Professor Littwin studies bankruptcy, consumer, and commercial law from an empirical perspective. Her current research includes studying the attitudes towards bankruptcy among consumers being sued by debt collectors as well as the relationship between consumer credit and domestic violence (DV). She has published in journals such as the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the California Law Review, and the American Bankruptcy Law Journal. She has recently published article about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's complaints process and supervision program as well as on how consumer bankruptcy attorneys adapted to the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. Professor Littwin has been a principal investigator for a number of empirical projects. With collaborator Adrienne Adams, Professor Littwin is currently interviewing DV victims about coerced debt, which occurs when the batterer in an abusive relationship uses fraud or coercion to generate debt in the name of the victim. Professors Adams and Littwin also developed a coerced debt survey conducted by the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Previously, Professor Littwin was a principal investigator on the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project, which has been the leading study of consumer bankruptcy for the past 35 years. She has also conducted a study on low-income women's use of credit cards.
Professor Littwin received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2002. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and founded ROAD (Reaching Out About Depression), a community-organizing project for low-income women. Prior to her appointment at the University of Texas School of Law, she was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She joined the UT faculty in 2008.
Professor Littwin teaches bankruptcy, secured credit, and a seminar on the regulation of credit cards.
Presented An Initial Quantitative Look at Coerced Debt (co-authored with Adrienne Adams). Hosted by American Bankruptcy Institute and Brooklyn Law School.
Presented Recent Developments in Student Loans.
Presented draft of Why Process Consumer Complaints? Then and Now.
Invited to present recent coerced debt research findings to audience of domestic violence advocates and attorneys. Presented with Adrienne Adams.
Created and presented three-hour webinar for consumer and family attorneys at South Carolina Legal Services. With Adrienne Adams.
Drafted and presented script for 15-minute coerced debt video for domestic violence victims.
Invited to present recent coerced debt research findings to audience of domestic violence advocates. Presented with Adrienne Adams.
Holistic Advocacy for the Long Term Stability of Domestic Violence Survivors. Invited to present at CLE session. Presented with Krista DelGallo, Policy Manager, Texas Council on Family Violence (TCFV) and Carla Sanchez-Adams, Staff Attorney, Texas Rio-Grande Legal Services. Housing & Consumer Law Task Force Meeting. Invited to present coerced debt research findings for local consumer and housing attorneys. Presented with Krista DelGallo, Policy Manager, TCFV.
Invited to present on Recent Developments Panel and presented Recent Developments in Empirical Consumer Bankruptcy Scholarship.
Invited to present Escaping Battered Credit: A Proposal for Repairing Credit Reports Damaged by Domestic Violence.
Presented Escaping Battered Credit: A Proposal for Repairing Credit Reports Damaged by Domestic Violence.
Invited to present The Affordability Paradox: How Consumer Bankruptcy’s Greatest Weakness May Account for its Surprising Success.
Selected through peer review to present Coerced Debt: The Role of Domestic Violence in Consumer Credit.
Invited to present on panel entitled The Consumer Debt/Credit Crisis.
Invited to present on panel entitled Effectively Assisting Pro Se Filers - A View from the Bench.
Selected to present Beyond Usury: A Study of Credit Card Use and Preference Among Low-Income Consumers.
Selected to present research from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project at invitation-only conference for junior scholars in commercial law.
Selected to present an overview of the Bankruptcy Internet Data Project at invitation-only conference for junior scholars in commercial law. Hosted jointly by Harvard Law School and University of Texas Law School.
Presented Beyond Usury: A Study of Credit Card Use and Preference Among Low-Income Consumers at Humboldt University, Berlin.
Selected to present Testing the Substitution Hypothesis: Would Credit Card Regulation Force Low-Income Borrowers Into Less Desirable Lending Alternatives? at invitation-only conference for junior scholars in commercial law.
Competitively selected as an American Bankruptcy Law Journal Fellow by the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. Attended the Annual Meeting of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges as the Judges' guest.