All posts tagged Katie Porter

Prof. Katie Porter to Speak at cdcbaa Program June 23, 2012

Next cdcbaa MCLE Program is sure to be a hit:

*Bankruptcy Mythbusters* *June 23, 2012*
*Southwestern Law School – 3050 Wilshire Boulevard – Westmoreland Building – 3rd Floor*

Panelist: Katherine Porter, A UC Irvine Law Professor.

General Meeting: 10:30am, CLE 11:00am-1:00pm

Many of you may know Prof. Porter as a UC Irvine Law Professor who was recently named by Attorney General Kamala Harris to serve as monitor of the mortgage settlement between California and five of the nation’s largest banks.  She is a nationally recognized expert in commercial and consumer law, has written several research articles taking aim at the banks and loan servicers for their [okay I’ll say it] FRAUD.  She is well versed in the mortgage crisis from a consumer perspective. Prof. Katie Porter CV

On October 15, 2011 Prof. Porter presented her Bankruptcy Mythbusters program at the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and received great reviews by some of our own judges and was mentioned in this blog article: National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges–10/15/2011 Mythbusters, by Stephen Sather.  This article is only a glimpse of what’s to come at our event. This should be very enlightening.

She has a book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class by Stanford Press, 2012.  Those of us that read and/or write blogs know her contributions to Credit Slips blog as a co-founder and contributor.

By clicking on any of the links provided herein you will find plenty of information regarding her contributions to consumers, her country and our practice. We are certainly privileged to have her as our guest for our next MCLE event.

See you all there!

— Christine A. Wilton, Esq. Law Office of Christine A. Wilton

Prof. Katie Porter’s Analysis of the Financial Management Program

I have been as big a critic as anyone about the silliness of the pre and postpetition counseling requirements.    The prepetition counseling is completed 99% of the time after the decision to file bankruptcy has been made and is usually done immediately prior to the actual filing.  A study by Prof. Katie Porter however has turned my eye a little about the postpetition financial management course.  You can find her analysis on the blog Credit Slips.  Here is a portion of the post.

Evaluating Mandatory Financial Education in Bankruptcy

posted by Katie Porter
Dr. Deborah Thorne and I have a new study that looks at how debtors themselves feel about the mandatory financial education course. It is a chapter in this book, Consumer Knowledge and Financial Decisions (ed. Douglas Lamdin, Springer, 2012) and available to read here. In the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we asked debtors whether they believed that the information from the financial education class 1)would what they learned in the financial education class have helped them avoid bankruptcy originally, and 2) would help them avoid financial trouble in the future. While only 33% thought a financial instruction course similar to the one required of bankruptcy debtors could have helped them avoid filing, 72% thought it would help them avoid future financial trouble.  As we report in detail in the chapter, some demographic groups were much more positive about the value of financial education than others.
About half (48.7%) of minority persons who filed bankruptcy, for example, thought the course would have helped them avoid bankruptcy; for whites, the response was 27.6%, a little more than half.  Similarly, there significant differences in the perceived value of financial education–both to have helped prevent their bankruptcy and to help them keep out of future financial trouble.  Those without a college degree, those aged under 25 years or 65 years or over, and those who less familiar with their household finances believed the course had more value.  Note that the point is not that the course actually would have or will help debtors; the measure here is debtor’s perception of value, which I think is well worth evaluating in a system that is designed to rehabilitate debtors.

New Book from Prof. Katie Porter

A few listserv members might be interested in a new book called Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class (available on Amazon at http://amzn.to/yslcVQ  among other places). The Amazon page has a table of contents and more information.

The book editor is Katie Porter, a law professor at UC-Irvine and Bankr-L list member. The chapters are from academics in economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and law (including two from me). For academics on the list, Katie Porter and Debb Thorne have syllabi that use the book for classes in law and sociology, respectively.

Bob

— Robert M. Lawless Professor of Law & Co-Director of the Illinois Program on Law, Behavior & Social Science University of Illinois College of Law