Behind the Bench: Avoiding Accidents at the Intersection of Bankruptcy and Corporate Governance
November 17, 2026, 1:00PM EST. Corporate governance issues arise in small business cases and in the largest corporate bankruptcies. Our experts will discuss some of the hard problems that arise at the intersection of bankruptcy and corporate governance, such as:
Professor Jared Ellias, Harvard Law School, will moderate this panel featuring Hon. Laurie Selber Silverstein, and Hon. Michael Slade
Bios:
Jared A. Ellias is Scott C. Collins Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Professor Ellias writes and teaches about corporate debt and corporate debt restructuring. His research on corporate bankruptcy topics has been published or is forthcoming in leading peer reviewed law and social science journals (such as the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Legal Analysis and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies) as well as in leading student-edited law reviews (such as the Yale Law Journal, the Duke Law Journal, the California Law Review, the Southern California Law Review and the Yale Journal on Regulation). He regularly presents his work at leading academic conferences, faculty workshops at leading law schools in the United States and abroad, and at events for practicing lawyers and distressed debt professionals. His work has been selected twice for the Stanford/Yale/Harvard junior faculty forum and for presentation at the Weil, Gotshal & Manges Roundtable at Yale Law School. Three of his Articles have been designated by Corporate Practice Commentator as one of the Top 10 Corporate and Securities Laws Articles of the year (2020, 2022 and 2025), and one of his papers won the 2026 Grant Gilmore award for superior writing in the field of commercial finance law from the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers.
In 2020, he was named to the American Bankruptcy Institute’s “40 Under 40” list for his scholarship and professional leadership.
Ellias frequently advises state and federal lawmakers on bankruptcy-related issues and he has testified on corporate bankruptcy issues before the California State Senate and presented research at a wide variety of bankruptcy law conferences and events. He advised the California State Senate on the 2019 bankruptcy of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, one of the top ten largest industrial bankruptcies of all time that touched on many core issues of interest to the State of California. Before entering academia, Professor Ellias practiced corporate restructuring law in New York, representing creditors both in and out of bankruptcy court.
Hon. Laurie Selber Silverstein was sworn in as a bankruptcy judge for the District of Delaware on January 7, 2015, and she is one of eight judges serving on the court. Judge Silverstein maintains a docket of corporate chapter 11 cases as well as one-half of the consumer chapter 7 docket.
She received her law degree, with honors, in 1985 from The National Law Center of The George Washington
University, and her Bachelor of Science, cum laude, in 1982 from the University of Delaware.
Judge Silverstein is a member of the Committee on the Budget of the Judicial Conference of the United States. She is also a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a member of the American Bar Foundation, and is on the Executive Committee of the Delaware Bankruptcy American Inn of Court.
Hon. Michael Slade grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was a member of the Barkley Forum and earned a B.A. with High Honors in Political Science. Judge Slade then attended Harvard Law School, where he received a J.D. with Honors.
Following law school, Judge Slade served as a law clerk for Hon. Emilio M. Garza of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in San Antonio, Texas. In 2000, he joined Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago, where he practiced for 24 years, 19 as a partner. While at Kirkland, Judge Slade had a broad commercial and appellate practice, focusing on products liability, employment, and restructuring-related matters across the country. Judge Slade also taught as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School and had an active pro bono practice in which he, among other things, accepted appointments representing individual criminal defendants in their criminal cases. Judge Slade was appointed to the United States Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Illinois, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2024.
Judge Slade previously served on the Board of Directors for CARPLS (the Coordinated Advice and Referral Program for Legal Services), Cook County’s largest legal aid provider, for ten years, including two as President. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Chicago Bar Foundation and Thrive Scholars.
Hon. Philip Bentley was sworn in as a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York on September 7, 2022. He received his B.A. degree cum laude in 1981 from Yale College and his J.D. degree in 1984 from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar.
Prior to joining the Court, Judge Bentley was a partner in the bankruptcy and restructuring department of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP. His practice focused on complex litigation in bankruptcy courts, as well as other federal and state courts. In addition to representing debtors, trustees and examiners, he litigated on behalf of official committees and creditor groups in many large bankruptcies, including Purdue Pharma, Puerto Rico, Residential Capital, Madoff Investment Securities, General Motors, W.R. Grace, Adelphia Communications, WorldCom, Dow Corning and SGL Carbon.
Judge Bentley is a frequent speaker on bankruptcy issues. He is a member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and the Federal Bar Council’s Bankruptcy Litigation Committee, and he regularly serves as a court-appointed mediator in cases both large and small. Prior to his appointment, he was a member of the advisory board for the American Bankruptcy Institute’s annual New York City Bankruptcy Conference, as well as a longstanding member of the Policy Committee of Human Rights Watch.