Bankrupt Enron paid more than a billion dollars in cash to bankruptcy lawyers, financial advisors, and other bankruptcy professionals. The managers of Enron, like those of most bankrupt companies, paid the professionals with other peoples' money - money that would otherwise have gone to creditors, employees, shareholders, or to saving the companies. To prevent excessive payments, the bankruptcy code and rules establish an elaborate system for public reporting and court approval of professional fees.Armed with the ability to choose among courts that want or need to attract the cases, the professionals have largely taken charge of the fee-control system and rendered it toothless. The professionals ignore ignore the rules and the courts do nothing about it. Objections to fees are rare, and the courts award almost 99% of the amounts applied for. Fees rose at the rate of 9.5% per year from 1998 through 2007. Effective methods for assessing and controlling fees do exist, but it is not in the interests of the courts or the professionals to employ them. Based on a study of thousands of documents from the court files in 102 of the largest cases, bankruptcy expert, Lynn M. LoPucki, and political scientist, Joseph W. Doherty, provide an unprecedented window on the worlds of bankruptcy professionals, professional fees, and their scientific study. Through that window, readers see both a disturbing picture of a legal system in crisis and a hopeful one with opportunities for desperately needed reform.Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies is a scholarly work that employs statistical analysis, and documents its findings to scientific standards. But the authors have written for readers with technical backgrounds in neither bankruptcy nor statistics. This book will be of interest not only to scholars studying professional fees, but also to bankruptcy professionals, judges, policymakers, and anyone interested in the functioning of law-based systems.

Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies: Data, Analysis, and Evaluation

LoPucki, Lynn M.

Doherty, Joseph W.

Business

Oxford University Press

This invaluable storehouse of tactical guidance has earned unanimous praise for its practical, expert advice on securing your client's rights and achieving the best possible outcome from the bankruptcy process. Attorneys who are faced with perplexing developments in a case - or are trying to plan ahead and anticipate new developments in a case - can turn with confidence to Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings to find all the possible solutions to their clients' problems.Some of the interesting strategies address:Selling the company in an LBO? Structure the transaction to insulate it from preference avoidance.Licensing intellectual property from a company? Structure the license to take advantage of special protections in the Bankruptcy Code.Considering a loan to a financially troubled company? Better dust off your Deprizio waivers.Mortgagees, take a close look at your security agreement - you may be secured by more than just the debtor's personal residence, and that's not what you want in a chapter 13.Secured lenders, eliminate the possibility of a later 506(c) claim by settling early with the trustee.203 North Lasalle prohibited exclusive deals to shareholders - but new ways of avoiding it are being found. Here's how to oppose them. Watch for shareholder releases in the plan. If you don't object, you may be out of luck - but the right objection can save your cause of action.

Strategies for creditors in bankruptcy proceedings

Little,Brown

If you've taught from Secured Credit: A Systems Approach before,  cutting-edge coverage and extraordinary authorship is what you've come to  expect from two of the foremost authorities in commercial law and bankruptcy.  If you have never taught from this book, you have yet to discover the  flexibility of its modular organization, how convenient it is to teach using  the assignment units, and the pedagogical advantages to teaching the code in  the context of actual transactions. Secured Credit: A Systems Approach, Sixth Edition, features:   the Systems Approach, examining how the law is applied in actual  transactions   convenient assignment structure and problem-based pedagogy --for added  flexibility, some assignments in the Sixth Edition will be have half-way  stopping points, to allow one-and-a-half assignments to be covered in a single  75-minute class   adaptable modular organization that supports different teaching  approaches   a helpful review of the commonalities between secured transactions and  bankruptcy   Thoroughly revised to ensure currency and accuracy, with updated cases,  statutes, and rules, the Sixth Edition includes:   updates to reflect the adoption of Revised Article 1 by a majority of  states, while preserving old Article 1 section numbers for use in states that  haven't made the change   new material on chattel paper, instruments, accounts, and payment  intangibles, including the celebrated Commercial Money Center case   new material on asset securitization, the sale-lease distinction  --including In re Worldcom-- and new debtors  updated search methods and costs to reflect migration of the UCC filing  systems to the Internet   two simple, easy-to-use drafting problems --a one-sentence security  agreement and a financing statement   refreshed and revised problems   Whether you've been teaching with Secured Credit: A Systems Approach for years, or you're looking at it for the first time, we think you will be  impressed by all that it offers: Outstanding authorship, flexibility,  pedagogy, and teaching support.

Secured Credit: A Systems Approach (Law School Casebook Series)

Warren, Elizabeth

Little Brown & Co Law & Business

Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings

Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases Is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts

LoPucki's provocative critique of Chapter 11 is required reading for everyone who cares about bankruptcy reform. This empirical account of large Chapter 11 cases will trigger intense debate both inside the academy and on the floor of Congress. Confronting LoPucki's controversial thesis-that competition between bankruptcy judges is corrupting them-is the most pressing challenge now facing any defender of the status quo." -Douglas Baird, University of Chicago Law School "This book is smart, shocking and funny. This story has everything-professional greed, wrecked companies, and embarrassed judges. Insiders are already buzzing." -Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law, Harvard Law School "LoPucki provides a scathing attack on reorganization practice. Courting Failure recounts how lawyers, managers and judges have transformed Chapter 11. It uses empirical data to explore how the interests of the various participants have combined to create a system markedly different from the one envisioned by Congress. LoPucki not only questions the wisdom of these changes but also the free market ideology that supports much of the general regulation of the corporate sector." -Robert Rasmussen, University of Chicago Law School A sobering chronicle of our broken bankruptcy-court system, Courting Failure exposes yet another American institution corrupted by greed, avarice, and the thirst for power. Lynn LoPucki's eye-opening account of the widespread and systematic decay of America's bankruptcy courts is a blockbuster story that has yet to be reported in the media. LoPucki reveals the profound corruption in the U.S. bankruptcy system and how this breakdown has directly led to the major corporate failures of the last decade, including Enron, MCI, WorldCom, and Global Crossing. LoPucki, one of the nation's leading experts on bankruptcy law, offers a clear and compelling picture of the destructive power of "forum shopping," in which corporations choose courts that offer the most favorable outcome for bankruptcy litigation. The courts, lured by big money and prestige, streamline their requirements and lower their standards to compete for these lucrative cases. The result has been a series of increasingly shoddy reorganizations of major American corporations, proposed by greedy corporate executives and authorized by case-hungry judges.

Courting Failure: How Competition For Big Cases Is Corrupting The Bankruptcy Courts

Business & Money

Univ of Michigan Pr

Book by Lopucki, Lynn M., Warren, Elizabeth

Secured Credit: A Systems Approach

Investing

ASPEN PUB.

Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach, Revised Article 9 Supplement

Aspen Law & Business

This invaluable storehouse of tactical guidance has earned unanimous praise for its practical, expert advice on securing your client's rights and achieving the best possible outcome from the bankruptcy process. Attorneys who are faced with perplexing developments in a case - or are trying to plan ahead and anticipate new developments in a case - can turn with confidence to Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings to find all the possible solutions to their clients' problems. Some of the interesting strategies address: Selling the company in an LBO? Structure the transaction to insulate it from preference avoidance. Licensing intellectual property from a company? Structure the license to take advantage of special protections in the Bankruptcy Code. Considering a loan to a financially troubled company? Better dust off your Deprizio waivers. Mortgagees, take a close look at your security agreement - you may be secured by more than just the debtor's personal residence, and that's not what you want in a chapter 13. Secured lenders, eliminate the possibility of a later 506(c) claim by settling early with the trustee. 203 North Lasalle prohibited exclusive deals to shareholders - but new ways of avoiding it are being found. Here's how to oppose them. Watch for shareholder releases in the plan. If you don't object, you may be out of luck - but the right objection can save your cause of action.

This is a casebook that covers all the major aspects of commercial law.

Commercial Law

Mann, Ronald J.

Keating, Daniel L.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LoPucki, Lynn M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by LoPucki, Lynn M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LoPucki, Lynn M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies: Data, Analysis, and Evaluation

Strategies for creditors in bankruptcy proceedings

Secured Credit: A Systems Approach (Law School Casebook Series)

Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings

Courting Failure: How Competition For Big Cases Is Corrupting The Bankruptcy Courts

Secured Credit: A Systems Approach

Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach, Revised Article 9 Supplement

Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings

Commercial Law

Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings