DETROIT "" Twenty-three students competed Friday, Nov. 13, in Wayne State University Law School's second annual Transactional Law Competition.

Winners were:

• Negotiations (seller's counsel) "" First place, Gabriel Appel of Huntington Woods and Matthew Coffee-Tavi of Macomb Township, and second place, Amy Huang of Farmington Hills and Stephen Reaume of Grosse Pointe Farms, all second-year students.
• Drafting (seller's counsel) "" First place, Robert Clemente of West Bloomfield and Ian Hickman of West Bloomfield, and second place, Stephen Lovell of Rochester Hills and A. Rachel Myung of Rochester Hills, all third-year students.
• Negotiations (buyer's counsel) "" First place, Haley Jonna of Keego Harbor and Lena Pantely of Royal Oak, and second place, Nana Osipova of Farmington Hills and Yana Osipova of Farmington Hills, all third-year students.
• Drafting (buyer's counsel) "" First place, Jonna and Pantely tied with Nana Osipova and Yana Osipova.

The live-round competition is part of a one-credit course created and supervised by Assistant Professor Eric Zacks of Huntington Woods. Justin Hanna of West Bloomfield was the chair of the competition. He is pursuing a law degree and master of business administration degree and will be graduating this academic year. Hanna is assisted by student board members Whitney Baubie of Grosse Pointe, Alex Bowman of Detroit and Emily Decker of Grosse Pointe, all third-year students.

"This is the type of program which is useful to all law students, and especially those interested in pursuing a career in transactional work," Hanna said. "It provides participants with a great head start when heading into their first year of practice."

The first-place winners from Wayne Law's negotiation rounds will represent the law school at the regional LawMeets competitions in the spring. The first-place winners for drafting will help the negotiation teams prepare for the regional competitions, including assisting with the drafting that will be required for the regional competitions and conducting practice negotiation rounds.

"This competition provides students with invaluable exposure to the practice of transactional law that cannot be mimicked in the traditional classroom," Zacks said. "Our students have shown not only a great appetite for this type of learning but also a great aptitude for transactional lawyering, as seen by their wonderful performance during the Wayne Law competition, as well as the spring regional competitions, where our winners compete with students from other schools."

At both the in-school and regional competitions, professional transactional experts judge which two-member teams are most adept.

After weeks of drafting and revising, the day of the Wayne Law live competition brought the teams together for two rounds of negotiations. The panel of judges "" composed of 10 attorneys "" offered feedback after each round.

Attorney Laura Davis, a partner at Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP, served as one of the judges.

"The preparation and negotiation skills of the Wayne Law students were really impressive," Davis said. "What a great event for the students to develop their practical legal skills."

Zacks said Wayne Law's Transactional Law Competition courses are designed to permit students to experience transactional law in a real-world setting and to begin to develop the skills necessary to represent clients well. The courses operate under the umbrella of Wayne Law's Program for Entrepreneurship and Business Law directed by Assistant (Clinical) Professor Eric Williams of Detroit.

Attorneys serving as judges were:

• Christopher Attar, Wayne Law class of 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
• Lise Barrera, Wayne Law class of 1997, Quicken Loans
• David Billings, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP
• Laura Davis, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP
• John Decker, Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss
• Jacob Drouillard, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP
• Danielle Graceffa, Wayne Law class of 2006, Dykema
• Barbara Kaye, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP
• Brian O'Keefe, Lippitt O'Keefe Gornbein
• Arius Webb, Wayne Law class of 2015, Ford Motor Credit Co.

Photo:

Four students were first-place winners in the negotiations category of Wayne State University Law School's second annual Transactional Law Competition. From left are Assistant Professor Eric Zacks, Lena Pantely, Haley Jonna, Matthew Coffee-Tavi, Gabriel Appel and competition Chair Justin Hanna.