Unit Synopsis
The Law of Startups is a simulation based unit designed to enable you to navigate through complex cross-disciplinary challenges facing startups involving multiple legal issues, business and ethical decisions. The focus is on practical evidence based decision making enabling you to resolve legal issues rather than pure analysis of legal authorities. The real world is messy and interconnected. The unit will immerse you in a legal simulation involving many of the following factors: Developing a pitch; Business structures; Business Risk; Financing; Intellectual property issues; Protecting confidential information and trade secrets; Licensing; Security law; Employment law – staffing issues; Taxation issues; Marketing and Advertising, Consumer law issues; Standard form contracts; Terms of use and privacy policies; and exit strategies.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 2 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 4 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Co-requisite: LAWS11057 Introduction to Law or LAWS11030. Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Presentation | 40% |
| 2. Critical Review | 60% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 1 - 2023 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 81.82% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 24.44% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Unit evaluation survey.
The course was well received but there were serious complaints about group work accounting for 40% of the overall assessment as some group member did less and seemed to have benefitted more from the hard-work of others. There was also a suggestion for a taxation topic and trust obligations be included in the course content.
The unit is designed to promote team work collaboration which is essential for many business organisations. I think this design should be maintained. However, to ensure students are fully on board with the rationale for the teamwork, the essence of the collaboration should be clearly communicated to students. Groups may also be reduced to a maximum of two per group with the students given the option of picking a partner for the teamwork. A short discussion on taxation law should be included in the course content for the next offering.
The unit retained the 40% group work; student feedback on assessments was positive in the following iteration.
Source: Discussions with Head of College.
This unit is not scheduled to be offered again.
Unit to be withdrawn from offerings.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Synthesise the pitch, initial planning and imagining of an organisation structure
- Use innovation, design and systems thinking to analyse data patterns and trends, resolve issues with finance and security to ensure sustainable growth
- Assess a crisis, evaluate alternative solutions to avoid startup collapse and evaluate alternative exit strategies
Not applicable.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| 1 - Presentation | • | • | • |
| 2 - Critical Review | • | • | • |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | • | • |
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | ||
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • |
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | ||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | • | ||
| 8 - Ethical practice | • | ||
| 9 - Social Innovation | • | ||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |