Eric J. Gouvin, Western New England College School of Law Using the Examination as a Teaching Tool I have found in teaching Corporate Finance that students frequently come to the class without having had any exposure to the kinds of transactions discussed in the cases or the types of documentation that usually lie at the heart of the legal controversies. Because many of my students are “hands-on” learners, I address the problem of lack of context throughout the course by using a hypothetical corporation I create for the class. I use that hypothetical corporation as an ongoing illustration of the accounting, valuation and financial aspects of the course. The class’s contact with the hypothetical company culminates in an exam that I have conceived to be a simulation of an actual corporate finance matter that an associate attorney might receive from a partner in a law firm. The simulation starts with a detailed fact pattern about two businesses that were originally family-owned but that merged and went public. I call the resulting corporation Consolidated Corn and Tobacco, Inc. (COCOTO). The fact pattern is based on a company I once represented (American Maize), which has since been acquired, but is strongly spiced with facts from Nabisco and RJ Reynolds. Throughout the term students learn more about COCOTO as we study various aspects of corporate finance. Toward the end of the term I give them a document package composed of corporate articles of incorporation, bylaws, SEC filings, a Standard & Poors Company report, and a trust indenture. They have a few weeks before the end of the term to digest the material, but they understand that in order to answer the take-home exam questions they will have to master the documents. Obviously, before I distribute the document package, I know what I am going to ask the students on the exam. The exam questions almost always turn on some corporate finance development that has been in the news during the term or on some interesting development in the tobacco industry (because that is one of the major areas of business for COCOTO). I plant appropriate language and numbers in the documents to raise the issues that will be on the exam. I give students about two weeks to review the documents and to ask questions either in class or during office hours. On the last day of class, I give the students the “exam,” which consists of additional facts that supplement the already well-developed story of COCOTO, along with perhaps some additional documents or newspaper articles and the questions that need to be addressed. Usually the students will not be able to answer the questions fully without using some data from every included document - including the financial statements. This examination turns out to be a lot of work for the students, but I have had positive feedback about it every time. Some students have informed me that applying the law to the hypothetical corporation and to the information in the exam document package allowed them to pull all the material together and really understand it. Professor Gouvin will share his ideas with participants during a special presentation at the Conference on New Ideas on Tuesday, June 12.