Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Practical Questions for Bankruptcy Scholars

Catherine Steege is a partner with the firm of Jenner & Block LLP. She is co-chair of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Restructuring practice group, a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, and a conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference. She recently represented USA Gymnastics in its chapter 11 case and represented McKesson and an ad hoc group of other major distributors, pharmacies, and manufacturers in Purdue Pharma’s, Endo’s and Mallinckrodt’s chapter 11 cases. In addition to a traditional bankruptcy practice, she has represented numerous retiree committees including the retiree committees in the Puerto Rico, Armstrong Flooring, Budd Company, Walter Energy, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Northwest Airlines chapter 11 cases and represented numerous parties in complex bankruptcy litigation matters including her representation of the Zell defendants in the Tribune fraudulent conveyance litigation, the Sentinel Management Group Litigation Trustee, the Magnatrax Litigation Trust, the NKK Litigation Trust, and the Trustees of Emerald Casino Inc. and Consolidated Industries Corp. and Epic! Creations Inc.  She has an active appellate practice and argued in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Wellness International Network in the case Wellness International Network v. Sharif and represented the petitioner in Law v. Siegel and the respondent in City of Chicago v. Fulton. She represented the examiners in the Lehman Brothers and Celsius Network chapter 11 cases and authored the sections of the Lehman Brothers Examiner’s Report that considered potential avoidance actions against various financial institutions. 

Jonathan Lipson holds the Harold E. Kohn Chair and is a Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. He teaches Contracts, Bankruptcy, Corporations, Commercial Law and a variety of other business law courses.  In addition to Temple, he has taught at the law schools of the University of Wisconsin, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Baltimore.  Professor Lipson is a member of the American Law Institute, a Regent of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, and is the Assistant Reporter for the Model Business Corporation Act, promulgated by the Corporate Laws Committee of Business Law Section of the American Bar Association.

His research focuses on corporate governance, reorganization, and contracting practices.  He has published in some of the nation’s top law reviews, including those of the UCLA, Boston University, Notre Dame, and Southern California law schools.  He has been counsel of record to amici law professors in a number of significant appellate bankruptcy decisions, including in the Purdue Pharma and FTX bankruptcies. He was pro bono counsel to an opioid activist and survivor in Purdue Pharma, where he successfully obtained the appointment of a bankruptcy examiner over fierce resistance, which is detailed in Beth Macy’s book, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis (2022). 

Nancy B. Rapoport is a UNLV Distinguished Professor, the Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an Affiliate Professor of Business Law and Ethics in the Lee Business School at UNLV. Her specialties are bankruptcy ethics, ethics in governance, law firm behavior, and the depiction of lawyers in popular culture. She has served as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement (the Mob Museum) and currently serves as a Trustee of Claremont Graduate University and Chair of its Audit and Risk Management Committee. She is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. In 2017, she received the Commercial Law League of America’s Lawrence P. King Award for Excellence in Bankruptcy, and in 2018, she was one of the recipients of the NAACP Legacy Builder Awards (Las Vegas Branch #1111).