Texas A&M University School of Law students achieved Global Top 100 honors last week in the worldwide Business Strategy Game (BSG) competition for “thinking like a client and not like a lawyer.”

3Ls Jason Bewley and Andrew Dammann, and 2L Justin Comeau, were among the top finishers out of thousands to compete for the week of June 23. The competition offers an opportunity to explore business problems from a client’s perspective, thus enhancing the students’ perspective and ideally, creating better, more effective business-minded individuals, according to Professor Frank Snyder.

2L Justin Comeau, at center, strategizes on best business practices while teammates 3Ls Andrew Dammann (left) and Jason Bewley (right) collaborate. The trio recently achieved top honors in the Business Strategy Game global competition.

The trio strategizes in competition from week to week as part of Snyder’s summer course, Business Fundamentals for Lawyers. The group is responsible for running their own athletic footwear company in competition with other students in the class, in addition to other universities and corporations worldwide. “Each ‘week’ is one year of time,” Snyder said. “So, each week of class the team members have to set their strategy and make all the nuts-and-bolts decisions businesses have to make.”

Going into this competition, Comeau admits he was a bit intimidated competing alongside business majors and other corporations. However, the spirit of competition engaged him. “I spent a lot of time studying up on what was in the game and how everything affected everything else,” Comeau said. “At some point, my inner gamer took over … I asked, ‘How can I optimize the numbers?’ or ‘What affects the most values?’” He and his teammates spent hours each week going over their plans and focusing on business goals.

Four teams of three represent the law school, while other larger businesses and schools have as many as 60 teams. The competition’s creator, Arthur Thompson at University of Alabama, says Texas A&M School of Law is the first law school to participate.

Each year about 50,000 students in 3,000 class sections at 600 universities in 50 countries take part in the BSG competition. The Texas A&M Law teams compete against business majors and MBA students who use the game as part of their capstone courses in business strategy.

“This competition has shown me that we all have strengths we may not have realized we had,” Comeau said. “Our school is blessed to have a lot of talented, driven and intelligent students. This was a reminder that we all have areas where we can excel.”