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Mary Katherine Browne
Dr. Leonard M. Cutler
Summer Legal Fellows
August 7th, 2015
Summer Legal Fellow Self-Evaluation
For my Summer Legal Fellows project at Western New England Law School, I worked
alongside fellow Siena College student, Matthew Lorini, and Attorney Justin Dion on producing
and publishing a law review article on the underutilization of court fee waivers in Chapter 7
bankruptcy cases. This project was interesting experience in an area of law that I was fairly
unfamiliar with. Though I found myself facing a few brick walls with the statistical research
component of our project, I learned a lot from this experience and I am proud to be named as a
coauthor of our law review article, “Are 28 USC 1930(f) Bankruptcy Filing Fee Waivers
Promoting Equal Access to Justice? - An Examination of the Purpose and Effectiveness of
Chapter 7 Filing Fee Waivers in Bankruptcy.”
The first couple of weeks during our project were focused on researching the basics of
bankruptcy and analyzing the issue of bankruptcy from different points of view. These
assignments were given as research questions. I was given three research questions: (1) How is
being poor in the United States differ from being poor in other countries?; (2) Is bankruptcy a
conservative or liberal concept?; and (3) Is bankruptcy good for the economy? I had no issues
with the research questions and was easily able to find the information to answer these questions
using research databases such as JSTOR and SSRN. I wrote a twenty-one-page outline on the
research behind each question. Two pages of the outline were focused on brief run down of the
history of bankruptcy in the United States. Matthew wrote a more extensive outline on the
history of United States bankruptcy law. Six pages were focused on the economic value of
bankruptcy, highlighting that bankruptcy allows for individuals to take more risky endeavors that
could benefit the economy and allows debtors to continue contributing to the economy instead of
dropping out. The only highlighted negative aspect of bankruptcy in the outline was that
Mary Katherine Browne
Dr. Leonard M. Cutler
Summer Legal Fellows
August 7th, 2015
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bankruptcy has negative affects when done in mass in a concentrated area. Nine pages of the
outline were dedicated to political aspects of bankruptcy law, which has both liberal and
conservative values. Though, both liberal and conservative were touched upon in the outline, I
mainly focused on 2005 revisions to the Bankruptcy Code made by the Bush Administration,
which were deeply embedded in conservative economic principals, which made bankruptcy laws
more in the favor of the creditors. The last four pages were dedicated to a comparison between
the life of the poor in America and the life of the poor in other countries. When it comes to living
spaces, American impoverished persons have better living space. 6% of poor households are
overcrowds and have more than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person, which is more
living space than typical non-poor person in European countries such as Sweden, France or the
United Kingdom. Attorney Dion seemed impressed with this outline and it was incredibly
beneficial to me when I started writing my assigned sections of our article.
Alongside research questions, Matthew and I were tasked with researching the
bankruptcy laws of other countries and completing a comparative analysis with those laws and
the laws of the United States. While Matt focused on China and Egypt, I focused on the
European Union bankruptcy laws and the individual bankruptcy laws of a few of its member
states: the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. I was able to use my accounts on
the United Kingdom Parliamentary Server and European Parliamentary Research Service
databases, which I had obtained from my prior internship with the Liberal Democrats, in order to
access information on the various bankruptcy laws in Europe. Bankruptcy and insolvency laws in
Europe are fairly complicated because a fair amount of cases fall under Cross-Border Insolvency
Law, which occurs whenever a debtor’s assets or liabilities are located in more than one state.
The majority of European countries are more in favor of the creditor, and only recently decided
to remodel their laws after the United States Bankruptcy Code to be more lenient on the debtor
Mary Katherine Browne
Dr. Leonard M. Cutler
Summer Legal Fellows
August 7th, 2015
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as financial distress amongst private individuals and companies has soared in the past twenty
years. During the third, fourth and fifth weeks, I was asked by Attorney Dion to focus my
research on Trustees regarding their role in bankruptcy and how they have been the cause of
many hindrances in obtaining court fee waivers in Chapter 7 cases. In Chapter 7 cases, a portion
of the court fee is the trustee’s only form of pay since there is often little monetary value to the
debtor’s estate outside exemptions. When in forma pauperis is granted, the trustee essentially
does all of his/her work for free. Both judges and bankruptcy attorneys are often uncomfortable
with this notion and we have hypothesized that this uncomfortable knowledge might lead to the
denial of fee waivers that should have been granted.
Along with research questions, Attorney Dion also assigned us to read law review articles
and various types of case law. These documents would be focused on the various areas in which
we wanted to cover in our law review article. During our weekly discussions we would discuss
whether these documents had information worth implementing into our article. The most
relevant document out of the readings assigned by Attorney Dion was the Takeshorse case,
which became a highlighted case in our article as it clearly showcased one of the main aspects of
our hypothesis – that bankruptcy judges are less likely to grant in forma pauperis waiver if the
debtor paid for an attorney. The Takeshorse case was cited many times in sections authored by
both Matthew and I.
During the fourth week of our Summer Legal Fellows session, Matthew and I began
writing different sections of our law review article. I wrote the Introduction to our piece and
Section 3. My Introduction section focused on the framework of bankruptcy and its societal
value, highlighting both its social justice and economic values. I also implemented a basic run
through on how the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process worked in order to allow the reader a basic
understanding of bankruptcy law. Both Attorney Dion and Matthew looked over the Introduction
Mary Katherine Browne
Dr. Leonard M. Cutler
Summer Legal Fellows
August 7th, 2015
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and found it satisfactory. Very few revisions were suggested to my Introduction and those
revisions were mainly focused on the phrasing of a few sentences and to use different a more
updates version of citation for the United States Code. Section 3 of our article was focused on the
purpose, role and compensation of Trustees. Section 3 was also well received by Matthew and
Attorney Dion. The main criticism was Section 3 was that it needed more elaboration on the
concept of “trustee shopping,” a term used for when debtors and their attorneys deliberately file
on a certain day in order to receive a trustee who will make decisions that might better benefit
the debtor.
During our final two weeks, Attorney Dion asked Matthew and I to focus on how the fee
waiver process should be revised. However, instead of writing out sections, we were asked to
create outlines of our ideas. I had numerous suggestions on how to address the problems in the
current Chapter 7 process. My main suggestion was to add an extra section to the Chapter 7
bankruptcy petition so that fee waivers would automatically be granted to debtors upon filing if
they fit the empirical benchmark to qualify, thus streamlining the process. I also suggested
reexamining the components of the current filing fee and turning the filing process into a
completely digital exercise in order to knock down the fee. Another suggestion I had was to
create a monetary pool for Trustees to be paid from if a debtor was granted in forma pauperis,
thus eliminating the need for judges to deny the waiver in order to ensure a Trustee gets paid for
his/her work.
While I excelled at research and writing, I hit a brick wall when it came to collecting
specific statistics from organizations and scholars. Attorney Dion asked Matt to contact the US
Courts for statistics while I was asked to contact the Federal Judicial Center and the authors of
other law review articles that focused on Chapter 7 bankruptcy fee waivers. I attempted to
contact Elizabeth Wiggins, George Cort, Carol Witcher, Naomi Melvin, Aletha Janitor and
Mary Katherine Browne
Dr. Leonard M. Cutler
Summer Legal Fellows
August 7th, 2015
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Yvette Jeter at the Federal Judicial Center through email and phone. Only Yvette Jeter responded
to my emails to tell me that she did not have any recent statistics on Chapter 7 bankruptcy court
fees and she would not be able to immediately help me due to a project she was working on. I
also attempted to contact Edward Flynn and Gordon Bermant, the authors of 1998 law review
article, “The Impact of the Coming Fee-waiver Provision,” via email and received no reply.
Though I attempted numerous times to contact researchers, I received very dismal results and
grew impatient with the assignment. I began to focus more on looking over dockets that I had
collected from PACER. These dockets ranged from October 2014 to March 2015. Upon
reviewing the documents, I was able to discern that the 1st and 2nd Circuits were more lenient in
granting court fee waivers with Pennsylvania judges granting the most fee waivers.
I am proud of contributions to our law review article despite the lack of success I had
obtaining direct statistics from the Federal Judicial Center. My successful contributions
outweighed my failure of obtain direct statistics, and I have no regrets in regards to my
experience as a Summer Legal Fellow.