Pamela Foohey

Pamela Foohey will join the Law School faculty in Fall 2026. She writes and teaches in the areas of bankruptcy, commercial law, consumer finance, and business law.  Most of her work involves empirical studies of bankruptcy and related parts of the legal system. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers.

Professor Foohey is a co-investigator on the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-term research project studying persons who file bankruptcy. Data from this research project serve as the basis of her co-authored book Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy, University of California Press (Aug. 2025). Her work in business bankruptcy focuses on nonprofit entities. Data from this project are included in her forthcoming book Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive, University of Chicago Press (Sept. 2026).

Professor Foohey’s scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews, including Virginia Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Law & Contemporary Problems. She is an author of Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach, with Lynn M. LoPucki, Elizabeth Warren, and Robert M. Lawless, a leading textbook in the field.

She has provided expert media commentary for publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times and The Washington Post, in addition to Bloomberg and National Public Radio. She is a co-organizer of the Law & Society Association’s Household Finance Collaborative Research Network, and she has served as the chair of several Association of American Law Schools sections. She previously served a three-year appointment on the editorial advisory board of the American Bankruptcy Law Journal. In 2019, the American Bankruptcy Institute named her a “40 Under 40” Emerging Leader in Insolvency Practice.

Professor Foohey received her B.S. summa cum laude from New York University’s undergraduate Stern School of Business. She received her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. Following law school, she served as a judicial clerk for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Peter J. Walsh of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. She also worked as an associate in the Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Group of Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Minneapolis.

She has previously taught at the University of Georgia School of Law, Cardozo School of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, and University of Illinois College of Law.

Professor Foohey is a co-contributor on the Credit Slips blog.