Find the one percent. A long time ago, when I was in law school, I took a course called “International Business Transactions,” taught by a professor named Harold Hongju Koh. I don’t remember much about the particulars of what we learned in class that semester—a few things about letters of credit, I think, and some stuff about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But I’ve never forgotten something Professor Koh told our class one spring afternoon. He said that in an attempt to understand the law—or, for that matter, just about anything—the key was to focus on what he termed the “one percent.”
...more