Collier Bankruptcy Exemption Guide

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 Supervising Attorney at the pro bono Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project in Philadelphia and formerly served as the head of the Consumer Law Project at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. Mr. Sommer has served as a Lecturer-in-Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and is 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). 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).

Hon. Mary Davies Scott served, from 1987 to 2002, as a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas and, from 1996 to 2002, as a member of the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a Conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and past President of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. Judge Scott is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock and Fayetteville Schools of Law. She is a faculty member of the American Law Institute of the American Bar Association and co-chairs the Fundamentals of Bankruptcy Law program. She is also a member of the Advisory Committee to the Program Subcommittee of ALI-ABA. Judge Scott is a frequent lecturer on bankruptcy topics.

Judge Scott serves on the Board of Editors of Collier on Bankruptcy, 15th Edition Revised. Since 1970, she has also served on the Board of Directors for the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

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). Mr. Levin received an S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1975.