Fall 2021 Course Schedule

Bankruptcy & Creditors' Rights (LAW-627-001)
Walter Effross

Meets: 09:30 AM - 10:50 AM (TuTh) - Yuma - Room Y250

Enrolled: 7 / Limit: 22

Administrator Access


Notices

There are no notices at this time.

Description

Bankruptcy & Creditors’ Rights- Professor Effross (Fall 2021) - (Course 627-001)

[for auditing option, see end of this document]

This course focuses on the legal strategies of individuals and companies to collect what they are owed as lenders, sellers, licensors, or successful plaintiffs; and also on how these efforts can be disrupted by the personal/consumer bankruptcies (federal Bankruptcy Code Chapters 7 and 13) and corporate bankruptcies (Chapters 7 and 11) of borrowers/buyers/licensees/defendants.

Often, the respective rights of those owed versus those owing cannot be resolved simply by plugging numbers into mathematical formulas. Instead, they implicate a wide and complex variety of policy and social justice concerns; introduce practical techniques of client counseling, business planning, statutory interpretation, and legislative and transactional drafting; and invoke deep and far-reaching issues of (and tensions among) trust, responsibility, honor, shame, fairness, stability/continuity, flexibility, predictability, forgiveness, redemption, self-renewal, equity, and (both legal and business) ethics.

Bankruptcy and creditors’ rights are among today’s most high-profile, in-demand, intellectually exciting, and “portable” (among firms and states) practice areas. They offer opportunities both of specialization (as separate and intricate legal field) and universality (in their interactions with a wide variety of other areas of law); provide occasions to engage not only in transactional work but also in litigation; and enable counsel pursuing any legal practice to protect themselves and their clients from their own and others’ financial distress. In addition, some states’ bar examinations test Creditors’ Rights.

We will discuss in detail the federal Bankruptcy Code and Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. Besides a casebook, our materials will include newspaper and magazine articles, Web postings, commentaries (such as law review articles, and proposals to revise the Bankruptcy Code), official forms, and filings from actual bankruptcy proceedings.

The examination will be an open-book, anonymously-graded take-home paper (with sources restricted to the materials studied during the semester) of 3,000 to 3,500 words, on an assigned topic to be distributed in our final class session of the semester. It will be due during one of the early days of the fall examination period.

There are no course prerequisites to this course.

Learning Goals: To understand the goals, processes, dynamics, and relevant provisions of the laws of creditors’ rights and of bankruptcy, as well as related issues of professional ethics, business planning, and transactional and legislative drafting.

Outcome: In the final paper, students will be able to analyze and respond critically to a general statement about the topics identified above.

*Auditing Option:

Class audits are charged the same amount of tuition as classes taken for credit.

Auditing students do not receive credit for the course toward graduation requirements, but it will appear on their transcript with a grade of “L” to indicate auditing. To request permission to audit a course, please contact the Office of the Registrar at registrationservices@wcl.american.edu.

Textbooks and Other Materials

The textbook information on this page was provided by the instructor. Students should use this information when considering purchases from the AU Campus Store or other vendors. Students may check to determine if books are currently available for purchase online.

Our coursebook will be Tabb & Brubaker, Bankruptcy Law: Principles, Policies, and Practice (5th ed. 2021) (Carolina Academic Press, ISBN #9781531013622), which should be available in early August through Amazon’s, and the publisher’s, Web site.

A digital version of the book is now available for licensing from the publisher, at https://redshelf.com/book/1893508

For those who do not wish to purchase their own hard copy, one will be available on closed reserve in the Pence Law Library.

First Class Readings

Not available at this time.