Portraits of Bankruptcy Filers (ECB211014-P2)

Thursday, October 14, 2021

10:05 AM to 10:55 AM (Eastern Daylight Time)

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About the Program

One in ten adult Americans have turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For the past nearly forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy comes from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which Professor Foohey, Professor Deborah Thorne, and Professor Robert Lawless serve as co-principal investigators. Professor Foohey will discuss their forthcoming article to be published in the Georgia Law Review, which uses CBP data from 2013 to 2019 to describe who is using the bankruptcy system, providing the first comprehensive overview of bankruptcy filers in thirty years. The article uses principal component analysis to leverage these data to identify distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy. This technique allows the co-principal investigators to situate the distinctions among filers’ financial and household situations within what bankruptcy laws and courts can and cannot provide. The article critiques the consumer bankruptcy system, based on the totality of people who have used it recently, to identify avenues for reforming bankruptcy and to underscore the broader economic, racial, and social issues that consumer bankruptcy filings highlight.

You Will Learn

  • About the distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy
  • How to reform the consumer bankruptcy system to address broader economic, racial, and social issues

Who Should Attend

Any attorney who practices in the area of commercial law and bankruptcy. 

CLE Credit: 0.75 CT (General); 1.0 NY (AOP)

 

Speaker

Pam Foohey Pamela Foohey
Cardozo School of Law, New York, NY