Accounting and Finance for Lawyers

This class is designed for law students who have little or no prior experience with accounting or finance course work, and it is intended to provide a general understanding of the basic accounting and finance information needed to make economic decisions about businesses. The course has three parts, with part 1 providing an introduction to accounting and the fundamentals of a general set of financial statements including the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement, as well as the process followed to create financial statements and basics of financial statement analysis. Part 2 will cover the principles of finance and valuation including the cost of using money, assessing risk and return, valuation basics, and economics of the firm. Part 3 will cover financial instruments (debt, equity, and derivatives), capital markets, and corporate transactions. The class is not designed to make you an expert accountant or finance professional, but it should enable you to 1) make intelligent use of accounting and financial information, and 2) raise appropriate questions about the accounting and financial information developed by the experts in your company. Students who take this course may not take Business Basics, and vice versa.