Dr Philipp Paech NAB7.05

This course is available on the Executive LLM. This course is not available as an outside option.

Available to Executive LLM students only. This course will be offered on the Executive LLM during the four year degree period. The Department of Law will not offer all Executive LLM courses every year, although some of the more popular courses may be offered in each year, or more than once each year. Please note that whilst it is the Department of Law's intention to offer all Executive LLM courses, its ability to do so will depend on the availability of the staff member in question. For more information please refer to the Department of Law website.

There are no specific prerequisites for taking this course. While this course is complimentary to LL410E prior completion of the latter is not necessary to take LL411E.

This course explores contemporary issues of the commercial law of international financial markets. These include

• the future of English law as reference law for international finance after Brexit
• financial markets and modern trends in conflict-of-laws
• the legal characteristics of the various types of networks used in financial markets (central, decentral, distributed)
• the disruption of law caused by ‘blockchain’ technology and FinTech
• the legal challenges flowing from the increasing use of ‘big data’ and artificial intelligence in financial services
• the future role of commercial law in managing risk
• the nature of so-called smart contracts and their role in standard documentation, risk management and due diligence 
• legal issues associated with cryptocurrencies and crypto-money

As the course is conceived to be very topical, some of the course content may change.

24-26 hours of contact time.

Students will have the option of producing a formative exam question of 2000 words to be delivered one month from the end of the module’s teaching session by email.

- The reading will consist of 2-3 scholarly articles per subject, such as P Paech, 'Governance of Blockchain Financial Networks', Modern Law Review (forthcoming), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2875487.

- Basic knowledge on international financial law (recommended in particular to students who did not take LL410E): P. Wood. Law and Practice of International Finance, Sweet & Maxwell, 2008 (ca. £40, soft bound).

- Understanding the financial market: S. Valdez, Ph. Molyneux, An Introduction to Global Financial Markets, 8th ed., Palgrave-McMillan 2015 (soft bound, ca. £29 - this is not a legal work but very useful for those new to the financial market).

Assessment path 1
Essay (100%, 8000 words).

Assessment path 2
Take home exam (100%).