Organized: The Business Law Breakdown

Financial Literacy for Lawyers – Episode 8: Deal Terms Decoded

This installment applies financial literacy to transactional law. Oranburg unpacks common deal terms—earnouts, working capital adjustments, net debt calculations—and shows how each interacts with the financial statements. Real-world M&A examples illustrate how misunderstandings over definitions or measurement periods can lead to post-closing disputes. By linking accounting concepts directly to contract language, the episode prepares lawyers to negotiate terms that accurately reflect the parties’ intentions and protect their clients’ interests.

Financial Literacy for Lawyers – Episode 9: Accounting for Securities Regulation

Focusing on the intersection of finance and securities regulation, Oranburg explains how public company disclosures depend on accurate and transparent financial reporting. The episode covers GAAP, IFRS, and SEC filing requirements, highlighting how misstated earnings or hidden liabilities can trigger enforcement actions or shareholder suits. Listeners see how securities lawyers use financial statements to assess disclosure adequacy, materiality, and risk—connecting the season’s earlier literacy skills to high-stakes regulatory compliance.

Financial Literacy for Lawyers – Episode 10: Financial Failure and Bankruptcy Law

Here, the season’s concepts are applied to insolvency contexts. Oranburg demonstrates how to spot financial distress through declining liquidity, unsustainable leverage, and negative cash flow trends. He connects these indicators to bankruptcy triggers, creditor strategies, and trustee avoidance actions. Real-world cases illustrate how financial statement analysis informs decisions on restructuring, liquidation, or reorganization, underscoring its central role in bankruptcy law.

Financial Literacy for Lawyers – Episode 11: The Financially Fluent Lawyer

In the season finale, Oranburg synthesizes all prior lessons into a model for ongoing financial fluency. He offers strategies for maintaining literacy through continuing education, collaboration with financial experts, and regular engagement with client financials. The episode reinforces the season’s core message: in a numbers-driven business environment, lawyers who can interpret financial statements hold a strategic advantage in every area of practice—from litigation and transactions to governance and compliance.

PTS: How to Protect Trade Secrets – Overview of this Law Course

Welcome to Protecting Trade Secrets, a comprehensive audio course on the law, strategy, and management of confidential business information. Professor Seth C. Oranburg introduces the intellectual framework for one of the most consequential yet misunderstood areas of intellectual property law.
In this opening episode, you’ll learn why trade secrets drive competitive advantage in nearly every modern enterprise—from algorithms and formulas to customer data and manufacturing know-how—and why secrecy, not registration, is the foundation of protection. You’ll also preview how the course integrates legal doctrine, business operations, and strategic frameworks into a single system for identifying, valuing, protecting, and enforcing trade secrets.
Across seven modules, the course moves from fundamentals to advanced practice.
Module 1: Foundations — defining trade secrets and distinguishing them from patents, copyrights, and trademarks.
Module 2: Identification & Inventory — recognizing and cataloging what’s truly secret.
Module 3: Valuation & Risk Assessment — measuring what secrets are worth and where they’re vulnerable.
Module 4: Internal Risk Mitigation — managing employee access, culture, and control.
Module 5: External Risk Mitigation — safeguarding secrets shared with vendors, partners, and investors.
Module 6: Enforcement & Remedies — proving misappropriation and choosing between injunctions, damages, and criminal remedies.
Module 7: Synthesis & Governance — building a Trade Secret Protection Plan that integrates law, operations, and strategy.
By the end of the series, you’ll be prepared to advise clients, lead organizations, or design systems that transform trade secret law from a reactive shield into a proactive strategy for innovation and long-term value.

PTS 1A: The Paradox of Sharing Secrets — Foundations of Trade Secret Law

Every business depends on information—and risks losing it. In this opening lecture, Professor Seth C. Oranburg introduces the paradox at the heart of trade secret law: how companies can share information to operate and innovate without destroying its secrecy.
Through the story of the Coca-Cola formula and other iconic examples, you’ll learn why trade secrets are often called the “dark matter” of intellectual property—hidden but immensely valuable. The episode traces the evolution of trade secret protection from scattered common-law cases to modern statutes like the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and it explains the core three-element test that defines every protected secret.
By the end, listeners will see how disciplined sharing—supported by law, contracts, and culture—turns confidentiality into a strategic advantage for innovators, executives, and lawyers alike.

PTS 1B: Trade Secrets and Patents — Choosing the Right Kind of Protection

Can a company protect its innovation without ever filing a patent? In this episode, Professor Seth C. Oranburg explores how courts draw the line between fair competition and “improper means” through the landmark case E.I. duPont deNemours & Co. v. Christopher. The lecture explains why trade secret law protects reasonable—not perfect—efforts to maintain secrecy and how the concept of commercial morality shapes modern intellectual property law.
The episode then turns to the strategic choice every innovator faces: whether to patent or keep an invention secret. Using Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp., Professor Oranburg shows how U.S. law allows firms to balance disclosure and secrecy to optimize innovation. By the end, listeners will understand when patents make sense, when secrecy is smarter, and how to counsel clients through this pivotal decision.

PTS 1C: The UTSA, the DTSA, and the Global Framework of Trade Secret Law

In this final lecture of Module 1, Professor Seth C. Oranburg traces the modern architecture of trade secret protection—from the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) to the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA)—and explains how these two systems interact in practice.
Listeners learn when to file in federal versus state court, how “reasonable measures” differ from “reasonable efforts,” and why the DTSA’s extraordinary remedy of ex parte seizure is so rarely granted. The episode then expands to a global survey of trade secret regimes in the European Union, China, Canada, Mexico, and Israel, revealing how cross-border litigation and employee mobility shape modern strategy.
By the end, you’ll see how U.S. and international frameworks align—and why protecting confidential information now requires a truly multi-jurisdictional mindset.

PTS 2A: What Makes a Secret a Trade Secret — Information and Economic Value

Not all secrets are created equal. In this lecture, Professor Seth C. Oranburg unpacks the first two elements of trade secret law: identifying what counts as information and showing that it has independent economic value because it’s secret.
Drawing on landmark cases such as Altavion v. Konica Minolta and ClearOne v. Bowers, the episode explains how courts distinguish protectable knowledge from unprotectable ideas, skills, and physical objects. You’ll learn to classify trade secrets as technical, business, or hybrid—and to recognize when information loses protection because it’s generally known, easily reverse-engineered, or discovered by proper means.
By the end, you’ll understand why secrecy itself—not novelty—creates commercial value, and how to evaluate whether information is legally protectable before litigation begins.

PTS 2B: Reasonable Efforts — How Companies Win or Lose Trade Secret Protection

Trade secret protection lives or dies on one word: reasonable. In this lecture, Professor Seth C. Oranburg examines the third element of the trade secret test—reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy—and why this requirement transforms business habits into legal outcomes.
Through real-world cases like Airfacts v. Amezaga and Allstate v. Fougere, listeners see how courts separate credible protection programs from paper ones. The episode outlines what “reasonable” looks like in practice—from NDAs and access controls to monitoring and audits—and why consistency matters more than perfection.
By the end, you’ll understand that trade secret law doesn’t reward good intentions; it rewards discipline. Protecting secrets is not a promise—it’s proof.