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Business Law cover

Business

Business

Business Law

James Marson; Katy Ferris

An introductory textbook on English law for students of business, accounting and management who have no legal background. It explains how the legal system works and then covers the areas of law that most affect businesses, using worked examples and business scenarios to show how legal rules apply in practice.

Prerequisites: None; the book assumes no prior study of law.

Difficulty Level
Beginner
Academic Level
Undergraduate
business lawenglish lawcontract lawcompany lawemployment lawTextbook

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Marson, J., & Ferris, K. (2020). Business Law (6th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The sixth edition (May 2020) is a paperback of about 770 pages with twenty-four chapters in eight parts. It deals with the law of England and Wales and is written for students of business, management, finance and accounting rather than law students. According to the publisher, every chapter is built around "Business Scenarios", everyday problems showing how the law affects a company, employer, employee or other individual, and readers are repeatedly asked to pause and apply the material to them. Chapters end with sample problem and essay questions (indicative answers are online) and with suggestions for further reading.

Part 1: Introduction

Chapter 1: How to Study Law for Businesses. A study-skills chapter on approaching legal material and doing well in assessments, including a sample problem question with a model answer that shows how to structure an answer.

Part 2: The English Legal System (Chapters 2–4)

Chapter 2: The English Legal System, Constitution and Human Rights; Chapter 3: Creating, Finding, and Applying the Law; Chapter 4: Dispute Resolution for Businesses. This part explains the institutional framework: the constitution and the place of human rights, how law is made and how statutes and cases are found and applied, and the ways businesses resolve disputes.

Part 3: Contractual Obligations (Chapters 5–10)

Chapters 5–6: Establishing an Agreement: Offer and Acceptance; Establishing the Contract: Consideration, Intention to Create Legal Relations, and Certainty of Terms. The formation of a contract, step by step.

Chapters 7–10: Factors Affecting the Validity of a Contract; Terms of a Contract; Statutory Regulation of Contracts; Ending the Contract. What can make a contract invalid, how its terms are identified and interpreted, how statute controls contractual terms, and how contracts come to an end. With six chapters, contract is the largest single topic in the book.

Part 4: Tortious Liability (Chapters 11–13)

Chapter 11: The Tortious Liability of Businesses in Negligence and Nuisance; Chapter 12: Non-Physical Damage and Liability for Economic Loss; Chapter 13: Responsibilities of Employers for the Torts of Employees and Statutory Duties. Liability outside contract, framed throughout from the business's point of view: negligence and nuisance, losses that are not physical damage, and an employer's responsibility for its employees' wrongs.

Part 5: Company Law (Chapters 14–17)

Chapter 14: Legal Requirements When Establishing a Business Enterprise; Chapter 15: The Administration of Corporations; Chapter 16: Duties Relating to Corporation Finance and Capital; Chapter 17: The Management of Corporations. The choice and formation of business forms, the running of a company, the rules on finance and capital, and the management of companies.

Part 6: Agency Law

Chapter 18: Businesses and the Responsibility of Agents. The responsibility of businesses for the acts of the agents who act on their behalf.

Part 7: Employment (Chapters 19–23)

Chapter 19: Hiring Staff and Establishing the Contract of Employment; Chapter 20: Ending Employment Contracts at Common Law; and Duties to Redundant and Transferring Staff; Chapter 21: Statutory Regulation of Dismissals; Chapter 22: Equality in Employment Relationships; Chapter 23: Statutory and Common Law Regulation of the Conditions of Employment. The second-largest part follows the employment relationship from hiring to dismissal, then covers equality law and the regulation of working conditions.

Part 8: Intellectual Property and Data Protection

Chapter 24: Intellectual Property and Data Protection. A single closing chapter on protecting intangible assets and on the handling of personal data.

Key Concepts

Parts 1–2: Studying Law and the Legal System

  • Sources of law: legislation and case law, and how each is created, found and applied.
  • Human rights in the constitution: how rights protection fits within the English constitutional framework.
  • Dispute resolution: the courts and other routes by which businesses settle disputes.

Part 3: Contractual Obligations

  • Offer and acceptance: the matching of an offer with an unconditional acceptance that creates an agreement.
  • Consideration and intention to create legal relations: the further elements that make an agreement an enforceable contract.
  • Contract terms and their statutory regulation: what the parties have agreed and how legislation limits it.

Parts 4–6: Torts, Companies and Agency

  • Negligence and nuisance: the main forms of tortious liability a business faces.
  • Vicarious liability: an employer's responsibility for torts committed by its employees.
  • Corporation finance and capital: the legal duties around raising and maintaining a company's capital.
  • Agency: the power of an agent to create legal relations for a principal.

Parts 7–8: Employment, Intellectual Property and Data

  • Contract of employment: the legal basis of the employment relationship and its terms.
  • Unfair dismissal and redundancy: statutory protection when employment ends.
  • Equality in employment: legal protection against discrimination at work.
  • Intellectual property and data protection: rights in intangible assets and duties when processing personal data.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • Designed for non-law students. The publisher's description, written with business, management and accounting students in mind, is borne out by the structure: legal rules are introduced through Business Scenarios and chapter titles are framed around the business's position (the liability "of businesses", "duties relating to corporation finance").
  • Built-in assessment support. The opening chapter on studying law, its model answer, and the problem and essay questions at the end of chapters with indicative answers online make the book suitable for independent study and exam preparation, which is often the main difficulty for business students taking a law module.
  • Wide coverage in one volume. The book covers the legal system, contract, tort, company law, agency, employment law, intellectual property and data protection, so one text can support a full-year business law module.
  • Supporting materials. The publisher lists online flashcards of cases, self-test questions with feedback and additional material on legislation; the further reading includes websites and other online channels as well as books and articles.

Limitations

  • Jurisdiction-specific. The book is about English law and is of limited use to students in other legal systems, including Scotland or the United States, without a local text.
  • Dated in a fast-moving field. The edition was published in May 2020, before the end of the Brexit transition period and before later changes in employment and data protection law, so statutory material in Parts 7 and 8 should be checked against current law.
  • Uneven depth. Contract and employment take eleven of the twenty-four chapters, while intellectual property and data protection share a single chapter, and corporate governance as such does not appear in the chapter titles.

Where It Fits in the Course

Marson and Ferris is a first-year text in the business law and governance course, an alternative to Adams, Caplan and Lockwood's Law for Business Students, which is also an introduction to English law for business and management students covering contract, negligence, employment and business organisations. A course will usually adopt one or the other; Marson and Ferris places more emphasis on assessment skills and scenario-based learning, so it suits students who are anxious about studying law for the first time.

Clarkson and Miller's Business Law: Text and Cases covers similar topics under United States law, with excerpts from court decisions, and is useful only for comparative work. After this book, the course moves into company law and governance: Christine Mallin's Corporate Governance deals with boards, shareholders and codes, a topic Marson and Ferris treat only within company administration and management; Gower Principles of Modern Company Law is the detailed treatise on UK company law that takes Part 5 much further; and Eva Micheler's Company Law: A Real Entity Theory offers a theoretical account of the company for advanced study.

How to Use This Book

The book assumes no prior study of law and suits students of business, management, finance and accounting taking one or two law modules.

  • Start with Chapter 1, which gives guidance on studying law and on doing well in assessments; return to its sample problem question and model answer before each assessment.
  • Core for most modules: Part 2 (Chapters 2–4) for the framework, then Part 3 on contract (Chapters 5–10), which most business law courses treat in depth.
  • Select by syllabus: tort (Part 4), company law (Part 5) and employment (Part 7) are substantial blocks; many modules cover one or two of them. Agency (Chapter 18) is short and connects naturally with company law. Chapter 24 is an introduction only.

Work through each Business Scenario before reading on, and attempt the end-of-chapter problem question before checking the indicative answer online. Use the flashcard cases for revision. Because statute law in employment and data protection changes frequently, check key provisions against current sources and note where the law has moved since 2020.