Here’s the announcement: Teaching Consumer Law Conference “Teaching Consumer Law in a Changing Environment” Santa Fe, New Mexico May 17-18, 2024 Preceded by the Law School Consumer Clinic Conference on May 16 The Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice at the UC Berkeley School of Law and The Center for Consumer Law […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
I think this is great. Here’s the announcement: The National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA) is pleased to announce its first annual 2-year Consumer Law Fellowship. For the first fellowship we are offering, NACA is partnering with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid (JALA). The program is designed to encourage new law school graduates to pursue a […]
Andrea Chandrasekher of UC-Davis has a history of writing important papers on important subjects. She has done so again, with The “Good” Starbucks: Consumer Redlining in Large American Chain Stores. Here’s the abstract: Racial discrimination in the retail realm has been well-documented in the academic literature. However, past studies have focused on retail redlining, a discriminatory […]
. . . at the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast. The episode also discusses the CFPB and discrimination.
Here. Excerpt: [F]or the past three years, having incorrect information on a report has been the No. 1 complaint made to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to CFPB data compiled by Consumer Reports. What’s more, the number of complaints about credit report errors more than doubled in recent years, from 165,129 in 2021 to […]
Carlie Malone and Paige Marta Skiba, both of Vanderbilt, have written Installment Loans. Here’s the abstract: Installment loans have increasingly replaced traditional payday loans in the short-term, small-dollar credit market. Installment loans, often offered by the same lenders who provide payday loans, have larger principal amounts, longer repayment periods, and lower interest rates relative to payday […]
Carrie Floyd of Michigan has written New Tech, Old Problem: The Rise of Virtual Rent-to-Own Agreements, forthcoming at 65 Boston College Law Review 3 (2024). Here is the abstract: This Article explores how fintech has disrupted the traditional rent-to-own (RTO) industry, giving rise to new, virtual RTO agreements (VirTOs). These VirTOs have enabled the RTO […]
David Berman has written Lending Experimentalism: A New Regulatory Approach to Payday Loans, Forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law Policy, Here is the abstract: Payday loans entangle consumers with few alternatives in catastrophically harmful cycles of borrowing. But because of their design, payday loans are vexingly difficult to regulate effectively. This article explains how […]
The industry often claims that arbitration is cheaper than litigation for consumers. Well, not so much any more–if that was ever true–after the AAA’s new mass arbitration rules that Adam Pulver reported about on January 29. Adam mentioned the $3,125 initiation fee. In addition, under the new rules, for cases that proceed beyond the initiation […]
E. Gary Spitko of Santa Clara has written Arbitration Secrecy, 108 Cornell Law Review 1729 (2023). Here’s the abstract: Parties to an arbitration contract may agree to a secrecy clause that will govern their arbitration process to protect the confidentiality of their proprietary or personal information. Of great concern, however, they also may use such an […]