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. Before coming to academia, Willis was a litigator in the Housing Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and worked with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on predatory mortgage lending litigation. She currently serves on the Research Advisory Council of the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington, D.C.
Lauren Willis 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. She was honored by Loyola’s graduating day class with the 2008 Excellence in Teaching award.
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, 46 San Diego L. Rev. 415 (Spring 2009)
Will the Mortgage Market Correct? How Households and Communities Would Fare If Risk Were Priced Well, 41 Conn. L. Rev. 1177 (May 2009)
Against Financial Literacy Education, 94 Iowa L. Rev. 197 (Nov. 2008)
Decisionmaking and the Limits of Disclosure: The Problem of Predatory Lending: Price, 65 Maryland L. Rev. 707 (2006) (lead article)
Decisionmaking and the Limits of Disclosure, American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting Papers (Apr. 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)
Americans Should Recommit to Service - Starting With Jury Duty, Daily Journal (June 3, 2009)
Question of the Week: Is Teaching Personal Finance Education in Schools a Waste of Time?, Guardian Sunday Observer, U.K. (Mar. 29, 2009)
Will Obama's Economic Engineering Encourage a Return to Old Habits?, Daily Journal (Mar. 18, 2009)
Bailout Should Also Help Renters, San Francisco Chronicle (Feb. 23, 2009)
Federal Reserve Failures Highlight Need for a Restructured System, Daily Journal (Oct. 29, 2008)
A House Divided, Daily Journal (July 23, 2008)
Foolish Mortgages, 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 (Oct. 8, 2006)
The IRS' Biggest Tax Cheat: Itself, Los Angeles Times (Aug. 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