Transactional Teams Take Top Prizes in Elite Competitions
UCLA School of Law’s Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy is celebrating several recent big wins by students on its transactional law competition teams.
For the second straight year, UCLA Law students took first place at the Interscholastic Transactional Law Competition at Duke University School of Law, among the most prestigious competitions in the country. At the Feb. 22 contest in Durham, North Carolina, Ethan Asofsky ’20, Christopher Burton ’20 and Alec Lautanen ’20 beat out teams from 18 other top law schools. They were coached by UCLA Law lecturer Neil Wertlieb, an expert in transactional law who teaches the course Life Cycle of a Business: From Start-up to Sale. A panel of attorneys from several of the nation’s leading law firms judged the competition.
The victory followed successes at the Feb. 14 Pircher, Nichols & Meeks Joint Venture Challenge, where teams including students from UCLA Law and UCLA Anderson School of Management competed against teams from USC Gould School of Law and USC Marshall School of Business. Law students David Gallop ’22 and Dana Ontiveros ’21 were on the winning team, while Timothy Roofian ’22 and Mary Ramzy ’22 were part of the squad that finished third. The Lowell Milken Institute and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate co-sponsor the annual competition with the law firm of Pircher, Nichols & Meeks.