With the move to WordPress, we can now connect the blog to our Bluesky account. Our posts should now automatically post there. A good way to keep updated on our content is to follow us on Bluesky — @creditslipsblog.bsky.social. No promises, but if there are other social media sites on which you like to see our content, I would be interested to hear your comments.
Author: Bob Lawless
-
Welcome to the New Credit Slips
Posted by
This is the new Credits Slips! A few things have changed, and most things are the same. Most importantly, you will continue to find us here at this same URL. We hope you like the new, cleaner design. If you are reading us on an RSS feed, you will need to change the feed URL to our new one (https://creditslips.org/feed/). All of the old posts have been imported to this new site. Linked files and images might have disappeared on old posts.
Most significantly, the author team has changed a bit. We welcome Professor Christopher Odinet from Texas A&M. He is another of our commercial and insolvency law junkies, and he adds significant expertise to the blogging team with his knowledge of digital assets.
Thank you for being a reader. We look forward to bringing you the same content here as we always have.
-
Typepad and the Future of Credit Slips
Posted by
As many of you have seen, Typepad is closing down on September 30. They have hosted this blog since 2006.
The good news is that we are moving the blog to a WordPress site. The URL, creditslips.org, will remain the same. We hope the new format is a little cleaner than our current site. We hope that work is done in a week or two. Until then, it seems that Typepad is having more problems as we get closer to the shutdown date. In fact, it ate the first draft of this posit. Please have patience if the Typepad site suffers from periods when it is not accessible.
-
Chapter 11s Did Not Spike in July 2025
Posted by
There were a number of reports that commercial chapter 11 filings jumped dramatically in July 2025. Unfortunately, these headlines appear to be from junk data and from sources that should know better such as the American Bankruptcy Institute and Epiq AACER. From working with both organizations in the past, I know they value accuracy. This post is a plea to do better.
The headlines are that commercial chapter 11 filings in July 2025 jumped 78% on a year-over-year basis. Supposedly, there were 911 commercial chapter 11s in July 2025 compared with only 512 in July 2024. Amid all the concerns about our national economy, that would be a notable increase if only it was true. Of those 911 new chapter 11s, almost a third were from the Genesis Healthcare bankruptcy. Ironically, Epiq is the claims agent and keeper of the public docket for the case. When a corporate group files bankruptcy, each one of its affiliates files its own bankruptcy petition. There is no connection between how the corporate group is organized and the size of the case. For example, the similarly sized Del Monte Foods filed bankruptcy with only 18 companies in its corporate group.
-
Debt’s Grip Now Available!
Posted by
Today is the official release date for our new book, Debt's Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy, from the University of California Press. Debt's Grip uses eleven years of court records and surveys from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project to provide a thick description of what it means to live in financial precarity in the United States. Through personal narratives from our surveys, bankruptcy filers describe in their own words the privations and struggles they suffered. It has been a privilege to work with Pamela Foohey (also a Slips blogger) of the University of Georgia and Debb Thorne of the University of Idaho to put this book together.
We wrote the book so it would be accessible to nonlawyers. The second chapter of the book describes the bankruptcy process in plain English. We then continue by documenting the increasingly lengthy period of time people sit in the financial "sweatbox" before filing bankruptcy. The next three chapters are built around types of debts–home and car debts, medical debts, and credit card and other unsecured debts. Demographics are part of the bankruptcy story. A chapter discusses how the bankruptcy system both reflects and exacerbates larger patterns of racial inequality. Another chapter looks at the overrepresentation of women and especially single women raising children. We then look at the fastest growing group of bankruptcy filers — adults age 65 and over. The book then turns to how debt collection and changes in that industry have shaped bankruptcy filings. The final chapter was supposed to be about the exceptions — bankruptcy filers with resources who were using the system to escape debts they could pay. I say "supposed to be" because we could not find those cases from the 8,800 files in our sample. Well, we did find one, but the court dismissed the case!
The book is available from the UC Press, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other outlets. We have a busy semester of events where we will be discussing the book and are always looking for more opportunities.
-
Arbitration for Thee, But Not for Mike Lindell
Posted by
The Eighth Circuit has overturned an arbitration award in favor of a software developer who took up the $5 million challenge of MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell, to "Prove Mike Wrong" about his claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The dispute went to arbitration per the boilerplate predispute terms in Mr. Lindell's contest rules. The arbitrators heard the evidence, gave reasons for their decisions, and decided in favor of the software developer. The software developer then used the Federal Arbitration Act, which requires federal courts to confirm an arbitration award (making them enforceable as a court judgment).
-
The “Big Beautiful Bill” & Law-School Student Loan Debt
Posted by
The president has done yet another thing that will have massive effects on legal education. No, this is not about how I must overhaul my Consumer Finance syllabus. Granted, the poor saps who teach Constitutional Law have it worse, but they knew what they signed up for.
If you have not dug into the details of H.R. 1, An Act to Provide for Reconciliation Pursuant to Title II of H. Con. Res. 14, there are some biggies for those who care about how legal education is funded and administered. Known in some circles as the "Big, Beautiful Bill," this law massively overhauls federal student loan programs. Jeff Robledo at USA Today has a good summary of what the changes mean for borrowers generally. For law schools, there is a biggie.
-
The 23andMe Court Got It Right; Is that Wrong?
Posted by
The bankruptcy court approved 23andMe's motion to sell its assets in its chapter 11 case. Those assets include the genetic information its customers had entrusted to the company. Understandably, many customers and government regulators had concerns about the deal. In the end, Judge Walsh got it right on the law.
All that was at issue in the motion before Judge Walsh was whether 23andMe satisfied the requirements to sell assets in bankruptcy. The consumer privacy ombudsman suggested restrictions on the transfer of its customers' genetic information. Those restrictions might serve the common weal, but Judge Walsh had to stick to the law Congress had given him. That law is a textual mess. The intentionalism and purposivism on display in the opinion cuts through the textual problems. There is a lot to the opinion, but for now I will just focus on the section 363 issue.
-
What Are Law Reviews Good For?
Posted by
Adam recently posted his laments about the state of law reviews, which has been an issue only since the 1930s. I have a different theoretical lens that fills a gap in the literature that, at first blush, seems counterintuitive, and for the first time in the history of civilization fills an unexplored niche. I have now run out of law-review clichés (but invite commenters to list their favorites).
The Washington Free Beacon story about the publication practices at the Harvard Law Review moves me not at all. If web sites can be "rags," the Beacon is an egregious one. As I write this post, the main headline reads, "Trump Delivers Victory in 12-Day War: Thank You, Mr. President, for Your Attention to This Matter." I put no reliance on a document review from any organization with such a thin connection to reality and committed obeisance to a regime that itself treats reality as an obstacle to overcome. Maybe somebody with more time will dig through the thousands of pages of documents the Beacon made available. As far as I know, no one has questioned their authenticity although it would be fair to wonder whether the Beacon has curated the documents it made available.
Still, Adam is not wrong, and he raises a good question. What good are law reviews in a world of widely available online sources where authors can quickly connect with audiences (such as the blog post you are reading)? Do law reviews now cause more harm than good?
-
Sharing Risk
Posted by
Credit Slips readers will want to check out a brand-new book from Pat McCoy, the Liberty Mutual Insurance Professor at Boston College Law School (and a past guest blogger here). Sharing Risk offers both a diagnosis and prescription for the financial precarity of American households. Because over half of Americans do not make enough to meet basic needs, they often turn to borrowing to make ends meet. McCoy proposes expended risk-sharing arrangements about income security, housing, health insurance, and college education. McCoy's proposals seek to enable American families to flourish and secured their economic well-being.
The book is available directly from the University of California Press. McCoy also passed along that she is now blogging at a new substack.