The Business Courts Blog is changing hands.
In late 2018, after 15 years of studying, writing, posting, and commenting on business courts, I began the Business Courts Blog. My intention was to create a single location resource library, and business court news information center, focusing primarily on U.S. business and commercial courts. Having spent years accumulating studies, reports, articles and other information, I wanted to put it together in an orderly manner in one easily accessible/searchable location, while also reporting on current business court events and developments.
The library aspect is reflected in, e.g., three lengthy posts with links to studies and reports, 1994-2009, 2010- 2018, and 2019 to the present; a running bibliography with over 800 references between 1982 to the present, including references to books, articles from legal journals and periodicals, as well as articles found in general circulation magazines and newspaper. There are also links to numerous business courts’ webpages, posts to case management type forms used in various business courts, lists concerning ESI and ESI discovery protections, and more.
The information-center aspect includes posting on current business court news, which often anticipates future developments.
It has been a rewarding effort, but it is now time for me to hand off the Business Courts Blog. I am extremely grateful the blog will be going into the very capable hands of Michigan attorney Douglas L. Toering, someone who knows his way around business courts.
Doug was one of the bar leaders involved in creating Michigan’s Business Courts, and in 2012, he was one of three private practice attorneys to attend the Governor’s signing legislation establishing specialized business courts in Michigan. Since 2013, Doug has been a co-author of the Business Courts chapter in the ABA publication Recent Developments in Business and Corporate Litigation. He has authored at least 25 published articles on business courts during that same time-period. He is past chair of the State Bar of Michigan’s Business Law Section, for which he currently chairs the Business Courts Committee and the Commercial Litigation Committee. Doug also serves on advisory committees for the Oakland County Business Court (for which he does volunteer discovery facilitation) and the Macomb County Business Court.
More broadly, to Doug’s character and commitment, in 2021, he received the Stephen H. Schulman Outstanding Business Lawyer Award from the State Bar of Michigan’s Business Law Section. This annual award honors a Michigan business lawyer who consistently exemplifies the characteristics the Business Law Section seeks to foster and facilitate: the highest quality of professionalism, the highest quality of practice, and an unwavering dedication to service, ethical conduct, and collegiality within the practice of law.
I hope my work on business courts over these last 20 years has been of some benefit, and again, I am extremely grateful that this blog is now in Doug Toering’s good hands.
Lee Applebaum
August 2023
