The Legislative Landscape for Consumer Bankruptcy: Chapter 10, Student Loans and Beyond

Prof. Adam J. Levitin is the Anne Fleming Research Professor and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he teaches courses in bankruptcy, commercial law and financial regulation.

Before joining Georgetown faculty, he practiced in the Business Finance & Restructuring Department of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP, and clerked for Hon. Jane R. Roth on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Prof. Levitin has also previously served as the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, as the ABI Robert N. Zinman Scholar in Residence, as special counsel to the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board. A laureate of the American Law Institute’s Young Scholar’s Medal, he has testified before Congress more than 30 times and is the author of numerous books and articles.

Prof. Levitin is also a elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He received his A.B. magna cum laude in Near Eastern languages and civilizations and history from Harvard College, his A.M. and M.Phil. in history from Columbia University, and his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Prof. Robert M. Lawless is the Max L. Rowe Professor of Law and co-director of the Program on Law, Behavior & Social Science at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Ill., where he writes and teaches about bankruptcy, consumer finance and business law. He also served as the College’s associate dean for research from 2013-16.

Prof. Lawless served as the reporter for the ABI’s Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy and was the recipient of ABI’s Service Award in 2019. He is a co-author of Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach and Empirical Methods in Law. He also is a regular contributor to the blog Credit Slips, a discussion on credit, finance and bankruptcy.

Prof. Lawless has testified before Congress, and his work has been featured in media outlets such as CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the National Law Journal, the L.A. Times and the Financial Times. He received both his undergraduate degree in accounting and his J.D. from the University of Illinois, during which time he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review.