Henry J. Sommer is a leading authority on consumer bankruptcy law and has litigated many major cases involving bankruptcy, consumer law, civil rights and other issues. He is the President of the National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center. He has served in the past as head of the Consumer Law Project at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia and as the Supervising Attorney at the pro bono Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project in Philadelphia. Mr. Sommer has been a Lecturer-in-Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an adjunct professor at Temple University School of Law. Mr. Sommer is the author of Collier Consumer Bankruptcy Practice Guide (Matthew Bender), Consumer Bankruptcy Law and Practice (Nat'l Consumer Law Center),and numerous articles on bankruptcy law. He is co-author of Collier Family Law and the Bankruptcy Code (Matthew Bender). Together with Richard Levin, Mr. Sommer serves as Editor-in-Chief of Collier on Bankruptcy (16th ed.). Mr. Sommer is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the National Bankruptcy Conference. In addition, he is an elected Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. He is a former president of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, former Chair of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Bankruptcy Conference and a former member of the Federal Reserve Board Consumer Advisory Council. Mr. Sommer was the first recipient of the National Consumer Law Center's Vern Countryman Consumer Law Award. He received his legal education from Harvard Law School (J.D., cum laude).
Richard Levin is a Co-head of Jenner & Block LLP’s Restructuring and Bankruptcy Practice, practicing in the New York City office. Mr. Levin's practice concentrates on corporate restructuring, insolvency and bankruptcy issues. From 1975 to 1978, Mr. Levin served as counsel to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, where he was one of the principal authors of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. Mr. Levin is a member and former Chair of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a select organization of bankruptcy professionals that has acted as an informal advisor to Congress on bankruptcy law since the mid-1930s. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and a former member of its Board of Trustees (2007–2009). Mr. Levin also served as Faculty at the Federal Judicial Center (2001-present) and as a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School (2004, 2006). Together with Henry J. Sommer, Mr. Levin serves as Editor-in-Chief of Collier on Bankruptcy (16th ed.). Mr. Levin received an S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1975.