What Communities Can Do to Rein In Payday Lending: Strategies for Successful Local Ordinance Campaigns through a Texas Lens

Because New Mexico has one of the highest consumer usage rates and highest concentrations of payday and title loan shops in the nation,2 we thought it would be an ideal place to measure the public’s knowledge of and interest in these ubiquitous loans. We also measured knowledge of interest rate caps in the context of credit cards, as a point of comparison. Our data are consistent with that of previous studies showing that the general public overwhelmingly supports interest rate caps both in general and for certain types of loans. More uniquely, we also found that many consumers are unaware that there are no interest rate caps on many forms of consumer loans. These data are useful in explaining why consumers do not do more to change the law on interest rate caps

Consumer Credit in America: Past, Present, and Future

In September 2016, in conjunction with Law & Contemporary Problems at Duke University School of Law, we organized a symposium on Consumer Credit in America. We sought to assess the state of consumer credit in America — to review and examine its recent history, to consider arguments for and against regulation, and to discuss the potential for future innovation. This is the introduction to the volume of articles coming out of that symposium

Les Jeux Ne Sont Pas Fait: The Right to Dignified Long-Term Care in the Face on Industry-Wide Financial Failure

This Article explores issues that we, as a society, would rather not, but must, discuss. These issues include aging, how the future costs of long-term care will be paid, and what form and quality of long-term care will continue to be financed through Medicare. More specifically, this Article discusses the philosophical issues raised by the cuts, as well as the practical implications of the cuts for patients and residents. It also attempts, primarily through information about the administrative and other costs of the federal bankruptcy process, to refute government claims that these cuts have not and will not affect patient care. Part I of this Article describes the extent of the financial failure in the nursing home and home-health industries, briefly explains what funds were cut by the BBA, and briefly describes the Government\u27s position with respect to the effects of the cuts. Because so many long-term care providers are now operating under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, Part II describes the general Chapter 11 process, the difficulty of successfully reorganizing under Chapter 11, the high direct and indirect costs of all bankruptcy proceedings, and the risks that bankruptcy poses for patients and residents. Part III discusses other risks created by the cuts, particularly the unavailability of necessary care. Part IV calls for a public discourse about our national policy with respect to both aging and funding long-term care with public funds. Ultimately this Article concludes that we left too much up to Congress, in expecting it to be able to address this complex and taboo issue

Explorations in the Classroom: A Book Review of Secured Credit: A Systems Approach

Part I of this book review discusses and summarizes two prior reviews of this book. Part II discusses how the book successfully provides context and relevance to its highly technical subject matter, through the use of pop culture, helpful ordering of the materials, and realistic problem sets. Part III describes some of the many ways this book can be used to provide flexibility in the classroom, from teaching different learning styles to creating additional components to the course grade. Part IV concludes that any teacher of Secured Transactions should strongly consider trying this text

Funding Long-Term Care: Some Risk-Spreaders Create More Risk Than They Cure

The purpose of this Article is to explore two different aspects of the long-term care issue. First, what are the options for receiving longterm care, such as home-care, assisted living, CCFs or traditional nursing homes? Second, what are the methods of funding long-term care? This Article will consider the strengths and weaknesses of each option when considering how best to control the costs of long-term care. Because only two of the options, maintaining LTC insurance and entering into a contract with a CCF, attempt to control future longterm care costs through risk-spreading, the Article considers these two options in more detail than other options. Part I discusses the alternatives to traditional nursing homes. Given that over 1,600 of this country\u27s traditional nursing homes have recently gone into bankruptcy, seniors will be more interested in options to traditional nursing homes than ever been before. Part II examines the issue, in general terms, of funding long-term costs. Part III analyzes long-term care insurance, and Part IV looks at continuing-care contracts. In the end, for people who want to avoid running out of money for long-term care before they die, long-term care insurance and CCF contracts appear to be the only options. At the moment, however, each provides far less protection against loss than one would hope

Think Like a (Mindful) Lawyer: Incorporating Mindfulness and Professional Identity into the First-Year Curriculum

In this article, I add to the existing mindfulness literature by discussing other ways that law teachers might consider incorporating mindfulness and emotional intelligence into one or more of their classes. I also discuss the related idea of helping students develop a professional identity. Next, I focus on providing these tools in a first-year mandatory class and then attempt to provide a rationale, and a roadmap, for doing this. After explaining briefly what mindfulness and emotional intelligence are, I review literature from other disciplines on the benefits of mindfulness practice and emotional intelligence training. Next, I discuss how this training might enhance the education of lawyers by improving their likelihood of success in the profession and, in turn, improving the quality of their lives both inside and outside their legal practices. Finally, I describe a few examples of materials that could be used in class, as well as some of the classes in which this material might be incorporated. As an example, I use our firstyear mandatory professionalism class at the University of New Mexico School of Law called Practicum, in which we incorporated mindfulness and emotional intelligence in the fall of 2013. In concluding the article, I discuss whether now is the time to make the curricular changes I suggest here or whether it would be best to wait until these principles become more accepted in the profession

The Insolvent Life Care Provider: Who Leads the Dance between the Federal Bankruptcy Code and State Continuing-Care Statutes

Continuing-care retirement communities provide seniors with an attractive option to traditionaln ursing homes. These arrangementsa llow seniors to live in a pleasant, independent environment for as long as possible, and then receive life time nursing care when it is needed. Residents of these communities pay a large upfront entry fee in exchange for the promise of life time nursing care. When continuing care facilities file for bankruptcy, however, residents risk losing their large upfront entry fee, which drastically reduces the value of these arrangements to consumers. In this Article, Professor Nathalie Martin analyses these risks against a host of state statutes purporting to regulate this industry. She concludes that despite many laws on the books, this industry remains largely unregulated, and residentfees are still at great risk of loss in most states. In the Article, Professor Martin analyses the relationship between state statutes and the Federal Bankruptcy Code, and discusses the Supremacy battle that results when state and federal statutes conflict. She analyses the specific provisions of the various state continuing-care statutes and suggests ways that the state statutes could be improved. She then concludes that because the Bankruptcy Code preempts some of the provisions of these state statutes, and because the state legislative process is inefficient and unpredictable, to fully protect residents form the loss of their life care investments, the Bankruptcy Code should also be amended to preclude rejection of life care contracts, to provide rejection damage claims with higher priority, or to otherwise protect resident claims