The Job At Hand

1. Summarize the law surrounding the topics (as a general refresher and to fill-in any gaps in their knowledge),

2. Explain the law's implications for business in the real-world (beyond the straightforward applications of the law), and

3. Illustrate the law in action by explaining three relevant cases and discussing the specific business take-aways from each.

Because you are eager to make a good impression - these are all potential prospective employers, after all - you will also want to be sure to:

4. Deliver a professional presentation.

Deliverable Medium

Because of your course schedule, you won't physically be at the presentation. Instead, you'll provide an electronic file or files that will be presented to the audience for their review.

There is no prescribed medium for your presentation deliverable. You may use the medium that best fits your preferences AND that best enables you to communicate the required content. This might include casting your deliverable as a newspaper article, journal article, business or legal memo, documentary movie, investigative TV news report, interview, speech, business presentation, TED Talk, etc.

One medium to avoid, says your legal research team, is a PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint is fine if you're filming yourself delivering it, but a PowerPoint by itself can't possibly communicate what you need to communicate without it being entirely written out in prose. And, if you're going to write it all out in prose, why not do that in a medium designed for writing?

Your legal research team was also quick to caution you to stay focused on the evaluation criteria. Creativity is refreshing, heightens your audience's engagement, and often leads to methods of communicating content that are superior to the predominate method of writing. While creativity is much appreciated, however, there are no points for it on the audience's evaluation rubric. So, your team warned, avoid temptations to over-invest in presentation elements that are sheerly auxiliary or ornamental, that do not earn you points on the rubric, and/or that are poor methods for communicating your content. As an example meant to humor you while also making the point, your team illustrated that a mime routine is unlikely to communicate the finer points of your analysis as effectively as a written memo or a video of you giving a speech. Similarly, a TV news report with an amazing set and exhaustive video editing doesn't make stale thinking score any higher on the evaluation criteria.

Topical Areas

You may choose one of any of the four topical areas, below, to address in your presentation. You may also choose the industry in which your audience works. Conveniently, each topical area maps perfectly to a matter you have already handled or will be handling in the future. So, there are a plethora of materials to work from. Here are the topical areas from which to choose:

Intellectual Property Rights - This is the topical area for Medium Matter 08, and here are some relevant caseshttps://uncg.instructure.com/courses/27230/files/1616425/download?wrap=1your research team has pulled for you.

Internet Law, Social Media, and Privacy - This is the topical area for Medium Matter 09, and here are some relevant caseshttps://uncg.instructure.com/courses/27230/files/1616421/download?wrap=1your research team has pulled for you.

Employment Discrimination - This is the topical area for Medium Matter 18, and here are some relevant caseshttps://uncg.instructure.com/courses/27230/files/1616423/download?wrap=1your research team has pulled for you.

Consumer Protection - This is the topical area for Medium Matter 20, and here are some relevant caseshttps://uncg.instructure.com/courses/27230/files/1616424/download?wrap=1you research team has pulled for you.

Audience Evaluation

As your legal team indicated, your audience will be evaluating your performance. The rubric they will be using is near the bottom of this page. Immediately below is discussion about what the rubric criteria measure.

Summarize the law surrounding the topics. The legal brief your research team created for this matter has everything you need. Address all the different law that is relevant - constitutional, case, statutory, and regulatory. Be careful to summarize in your own words, however, and avoid saying so little that you are uninformative or leave key ideas out, while also avoiding droning on and on and on. Less is more, unless you leave out important content.

Explain the law's implications for business in the real-world of the industry of your choice. Remember, your audience is already generally familiar with the law and will not find a straightforward application to business very enlightening. For example, if you boldly state that, because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits racial discrimination, employers should not treat employees differently because of their race, your audience is going to be very underwhelmed.

Instead, make connections to other things you've learned at UNCG or in your professional experience and offer ideas about the implications this area of the law has on day-to-day operations, long term strategy, recruitment, retention, marketing, research and development, professional development, acquisitions, compensation...anything and everything.

This is where you're showing your stuff and earning big on the rubric, so dig deep. And be sure that what your digging out are shiny gold nuggets of your own thought and not day-old cow patties (Links to an external site.).

Illustrate the law in action by explaining three relevant cases and discussing the specific business take-aways from each. Use the cases that your legal research team provided you. If you prefer to use a case other than one of those, be sure to cite it and to provide the full text of the opinion so your audience will have it.

Deliver a professional presentation. Your high-powered audience is used to cut-to-the-chase, tell-it-like-it-is presentations. Beating around the bush, using a paragraph where a sentence would do, and using generalities to gloss over the details will not sell well. Big fancy words also won't impress, so avoid talking about "value added strategic alliances that produce paradigm shifts and synergy."

On the other hand, don't go too thin. Your audience came for solid ideas, so you need to deliver some.

Of course, spelling grammar, punctuation, etc. must be flawless and you should use headings or other ways to help your audience navigate your thinking. Similarly, if your deliverable will include images, video, or audio, make sure you maintain a high level of professionalism in them. Bouncing emojis singing about cybersquatting is probably not the best way to get your point across to this crowd.

Last, remember that professionals cite their sources. So, if you weren't born with the information or the idea wasn't born in your head, you need to cite your sources using the APA (Links to an external site.) or MLA (Links to an external site.) style and include a bibliography. Seriously, you're going to need citations and a bibliography.

Length

There is intentionally no scientific formula to guide the length of your presentation (font size, spacing, number of pages, length of video, etc.). Instead there is a guideline with guardrails.

The guideline (a crass one with which you are surely familiar) is to make your deliverable like a mini-skirt or a kilt - long enough to cover the subject and short enough to keep it interesting.

To ensure you don't go over the edge in either direction, here are some guardrails. On one edge, a two-page paper (single spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins) or a 3 minute video would be too short to communicate the content you need to communicate. On the other edge, an 8-page paper (single spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins) or a 20 minute video would be more ink or pixels than should be needed to concisely and cogently address the objectives.