Combining Business Law with Business Theory: An Experiential Classroom Crossover Activity

Effective business owners and managers must understand and apply skills from a variety of disciplines, including legal studies, marketing, and economics. The ability of professionals from diverse backgrounds to communicate, debate, and problem-solve can be the difference between a project's success and failure. The authors are faculty members from different academic and professional backgrounds who teach different subjects at the same business school. Two teach legal studies, one teaches economics, and one teaches marketing. The authors chose a topical issue that would interest students and developed a mock trial exercise to help students understand and practice how subject matter specialists collaborate in the business world. Each exercise involved classes from two different business disciplines--one legal studies class and one other class. Following an introduction, Part II of this article provides an overview of the academic literature regarding the value of cross-disciplinary collaboration in business and business education as well as the value of experiential learning and specifically the value of conducting a mock trial. Part III describes each instance of the exercise in detail and provides a roadmap and supplemental materials for teachers who would like to implement a similar exercise in their classrooms. Part IV presents detailed assessment results. Part V discusses which aspects of the exercises the authors found particularly valuable and which aspects could be improved. This section also includes conclusions and suggestions for teachers implementing the exercise in future classes.