Lauren E. Willis
Professor of Law
Contact Information
Phone: (213) 736-1086
Fax: (213) 380-3769
E-mail: lauren.willis@lls.edu
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211
Educational and Professional Background
BA, with high honors in
general scholarship, Wesleyan University
JD, with distinction and Order of the Coif, Stanford Law School
While in law school, Lauren Willis was on the senior staff of the Stanford Law Review, was a co-founder of the Stanford Public
Interest Law Students Association and was a Foreign Language and
Area Studies (Russian) Fellow. She received the Block Civil Liberties
Award, the Stanford Women Lawyers Scholarship and the University
Goldstein Award for Scholarship on Children at Risk. After law school,
she clerked for the Office of the Solicitor General of the United
States and for Judge Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr. of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She practiced law with
Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP in Baltimore and at the Civil Rights
Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington,
DC. She taught at Stanford
Law School as a Fellow, joined the Loyola faculty in 2004, and spent the 2008 Spring semester as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Professional Memberships and Activities
In her lecture, panelist, and media appearances in the U.S., the E.U., and South Africa, Willis has discussed regulation of the U.S. home mortgage market, predatory lending, financial literacy education, behavioral decisionmaking, and a variety of consumer law topics. She is a member of the State Bars of Maryland and Massachusetts.
"Evidence and Ideology in Assessing the Effectiveness of Financial Literacy Education," __ San Diego Law Review __ (forthcoming 2009)
"Will Obama's economic engineering encourage a return to old habits?" L.A. Daily J. 6 (March 18, 2009)
"Federal Reserve failures highlight need for a restructured system," LA Daily J. (October 29, 2008)
"Will the Mortgage Market 'Correct'?" (May 2008 draft)
"Against Financial Literacy Education," 94 Iowa L. Rev. 197 (2008)
"Decisionmaking and the Limits of Disclosure: The Problem of Predatory Lending: Price," 65 Maryland L. Rev. 707 (2006) (lead article)
"Decisionmaking & the Limits of Disclosure: The Problem of Predatory Lending (Working Paper)," American Law & Economics Association 15th Annual Meeting, Working Paper 2 (April 2005)
Comments to the Federal Reserve Board Regarding Informed Consumer Choice in the Subprime Market, Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act Hearings (August 2006)
Letter Critique of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency July 30, 2003 Working Paper on Economic Issues in Predatory Lending (Exhibit A, Comments of the National Consumer Law Center et al. to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Regarding Banking Activities and Operations; Real Estate Lending and Appraisals, Docket No. 03-16) (October 2003)
Sorting Through the Mortgage Muddle, Chicago Tribune (Aug. 26, 2007)
The Price Is Not Right, Daily Journal (May 16, 2007)
Borrowers May Lose Key State Law Protections, Daily Journal (Nov. 30, 2006)
The Fleecing of Black Borrowers, Washington Post (October 8, 2006)
The IRS' Biggest Tax Cheat: Itself, Los Angeles Times (August 30, 2006)
Rewarding Votes with Cash Bankrupts Democracy, San Francisco Chronicle (July 26, 2006)
Civil Procedure, Consumer Law, Problems and Reforms in the Home Mortgage Market