Robert M. Lawless
Max L. Rowe Professor of Law
Co-Director, Illinois Program on Law, Behavior and Social Science
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About
About
A nationally recognized expert in bankruptcy law, consumer finance, and empirical legal studies, Robert M. Lawless is the Max L. Rowe Professor of Law. Professor Lawless has published extensively on topics related to financial distress, business and consumer bankruptcy, and the intersection of law and social science. He co-directs the College of Law’s Program on Law, Behavior & Social Science and is a faculty affiliate of the university’s Center for Social & Behavioral Science and Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. Committed to bridging scholarship and real-world policy, Professor Lawless has played a key role in shaping discussions on bankruptcy reform.
Professor Lawless is a co-author of Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy. Scheduled for release in August 2025, Debt’s Grip combines empirical data with personal narratives from bankruptcy filers to document what it means to live in financial precarity. Professor Lawless is also a co-author of leading textbooks in the fields of secured transactions and empirical methods in law. He administers and contributes to the blog Credit Slips, a discussion on credit, finance, and bankruptcy. He is a co-principal investigator in the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-term research project studying persons who file bankruptcy.
Professor Lawless has served in leadership roles in major legal organizations, including the National Bankruptcy Conference and the American College of Bankruptcy. As the reporter for the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy (2017–2019), he played a pivotal role in shaping its findings, earning the ABI’s 2019 Annual Service Award. He has testified before the U.S. Senate on consumer protection and bankruptcy reform and has been an influential voice in policy discussions.
Born and raised in Illinois, Professor Lawless earned both his undergraduate degree in accounting and his law degree from the University of Illinois. During law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. Before joining the University of Illinois, he taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the University of Missouri. He also held visiting professorships at Washington University in St. Louis and The Ohio State University. He began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Harlington Wood, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit before practicing law in Washington, D.C.
Education
BS, JD University of Illinois
Areas of Expertise
Bankruptcy
Business Law
Consumer Finance
Publications
Selected Publications
Empirical Methods in Law, Second Edition (Aspen 2016) (with Jennifer K. Robbennolt & Thomas S. Ulen)
Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach. Eighth Edition (Aspen, 2016) (with Lynn M. LoPucki & Elizabeth Warren)
“No Money Down” Bankruptcy, S. Cal. L. Rev. forthcoming (with Pamela Foohey, Katherine Porter & Deborah Thorne)
Race, Attorney Influence, and Bankruptcy Chapter Choice, 9 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 323 (2012) (with Jean Braucher and Dov Cohen)
Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study of Consumer Debtors, 82 Am. Bankr. L.J. 349 (2008) (with Angela Littwin, Katherine Porter, John Pottow, Deborah Thorne, and Elizabeth Warren)
The Paradox of Consumer Credit, 2007 U. Ill. L. Rev. 347
The Myth of the Disappearing Business Bankruptcy, 93 Cal. L. Rev. 743 (2005) (with Elizabeth Warren)
See All PublicationsCourses
Courses
Bankruptcy
Consumer Finance
Empirical Methods in Law
JSD Seminar
Secured Transactions
News
- Lawless publishes new article on overindebtedness (Annual Reviews, November 27, 2024)