Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Lynn LoPucki

Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law

Expertise

Comparative Corporate Law  • Corporate Law  • Corporate Social Responsibility  • Debtor-Creditor Relations  • Empirical Analysis of Law  • Large Public Company Bankruptcies  • Legal Strategy  • Secured Transactions  • Systems Analysis of Law  • 

About

Professor Lynn M. LoPucki comes to UF in August 2022 from the UCLA School of Law where he taught Secured Transactions and Business Associations for twenty-two years. His Stakeholder Takeover Project is an effort to provide corporate stakeholders with the information they need to control corporations through markets. For example, the Project website ranks the S&P 500 companies by their greenhouse gas emissions. The UC Davis Law Review published the first Project article, Repurposing the Corporation Through Stakeholder Markets, in February 2022 and will publish the second, Corporate Greenhouse Gas Disclosures, in November.

Professor LoPucki has published more than seventy-five articles in highly regarded law reviews, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and Northwestern University Law Review. He co-authors three Aspen Casebooks:  Business Associations: A Systems Approach (2020) (with Andrew Verstein); Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach (9th edition with Elizabeth Warren and Robert M. Lawless), and Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach (7th edition with Elizabeth Warren, Daniel L. Keating, Ronald Mann, and Robert M. Lawless).

Since 1994, the Florida-UCLA-LoPucki Bankruptcy Research Database has collected large, public company bankruptcy data and disseminated it to the public and to bankruptcy researchers throughout the world.  Those data provided the foundation for Professor LoPucki’s books, Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts (University of Michigan Press 2005) and Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies: Data, Analysis, and Evaluation (Oxford University Press, 2011) (with Joseph Doherty).

Education

B.A., University of Michigan
J.D., University of Michigan
LL.M., Harvard

Teaching and Scholarship

  • Business Associations
  • Secured Transactions
  • Corporate Social Responsibility

Publications

Selected Books

  • Business Associations: A Systems Approach (Aspen Publishing 2021) (with Andrew Verstein)
  • Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach (Aspen Publishing 9th edition 2020) (with Elizabeth Warren and Robert M. Lawless)
  • Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach (Aspen Publishing 7th edition 2020) (with Elizabeth Warren, Daniel Keating, Ronald J. Mann, and Robert M. Lawless)
  • Strategies for Creditors in Bankruptcy Proceedings (Wolters Kluwer 7th edition 2021) (with Christopher R. Mirick and Christopher G. Bradley)
  • Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies: Data, Analysis, and Evaluation (Oxford University Press 2011) (with Joseph W. Doherty)
  • Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases Is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts (University of Michigan Press 2005, paperback 2006)

Selected Articles

  • Corporate Greenhouse Gas Disclosures,  56 UC Davis Law Review (forthcoming 2022)
  • Chapter 11’s Descent into Lawlessness, 96 American Bankruptcy Law Journal (forthcoming 2022)
  • Repurposing the Corporation Through Stakeholder Markets, 55 UC Davis Law Review 1445 (2022)
  • The PowerPoint Channel, 17 University of Massachusetts Law Review 41 (2021)
  • The Systems Approach to Teaching Business Associations, 2020 Michigan State Law Review 703 (with Andrew Verstein)
  • A Rule-Based Method for Comparing Corporate Laws, 94 Notre Dame Law Review 263 (2018)
  • Corporate Charter Competition, 102 Minnesota Law Review 2102 (2018)
  • Algorithmic Entities, 95 Washington University Law Review 887 (2018)

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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.