Read here about the Moringiello award. And stay tuned for information about a memorial volume of scholarship in Juliet’s honor.
Category: Academic & Scholarly News
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Telling Anecdotes About Bankruptcy Filers
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The very recently released Issue 99:3 of the American Bankruptcy Law Journal features the return of its book review series. My co-authors Robert Lawless and Deborah Thorne and I are honored that the journal’s editors picked Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy for the series re-introduction. Professors Alexandra Sickler and Edward Janger kindly wrote book reviews, as well as participated in a recorded roundtable hosted by ABLJ and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges focusing on the book.
In our response to their reviews, Anecdotes on the Data in Debt’s Grip, we highlight some of our go-to stories of bankruptcy filers’ journeys through financial hardship, as written to us, via the survey we send to the people who file bankuptcy. These stories are vivid reminders of people’s struggles. Or, as Ted Janger wrote, “[t]he picture painted by [us in Debt’s Grip] is dark.” Still, we hope that sharing the stories — in our response and in Debt’s Grip itself — will bring some light to the financial precarity faced by households across the United States.
The full new issue of ABLJ is here.
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How Not To Do A Bankruptcy Literature Review
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I was excited to see a new article purporting to offer a “bibliometric analysis of research on personal insolvency.” My excitement soon turned to disappointment as I realized how fundamentally flawed the “analysis” was. To make lemonade out of lemons, I offer this cautionary tale for future analysts to avoid a research method gone horribly wrong. (more…)
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Encouraging People To File Bankruptcy — A Book To Recommend To Potential Clients
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A few months ago, Slipster Bob Lawless, former Slipster Deborah Thorne, and I published Debts Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy. The book draws on eleven years of data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project to document the financial consequences of decades of risk privatization for individuals and families across the United States. Some people ultimately will file bankruptcy. Over the past few months, during panel discussions, podcasts, and interviews, we have been asked about the value of people filing bankruptcy earlier. We (well, at least I) think that for many people, filing sooner would be advantageous. People deplete their assets in the years they struggle before filing and suffer psychologically and physically from the stress of unmanageable debts. Based on our data, the stigma of bankruptcy and the inability to make good on their contracts remains a barrier to filing. So, how to encourage people to file? And, relatedly, how to make people feel “good” about their bankruptcies such that they have a better chance at succeeding when they are released post-bankruptcy into the same economic and social structure that may be stacked against them?
I recently spoke about Debt’s Grip as part of the National Association of Bankruptcy Attorneys‘ meeting. There I saw Adrienne Hines, a bankruptcy attorney from Ohio who I knew from her social media presence as The Lady Like Lawyer (Instagram, TikTok). I picked up her new book, Bankruptcy Magic: The Life-Changing Power of Debt Relief With Dignity. The book puts into a written guide format for people the core message of her social media: that filing bankruptcy can be an effective solution to unmanageable debt challenges for which people do not need to feel ashamed. Adrienne’s social media accounts are an excellent resource for struggling debtors. Her book may be even more excellent. It is part of the answer to the question of how to encourage people to file sooner.
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The “Big Beautiful Bill” & Law-School Student Loan Debt
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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.
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What Are Law Reviews Good For?
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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?
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It’s Time to Get Rid of Law Reviews
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The Washington Beacon has published an absolutely jaw-dropping piece about the Harvard Law Review's article selection process, which allegedly gives substantial consideration not just to the assumed identity (race, gender, sexual orientation) of the author, but to the assumed identity of the authors of sources cited. (Who knew that I should have been indicating in every citation the race, gender, and orientation of the author?)
I haven't bothered submitting to HLR for some time, but if the allegations are true, it still leaves me dismayed that I have had my time wasted as an author and furious that I have had my time wasted doing outside reviews. Don't ask me to do free reviews when it's just for show. I'm just waiting for the class action…
It’s easy to dismiss the HLR fiasco as an example of woke gone wild, and that’s undoubtedly part of the problem, but the more fundamental problem is that student editors should have no business selecting articles. Indeed, as I will argue below, law reviews are a medium that has served its purpose and they should shut down—there’s a much better way to disseminate legal scholarship: connecting authors directly to legal research databases (direct-to-database publishing).
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AI Models on Law School Exams
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The question of how well AI can do on law school exams is one that interests me, since I give exams and want them to be a measure of how much my students have learned (as opposed to their skills at using AI — although I want them to learn those too). Others appear to be interested too — just see the ssrn downloads for papers on this topic. Caveat: I can't pretend that I have more than the shallowest of understandings of AI models. But this cool new paper I came across might be of interest to folks.
The paper is from a set of scholars at ETH in Zurich (a place long known for its excellent research). As I understand the draft (and, to repeat, I don't understand a lot of this stuff), the paper finds that the large language models (LLMs) don't do that great when you increase the level of reasoning required on the exam. I was also intrigued to read (I think) that LLMs are not necessarily better on multiple choice exams than essay type ones. From the abstract, here is a sentence that stood out: "Our evaluation on both open-ended and multiple-choice questions present significant challenges for current LLMs; in particular, they notably struggle with open questions that require structured, multi-step legal reasoning".
The paper is "LEXam: Benchmarking Legal Reasoning on 340 Legal Exams"
Among the other cool things about this paper to me is how collaborative it is — students, professors, and even judges. To me, it reflects well on the culture of the institution that has such a degree of collaboration.
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Sharing Risk
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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.
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Virtual Access to Event in Memory of Juliet Moringiello March 20 2025
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Widener University Commonwealth Law School will hold an event honoring Professor Juliet Moringiello on March 20, 2025 at 1pm ET. Friends and fans of Juliet are welcome and encouraged to join virtually. The Zoom link is embedded in the image accompanying this post as well as accessible here. I will repeat what Widener says in the bottom of the image about Juliet: "Professor Moringiello was a beloved scholar, professor, mentor, author, administrator, colleague, and friend whose impact on our students and institution was profound and will never be forgotten. We gather to celebrate her contributions to the legal field, share memories, and find comfort in one another."