least two employees raised concerns about using intellectual property and not paying authors and other artists fairly or at all, according to the recordings. One employee recounted a separate discussion about copyrighted data with senior executives including Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, and said no one in that meeting considered the ethics of using people’s creative works.

‘Synthetic’ Data

OpenAI’s Mr. Altman had a plan to deal with the looming data shortage.

Companies like his, he said at the May conference, would eventually train their A.I. on text generated by A.I. — otherwise known as synthetic data.

Since an A.I. model can produce humanlike text, Mr. Altman and others have argued, the systems can create additional data to develop better versions of themselves. This would help developers build increasingly powerful technology and reduce their dependence on copyrighted data.

“As long as you can get over the synthetic data event horizon, where the model is smart enough to make good synthetic data, everything will be fine,” Mr. Altman said.

A.I. researchers have explored synthetic data for years. But building an A.I system that can train itself is easier said than done. A.I. models that learn from their own outputs can get caught in a loop where they reinforce their own quirks, mistakes and limitations.

“The data these systems need is like a path through the jungle,” said Jeff Clune, a former OpenAI researcher who now teaches computer science at the University of British Columbia. “If they only train on synthetic data, they can get lost in the jungle.”

To combat this, OpenAI and others are investigating how two different A.I. models might work together to generate synthetic data that is more useful and reliable. One system produces the data, while a second judges the information to separate the good from the bad. Researchers are divided on whether this method will work.

A.I. executives are barreling ahead nonetheless.

“It should be all right,” Mr. Altman said at the conference.

Read by Cade Metz

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán .

An earlier version of this article misstated the publisher of J.K. Rowling’s books. Her works have been published by Scholastic, Little, Brown and others. They were not published by Simon & Schuster.

How we handle corrections

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy and is based in Washington D.C. She has written about technology for over two decades. More about Cecilia Kang

Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

Stuart A. Thompson writes about how false and misleading information spreads online and how it affects people around the world. He focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other misleading content. More about Stuart A. Thompson

Nico Grant is a technology reporter covering Google from San Francisco. Previously, he spent five years at Bloomberg News, where he focused on Google and cloud computing. More about Nico Grant

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News  and Analysis

U.S. clinics are starting to offer patients a new service: having their mammograms read not just by a radiologist, but also by an A.I. model .

OpenAI unveiled Voice Engine , an A.I. technology that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording.

Amazon said it had added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic , an A.I. start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google.

The Age of A.I.

A.I. tools can replace much of Wall Street’s entry-level white-collar work , raising tough questions about the future of finance.

The boom in A.I. technology has put a more sophisticated spin on a kind of gig work that doesn’t require leaving the house: training A.I, models .

Teen girls are confronting an epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools  across the United States, as middle and high school students have used A.I. to fabricate explicit images of female classmates.

A.I. is peering into restaurant garbage pails  and crunching grocery-store data to try to figure out how to send less uneaten food into dumpsters.

David Autor, an M.I.T. economist and tech skeptic, argues that A.I. is fundamentally different  from past waves of computerization.

Economists doubt that A.I. is already visible in productivity data . Big companies, however, talk often about adopting it to improve efficiency.

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Tax lessons from the trump hush money trial over business records.

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Money buys silence. Woman's mouth covered with dollar bill. Corruption and freedom of speech ... [+] concept.

Former President Donald Trump will start trial shortly in New York over charges related to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. The case is unusual, yet involves the increasingly familiar topic of hush money. It sounds dirty or illegal, but many businesses pay it on occasion. One helpful explanation about the charges former President Trump is facing noted that Trump's 'hush money' payment isn't illegal in itself. In a kind of cover up is worse than the crime theory, the charges assert that Trump falsified business records, trying to conceal information that would be damaging in his 2016 election campaign.

Yet amid the business records case, there is a background of important tax rules at play for many businesses. Let’s start with the fact that just about every kind of payment has tax consequences, to both the recipient and to the one who paid the money.

1. Hush Money is Income . If you get paid hush money, is it income you have to report on your taxes? Yes, the IRS says almost everything is income, and that certainly applies to hush money, whatever the circumstances. In fact, almost all lawsuit settlements are income. There are a few exceptions, mainly for compensatory personal physical injury damages. But the IRS is strict about what qualifies as physical.

Unless the money is a payment for physical injuries or physical sickness, it is taxable. To prove physical sickness, the plaintiff should have evidence of medical care, and evidence that she claimed the defendant caused or worsened the condition. Some plaintiffs claim the harassment gave them post traumatic stress disorder, and PTSD is arguably physical for tax purposes. But the IRS taxes most lawsuit settlements, exact wording matters , and taxes can make a huge difference in how much a plaintiff gets to keep after legal fees.

What’s more, in some cases the plaintiff is taxed on 100% of the money, even if the lawyer takes legal fees off the top. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Commissioner v. Banks that plaintiffs generally have income equal to 100% of their recoveries, even if their lawyers take a share. Then, a massive tax law championed by then President Trump, was passed in 2017 to restrict many plaintiff deductions for legal fees, a tax law that hurts legal settlements .

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2. Defendants Deduct It . Businesses routinely settle legal claims of all sorts to keep claims and amounts quiet. No business wants bad publicity, and lawsuits are bad for business. Even settlements can be bad for business, especially if amounts are publicized, and settlements that become public can encourage other claims to be brought. As a result, nearly every legal settlement agreement requires confidentiality. You can say that the business is paying the claim or paying for silence, and it might be a bit of both. If the company paying the money is in business, it is almost always tax deductible, except for the exception discussed below in #4.

3. Individual Defendants Usually Can’t Claim a Write-off . Companies routinely pay hush money. Individuals do so less frequently, even though individual conduct at companies probably leads to most of the liabilities the hush money is intended to cover up. To claim a write off, an individual would have to be conducting a trade or business. Plus, the hush money would have to relate to that trade or business. For an individual, that can be a tall order.

4. Hush Money for Sexual Harassment or Abuse. The tax law changed in a major way in 2018. Since then, the tax law says that businesses and individuals can no longer write off confidential legal settlements for sexual harassment or sex abuse. These restrictions only apply if confidentiality is required . So if you just pay hush money but do not expressly call for nondisclosure or confidentiality, companies can still write it off. Some companies settle without requiring confidentiality to get around the new rules. For example, it was reported that Fox settled some suits without confidentiality .

However, most companies are willing to forgo a tax deduction to keep the settlement quiet. Then again, some companies want to have their cake and to eat it too by splitting the money into several parts. It works like this: In a $1M settlement, how about saying that only $50,000 is for sexual harassment, and the other $950,000 is for other employment claims? In some cases, there is an argument that you can still write off the bulk of confidential sexual harassment settlements in that way.

5. Legal Fees Can Be a Problem . For businesses, legal fees are almost always tax deductible, even if the legal fees are very expensive. They are just one of numerous business expenses. But since 2018, if you are paying hush money for sexual harassment or abuse, and if you require confidentiality, not even the legal fees can be deducted. But even bigger tax problems can await plaintiffs. As they face IRS taxes on their legal settlements, they are often searching for some way to deduct their legal fees under the new tax law .

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AI Can Write the Lyrics, But Who Owns the Music Is Up for Debate

By Isaiah Poritz

Nashville-based country musician Anna Vaus and her brother were curious about the quality of AI songwriting, so they asked a generative AI chatbot to write a country tune, offering the bot nothing more than a title: “River of Love.”

The chatbot generated a verse about the ebb and flow of a romantic relationship replete with imagery of water. The opening line: “I’ve been a river looking for ocean arms.”

Vaus and her brother composed chords, added rhythm, and recorded the song verbatim. The resulting song includes a combination of AI-generated lyrics and human-made musical expression.

Who owns the copyrights? The US Copyright Office is tasked with finding the answer.

The agency says lyrics like ‘River of Love’ can’t receive copyright protection under existing law. The agency, part of the Library of Congress, issued guidance in March 2023 stating that any AI-generated content alone is not copyrightable—only human creativity can receive protection.

Video: Watch ‘River of Love,’ a song written by AI and performed by Anna Vaus

Vaus’s experiment from 2020 underscores complex legal questions for musicians and artists as they weigh the advantages and pitfalls of using rapidly advancing AI tools in the creative process. AI could unlock enormous creative potential for artists who may find imaginative uses of AI or use bots to support their own art. For now, uncertainty remains over protections afforded to artists using the new technology.

The lines of copyright demarcation between pure, human art and bot-influenced art are being drawn in federal offices and courts. The Copyright Office, which once had to contend with the novelty of copyrighting photographs and then later computer programs, will release a series of studies on copyright law’s intersection with AI. Among them will be a paper, expected this summer, focused on the copyrightability of AI-generated works.

In the meantime, one federal court has already agreed with the Office’s view that a work created exclusively with AI isn’t protected, but many more close cases are in the pipeline.

“Artists and creators who are interested in using AI generators will potentially use them but not register their works, waiting, hopefully, for a change in the legal position,” said Edward Lee, an intellectual property law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “But some might shy away from even using AI at all.”

Vaus said she agrees that a song created exclusively with AI shouldn’t receive the same copyright protections afforded to humans, and the siblings never sought to own the lyrics. But she said there is “absolutely a skill” in figuring out how to create art with AI.

Vaus said she and other songwriters have wielded AI in creative ways, experimenting with chatbots to help write specific lines for a song or come up with rhymes. Vaus wasn’t that impressed with AI-generated “River of Love” lyrics, but said they could offer a foundation to write her own song.

“It certainly generated some new perspectives,” Vaus said. “It brought up some language that maybe I wouldn’t go to when writing.”

‘Rigid View’

The Copyright Office’s guidance is merely a year old and still evolving. The current policy framework, released in March 2023, fails to account for nuanced uses of AI, and until regulators or the courts provide additional clarity, many artists may be in legal limbo, Lee said.

Copyright Office Director Shira Perlmutter defended the office’s guidance and its recent rejections of registrations for AI-assisted works at an AI and music law conference last week. They include an award-winning piece created with the AI tool Midjourney and a human-made photograph reanimated with AI in the style of Vincent van Gogh.

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The guidance asks applicants to disclose and disclaim any elements of their copyrighted work that were created with AI. Requiring the disclaimer “was not to make applicants’ lives more difficult, or to require lawyers to be consulted,” but to “avoid any later questioning of the validity of the registration,” Perlmutter said on April 4.

Lee, who authored a law review article criticizing the office’s AI guidance, said it failed to undergo the proper procedural steps before issuance. The office should have held a public comment period because the guidance include “new substantive rules” about the copyrightability of an entirely new class of AI-generated works, Lee said.

The office said in a statement to Bloomberg Law that its guidance “clarified existing practice” and “was issued in a manner consistent with other policy statements and interpretive rules that the Office has published.”

The office did open a formal public comment period later in summer 2023 for its study on AI, and it will provide updated guidance on registering AI generated works, subject to the notice-and-comment process.

But as a legal matter, Lee argued the office’s approach provides an overly rigid view of authorship. He agreed that an AI work based on one or two word prompts can’t receive copyright protection. But an AI user can express creativity through sufficiently complex prompt engineering and the “selection and arrangement” of AI elements of a work, he said.

In one closely watched case, the office in 2023 granted partial registration for an AI-generated comic book “Zarya of the Dawn,” but only for the human-made text and panels. The artist Kris Kashtanova had to disclaim the comic book images, which were created with Midjourney.

Lee argued Kashtanova’s AI-images should be registered as well, since the artist exercised control over the images with creative prompting and iterations. But the office reasoned that AI text-to-image models include some randomness, so an AI model given the same set of prompts might reproduce completely different images.

“The Copyright Office and the Supreme Court have rejected the ‘sweat of the brow’ doctrine, which is that just because you worked hard at something doesn’t make it copyrightable,” said Stuart Levi, an intellectual property attorney at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.

Although the Copyright Office’s rejections of applicants using AI receive far more public attention, it has still granted registrations for AI-assisted works, said Perlmutter. Those include about 200 registrations of the 1,000 applications the office has received that disclose the use of AI, Perlmutter said.

Navigating Uncertainty

The agency’s evolving regulatory posture poses a number of practical problems for creative industries.

The Copyright Office last year sent a letter to the Mechanical Licensing Collective, a nonprofit tasked by the federal government with distributing royalties to songwriters and composers, guiding it to withhold certain royalty payments.

Specifically, copyright owners of musical works shouldn’t receive royalties if “circumstances reasonably indicate” the music lacks sufficient human authorship pending an investigation by the MLC, the agency said.

Amazon.com Inc . will have to navigate similar legal waters as it faces an inundation of AI-generated self-published books, Levi said.

“Everybody is going to have to deal with this dramatic increase in the amount of content generated,” he said. “And there’s going to be a lot of touch points where we will care if it is human generated or not.”

Singer-songwriter Shane Stevens warned the use of AI in the writer’s room without guardrails could cause chaos for authorship credit and royalty distribution.

“Until we really know how they’re tracking the AI that they’re using, it can become a copyright issue for a songwriter in particular,” Stevens said at the AI and music law conference held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “We need to get ahead of it in the room now.”

The Motion Picture Association, which represents major film studios and Netflix Inc. , argued in a comment to the Copyright Office in 2023 that its rigid copyrightability guidance could be used by infringers who want to rip off AI-generated material that reflects human creativity.

Potential infringers could “cause mischief by challenging the validity of registrations” for works that were touched by AI, the comment said. The association pointed to a copyright infringement case involving video games on the brink of trial that was paused while the Copyright Office sorted out a new registration questions in the case.

Given those uncertainties, providing artists with blanket advice about their ownership of art which used AI remains complicated, said Farrah Usmani, a music and entertainment attorney at Nixon Peabody LLP in Nashville. But musicians shouldn’t stop using AI tools, as long as they have the proper legal conversation before they put it on the marketplace, she said.

“Let’s try to deconstruct what it is that went into the song, whether its AI or whether its samples,” Usmani said. “It doesn’t necessarily change how we advise our clients.”

Until then, the Copyright Office will continue to debate the essence of its AI dilemma.

“When does the AI become a tool that reflects the human’s creativity, rather than being the source of the expressive elements itself?” Perlmutter said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Isaiah Poritz in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kartikay Mehrotra at [email protected] ; James Arkin at [email protected] ; Gregory Henderson at [email protected]

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